The jury is selected randomly from the electoral role. Around 150 people are chosen and then summons around 15 people to sit. To be a juror you also have to be between the ages of 18-70 and be ordinarily resident in the UK, Channel Islands or Isle of Man for at least five years since the age of 13. There are a certain number of people who are not allowed to sit due to lack of capacity, these can be the mentally disordered, be resident in a hospital or similar institution, or regularly attend a medical practitioner for treatment. Other members of the population are also disqualified from being a juror, these are anyone who is on bail, anyone who has at anytime been sentenced to life imprisonment, imprisonment for public protection, detention during her Majesty’s pleasure, sentenced to an extended sentence or been imprisoned for five years or more. Also if a person has in the last ten years served any part of an imprisonment sentence, had a community order, rehabilitation order or a drug order.
Some people by law are given permission to be excused from jury. The following have the right to be excused from jury service for their period of service to be put back to a later date; if you have been on a jury in the last 2 years, are a full time serving member of Her Majesty’s navel, military or air forces, you have insufficient understanding of English, have care responsibilities, are a practising member of a religious society with beliefs incompatible with jury service, have valid business reasons or you can also have deferral rather than excusal if you have holidays booked or exams in that time period. If a person is not excused but does not attend they may be fined up to £1000.
Since the “Criminal Justice Act 2003” the excusal as of right and ineligibility categories have been abolished, this used to allow MP’s, Doctors, Dentists, members of armed services, Judges, police officers and the rest of the legal profession to be ineligible for jury service. Now, with the exception of the armed services must do jury duty if called.
The Central Summonsing Bureau selects enough jurors for a two week period. More than 12 people are chosen due to them not knowing who will be disqualified or will ask for discretionary excusal. The jurors chosen are from the same area as the defendant. Prior to jurors attending court the prosecution and defence vet for suitability. The two types of police checks are;
Routine Police Checks – this eliminates the disqualified people selected, R v Mason (1980.)
Background and Affiliation Checks – this is a wider check made on the juror’s background and political affiliation, this type of vetting is used on high profile cases such as national security or terrorist cases subject to Attorney-General’s guidelines.
Once at court have selected a panel of 12 jurors from a group of 15 the prosecution and defence have certain rights to challenge the jury. They can challenge to the array – section 5 Juries Act 1974 – this is when they challenge the whole jury because they believe it is biased or unrepresentative of the population. Such cases that this has happened is the Romford Jury (1993) and R v Ford (1989) although in this case it went ahead as the jury had been chosen at random. They can also challenge for cause, where the prosecution or defence will challenged an individual juror with a valid reason. An example of this type of challenge was R v Wilson and R v Sprason (1995) as the judge did not allow one of the jurors to be excused from the case, it went to appeal and the convictions had to be quashed. Finally the prosecution has an extra right to “standby” a juror. They can ask for one member to be put to the back of the list with no reason. If not all the members of the jury turn up on the day of trial then a random selection of someone from the nearby area can be chosen. This person will have quick vetting procedures done and will then have to sit on the full two weeks of the jury.
