Part 1: The Queen Versus...
Our court usher was on the verge of being a racist. Not in a Neo-Nazi/Swastika-carved-into-forearm sort of way, but that relatively innocent old fashioned racism that flies out of the mouth as easily as it flies over the heads of most that hear it. Either way, it wasn't a great start to my two weeks on jury service.
"Is everyone ok to swear on the bible?" she asked, while her eyes quickly circled the room and stopped dead on a dark skinned chap who looked a lot like the owner of a kebab shop I frequented in my youth. His response was the same as all of ours, nothing more than a mumble and a quick nod of the head. There was a brief pause as she continued to stare at him with an oblivious grin. He gave a quick wave of his right hand as if to say "No, that's fine with me". "We have all of the holy books" she said directly at him. Kebab mans eyebrows, which were just as thick as his bushy moustache, were now negatively dipped in the middle. She finally understood and decided to shut up.
It's probably wrong to say this incident was the start of my week. It actually began a couple of hours before, waiting. Then there was waiting to wait. We waited in a hallway to wait in a room to wait in a jurors "holding pen" to wait in another room. The whole tedious process lasts the majority of the morning. I was lucky in that I got selected for a case the first morning. Another juror I spoke to in the holding pen had been in that very same room for a whole week having never successfully been selected for a case.
The process is simple. 30 or so people are summoned at a time. They stay in this pen until one of the ushers calls out 14 names. Some more waiting happens, usually an hour or more, before they are herded into the court. Only 12 are then selected to sit on the panel. The reason for the extra 2 is that in the event a juror knows the defendant, depending on the relationship, the judge is likely to not let them take part. Also, it's possible the defence may wish to reject someone. Another reason is case length, which became apparent quickly when the judge announced "If anyone has any reason they will not be able to take part until at least next week, please say so now". A list of names was then called out. These names were witnesses, people who had given statements, police officers, etc. Again, depending on your possible relationship with these people, the judge may remove you from the case.
The names all seemed to be family members and my worst thoughts had come true. This, along with the trail length, could surely mean only one thing - I'd been selected for a long and boring fraud case. This guy had probably just been screwing his family (financially) for years and they were out for blood.
I was hoping for something I could get my teeth into. Something gritty. Maybe a local chav robbing a post office had then blamed it on another chav. Or even a chav stabbing another chav to death and denying the whole thing. You know, something interesting but an overall victim-less crime.
The bomb was dropped in the form of a 7 page indictment listing 15 acts of extreme deviance. As the list progressed, each turn of the page felt like I was lifting a brick.
I could feel a mix of rage and pure disgust building within me. The only way to stop myself from standing up and shouting at the defendant was to try to lighten the situation within my mind. The crimes could wait. I decided to start looking at everyone in the court and judging them based on their appearance, as you do.
Surely they had chosen the barristers on image alone? The prosecutor; "The Crown", was a relatively attractive woman. A bright smile, friendly, well spoken, married and heavily pregnant. On the other hand the defence; the "Bad Guy", had most likely been a weasel in his past life. Hunched over and balding with no wedding ring.What hair he did have left had been attacked by an awful dye job to cover the grey. I don't think he was even that old, but his looks had been ravaged by many years of evil deeds. To top it all off he spoke LIKE this.... With long BROKEN gaps and that PATRONIZING tooone that seems to jump UP and DOWN for no reason.
My mind, like the majority of the story to come, had wandered into a tangent. It was time to start doing my duty and at very least pay attention. Let me take you back to last year, February to be exact. A young girl aged 8, who shall be referred to as Emma, is pestering her mother to let her join a kids chat room on the internet. All the other girls at school were allowed on it, so why wasn't she? The mother was careful though. She knows the dangers of the world wide web and, quite understandably, she wanted to check it out to make sure it's safe for her little girl. But wwwhhhhyyy mummy? I can imagine her response would be. The mother said something along the lines of, "There are sometimes bad people on the internet who want to take away little children and make them do bad things. Things that might make them hurt or make them upset. These people are sick in the head." Emma threw a brief tantrum before returning to the computer. Several minutes later, in her innocent and childish way, calls out to her mum - "Does that mean Grandad is sick in the head?"
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