Looks like we need to add corrupt to incompetent, mendacious, hubristic, anti-democratic and arrogant when we describe this Tory government.
I’ll put you down as a maybe, shall I?
That’s what Scottish Tory canvas returns used to look like. They’d have whole streets full of supporters and DKs when not a single Con voter lived there.
They can’t sack Jenrick. He is very distilled essence of Toryism. This sort of favour and back scratching has played out in the Conservative party in its various forms across the nation for years. It’s what Toryism is.
Spoken like a true Blairite, even keeping a straight face.
A truly awful idea. Being judged by a jury of one's peers is a an inalienable right in this country. Whatever virus bullshit excuse isn't going to cut it when suspending or removing such a basic right.
The virus may have (I have no idea in truth) how a jury functions in practice but the principle of being judged by 12 ought to remain.
Actually it’s virtually impossible to socially distance a group of 12 with the space available. 7 or 8 you can manage using the press box and the jury box for the hearing and spacing around the walls in the jury room
Then use the bubble principle and accept the jury can't be socially distanced. Give those at risk the right to excuse themselves from jury service. Don't tamper with it.
And the 12 families the go home to in the evening?
I assume this post is by Antifrank, despite being unsigned?
It says "Cyclefree"
Aha. Ta. I cannot see an author at all. But I have horrific problems reading this blog full stop. It is nigh on impossible. A dinosaur from the era of primeval blogging.
First the test and trace system was “world beating”. Today it is a “stunning success”.
Embarrassing hyperbole seems to be a key part of The Clown’s repertoire. It’ll be painful by the end of his disastrous tenure.
It's the same play book as Trump. Make outrageous statements in the hope that your core voters believe you and can't be bothered to verify whether it is true or not. By and large it seems to work, sadly.
But over the long term it risks seriously pissing off even core voters. Then you’re up effluent canyon with no mean of propulsion.
Agreed, and I believe we might finally be witnessing its demise as a successful strategy for Trump.
Even the thickest Trump voter must have noticed by now that that covid-19 infections didn't reduce to zero weeks ago as the Orange one told them it would.
The thing is that Jenrick could have resigned, or been resigned, at the beginning of this affair with minimal damage. It could have been pitched as an honourable resignation. Now that is not possible.
They can’t sack Jenrick. He is very distilled essence of Toryism. This sort of favour and back scratching has played out in the Conservative party in its various forms across the nation for years. It’s what Toryism is.
Spoken like a true Blairite, even keeping a straight face.
Don’t you just love it when they call you a Blairite. Corbynite or Tory, they’re two cheeks of the Forces of Conservatism arse.
They can’t sack Jenrick. He is very distilled essence of Toryism. This sort of favour and back scratching has played out in the Conservative party in its various forms across the nation for years. It’s what Toryism is.
Spoken like a true Blairite, even keeping a straight face.
Don’t you just love it when they call you a Blairite. Corbynite or Tory, they’re two cheeks of the Forces of Conservatism arse.
I thought you were a proud Blairite. Have you recanted?
On a tangential note, I sometimes wonder whether juries should be drawn from places that are not local to the trial. When Alex Salmond was tried, it would have been utterly impossible to draw a jury from Scotland that didn't have strong personal views on the man. I could understand Salmond not wanting an all English jury either, but perhaps a Welsh jury would have been the best way of getting a fair trial.
Separate jurisdictions. You must be resident in Scotland to serve in a Scottish jury. Jurors are selected at random from the electoral register.
Purely for information Scotland has also looked at restricted juries of 7, something that was done in WW2. A Scottish jury has15 members making social distancing even more problematic.
What I have found surprising is that the adamant opposition to the withdrawal of Juries maintained by the bar, even although it has meant no High Court trials in Scotland for 3 months and consequentially minimal income. It’s almost as if the Scottish bar at least is not quite as cynical as @cyclefree suggests.
A truly awful idea. Being judged by a jury of one's peers is a an inalienable right in this country. Whatever virus bullshit excuse isn't going to cut it when suspending or removing such a basic right.
The virus may have (I have no idea in truth) how a jury functions in practice but the principle of being judged by 12 ought to remain.
Actually it’s virtually impossible to socially distance a group of 12 with the space available. 7 or 8 you can manage using the press box and the jury box for the hearing and spacing around the walls in the jury room
Then use the bubble principle and accept the jury can't be socially distanced. Give those at risk the right to excuse themselves from jury service. Don't tamper with it.
And the 12 families the go home to in the evening?
What’s the magic about 12?
Not as magic as 15.
Actually, proper magic numbers are 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126
They can’t sack Jenrick. He is very distilled essence of Toryism. This sort of favour and back scratching has played out in the Conservative party in its various forms across the nation for years. It’s what Toryism is.
Spoken like a true Blairite, even keeping a straight face.
Don’t you just love it when they call you a Blairite. Corbynite or Tory, they’re two cheeks of the Forces of Conservatism arse.
I thought you were a proud Blairite. Have you recanted?
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
A neat leap-frog. It's certainly true that the Labour Party in Crosland's day (at the national level at least) was much less corrupt than in the New Labour era.
The thing is that Jenrick could have resigned, or been resigned, at the beginning of this affair with minimal damage. It could have been pitched as an honourable resignation. Now that is not possible.
Though we all thought the same about Dom as three days of headlines became four, then five...
The government logic seems to boil down to "Can you actually force us to go? No, not until 2024. So off you trot until then." From anywhere outside a bunker, that's obviously mad, and is storing up a whole world of pain. But from inside, it saves the hassle of getting a new minister up to speed and makes the Jenrick's of this world more pliable. So I can see the logic.
It depends what sort of failure you want in the end. John Major's government kept being hit by scandals and resignations. A bit like a marshmallow, it kept being dented, but was hard to break totally. It survived five years, and only then fell apart.
Boris has learned the wrong lesson from that. He seems to have set his government up like a piece of glass. Hard, unyielding, enemy shot just bounces off, no change. And that will likely continue until something random hits in the right place and the whole thing shatters unpredictably.
For those betting on LibDem leadership - the positon at 5pm tonight. Much too early to read anything into this I think.
I'll feel a little bad for him if he loses yet again, but despite playing up his Tory fighting credentials I just have this suspicion the good people of 2020 are not ever the coalition yet and the LDs won't want to risk people bringing it up all the time.
Layla is clear fav atm - 1.65.
Funny when you remember 2 MP nominations each is more than half the party accounted for .
Only way is up for the LDs surely.
Not at all. They've come back from a worse position (well, their predecessors anyway), but that's no guarnatee they will again
I think they are in real trouble in some areas that used to of relative strength. Here in the SW for instance they still haven't even regained second place in many seats, so it is not impossible (though I don't think it likely) that Labour could consolidate the anti-tory vote in some of those areas. And they could still go backwards.
Both demographics and cultural issues (e.g. SW has always been more eurosceptic, LDs included) are trending away from LDs down these parts
We should also remember that four of the eleven Lib Dem MPs represent Scottish seats and may, as such, find themselves out of a job before the end of the current Parliamentary term.
What sequence of events do you envisage precipitating this?
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
A neat leap-frog. It's certainly true that the Labour Party in Crosland's day (at the national level at least) was much less corrupt than in the New Labour era.
Nothing can disguise the stench in the Tory shires. A side effect of local power left unchecked for too long. Hopefully that will change. Jenrick and his support is a symptom of this complacency.
Lord Sumption was on R4 today expressing a dissenting view.
Given their boycotting of him, presumably Sumption battered his way in, took a presenter hostage and barricaded himself into a studio.
Does that prize goof Hitchens talk about Sweden as much these days as he does about Sumption being silenced?
He has been talking about the subject of tonight's thread since this morning, and agreeing with someone he has argued at length with previously, namely the Secret Barrister. Fancy that, big enough to do such a thing
Though we all thought the same about Dom as three days of headlines became four, then five...
The government logic seems to boil down to "Can you actually force us to go? No, not until 2024. So off you trot until then." From anywhere outside a bunker, that's obviously mad, and is storing up a whole world of pain. But from inside, it saves the hassle of getting a new minister up to speed and makes the Jenrick's of this world more pliable. So I can see the logic.
It depends what sort of failure you want in the end. John Major's government kept being hit by scandals and resignations. A bit like a marshmallow, it kept being dented, but was hard to break totally. It survived five years, and only then fell apart.
Boris has learned the wrong lesson from that. He seems to have set his government up like a piece of glass. Hard, unyielding, enemy shot just bounces off, no change. And that will likely continue until something random hits in the right place and the whole thing shatters unpredictably.
I don't disagree, but Cummings is absolutely central to the government's operation: Boris seems to have subcontracted the entire machinery of policy making and implementation to him. Jenrick is of no importance whatsoever.
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
A neat leap-frog. It's certainly true that the Labour Party in Crosland's day (at the national level at least) was much less corrupt than in the New Labour era.
Nothing can disguise the stench in the Tory shires. A side effect of local power left unchecked for too long. Hopefully that will change. Jenrick and his support is a symptom of this complacency.
Not really. Quite apart from anything else, in living memory Tory shires such as Wealden have been infested with LibDems. The Labour fiefdoms have been much better examples of unchecked local power for decades (well, the remaining English and Welsh ones at least, best not to mention the former Scottish fiefdoms...)
I don't disagree, but Cummings is absolutely central to the government's operation: Boris seems to have subcontracted the entire machinery of policy making and implementation to him. Jenrick is of no importance whatsoever.
With great power comes great responsibility ? Or not as in Cummings case.
91 Fahrenheit means absolutely nothing to me or indeed anyone under the age of about 100
Yes, that was peculiar. And even where it does mean something I don't know anyone who still uses it casually, it's not like stones or feet, my 70 year old father wouldn't describe the temperature with farenheit.
Purely for information Scotland has also looked at restricted juries of 7, something that was done in WW2. A Scottish jury has15 members making social distancing even more problematic.
What I have found surprising is that the adamant opposition to the withdrawal of Juries maintained by the bar, even although it has meant no High Court trials in Scotland for 3 months and consequentially minimal income. It’s almost as if the Scottish bar at least is not quite as cynical as @cyclefree suggests.
Maybe they have principles? Unlike large swathes of Westminster it would seem.....
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
A neat leap-frog. It's certainly true that the Labour Party in Crosland's day (at the national level at least) was much less corrupt than in the New Labour era.
Nothing can disguise the stench in the Tory shires. A side effect of local power left unchecked for too long. Hopefully that will change. Jenrick and his support is a symptom of this complacency.
Do you have an opinion on Epping Forest? No Labour representation there... or so it has been claimed
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
No they should be put in front of a jury but arguably with a right for the defendant to then appeal to an expert tribunal if they're convicted.
Better for ten guilty men to walk free than one innocent to be wrongly convicted. The right to a jury trial should never be qualified.
The problem is that most juries don’t understand financial crimes. They try to get round it with allocating expert jurors but it’s hard.
Thanks Cyclefree. This is the sort of topic I enjoy very much.
One problem you might have in your defence of the current jury system is that many of us have sat on juries. Whilst my own experiences did not make we wish to abolish trial by jury, they did make me think there is a lot wrong with them that could and should be addressed. The list is long so I'll stick to one fairly uncontroversial question.
Why does it have to be 12 jurors? What is special about that number? why not, say, 10, or perhaps the 7 that others have suggested?
And if I may be allowed a supplementary.... What is wrong with having specialist jurors for certain types of trial where specialist knowledge would be a distinct advantage? I am thinking particularly of fraud or similar financial offences where the technicalities may be beyond most people but straight forward enough for people with a financial background. Why would it be wrong for the jury to ;know its subject'?
Got to go out for a bit but back in about an hour.
I strongly disagree with you and @Charles on this and having done quite a few of the biggest and most complicated fraud and financial trials around, I’ll tell you why.
It is precisely the lack of specialist knowledge which is an advantage, the ability not to be blinded by your belief that you understand all this because you’re an expert. And that’s because the issue is not the complicated financial stuff but whether someone is dishonest or not, whether they’re lying or bullshitting etc - all the issues which come up in every trial. And ordinary people are as good, often better, than specialists at seeing through the bullshit, at assessing whether someone is lying or not.
Take one case - the Adoboli case: lots of people with oh so much specialist knowledge believed him and could not see what the jury clearly saw - that he was a lying bullshitter who had no answer to the simple question: if what he was doing was sanctioned by his bosses, as he claimed (untrue) why did he go to such lengths to hide what he was doing.
The lawyers’ job is to explain the complicated simply. Believe me - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world so complicated that someone cannot explain it simply. That is what the lawyers have to do.
So I don’t buy this stuff about financial crimes being too complicated for ordinary people. That is simply making exactly the mistake I describe - thinking that only clever people can understand this. It was clever people who made the mistakes. Ordinary people are well able to see what clever people, blinded by their own cleverness, often miss.
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
A neat leap-frog. It's certainly true that the Labour Party in Crosland's day (at the national level at least) was much less corrupt than in the New Labour era.
Nothing can disguise the stench in the Tory shires. A side effect of local power left unchecked for too long. Hopefully that will change. Jenrick and his support is a symptom of this complacency.
Not really. Quite apart from anything else, in living memory Tory shires such as Wealden have been infested with LibDems. The Labour fiefdoms have been much better examples of unchecked local power for decades (well, the remaining English and Welsh ones at least, best not to mention the former Scottish fiefdoms...)
I totally get people thinking one party or another has instinctively better policies, and that there will be one which is clearly more incompetent or corrupt at any given time, but what I don't get is the belief that, in general, adherents of one party or another are going to be more corrupt than the other when in a position of power.
Looks like we need to add corrupt to incompetent, mendacious, hubristic, anti-democratic and arrogant when we describe this Tory government.
It's very puzzling. Robert Jenrick's career seems a really odd hill to make a stand on. I'd have thought that if you were looking for a definition of 'expendable', Mr Jenrick would be one of the first examples to come to mind.
Be loyal. And anything will be forgiven. Stand by me and I'll stand by you. It is the masons and the mafia code.
On a tangential note, I sometimes wonder whether juries should be drawn from places that are not local to the trial. When Alex Salmond was tried, it would have been utterly impossible to draw a jury from Scotland that didn't have strong personal views on the man. I could understand Salmond not wanting an all English jury either, but perhaps a Welsh jury would have been the best way of getting a fair trial.
Separate jurisdictions. You must be resident in Scotland to serve in a Scottish jury. Jurors are selected at random from the electoral register.
I assume the Salmond jury was drawn from the Edinburgh register? I'm not particularly sympatico to him given the behaviour he admitted to as part of his defence, but I can't think an Edinburgh jury would be particularly inclined to look on him favourably.
I wonder in what % of trials the judge privately disagrees with the verdict of the jury? 20% maybe?
Doesn't mean the judge is right though. Having been on a jury and been impressed at how seriously it took its duty I am a big fan of jury trials, they are a cornerstone of our justice system.
I have only done Jury service once in my life and only once had the opportunity to "consider our verdict". We were split 8-4 but the end of the day was coming and none of us were going to change our minds so we filed back into the courtroom and the Jury Foreman announced our (agreed) unanimous not guilty verdict. The body language of the Judge (and prolonged stare at the paper in front of him) said that he was expecting nothing less than a guilty verdict.
Judges hear cases once or twice a week and will form their opinion based on what I would call "familiarity with the system", ie I've heard that story before. But eight of us thought the Prosecution/Police had made no effort to disprove the defendant's alibi because they wrongly thought the rest of the evidence was conclusive, which actually it wasn't. Sure we had heard an unlikely but not impossible tale but more importantly it was relatively easy to show to be false if that were the case. I think it is fair to say we thought the defendant might be guilty of 'something' but maybe not what he was being charged with. The Judge almost certainly disagreed with us that day but of course never heard our reasoning.
I wonder in what % of trials the judge privately disagrees with the verdict of the jury? 20% maybe?
Doesn't mean the judge is right though. Having been on a jury and been impressed at how seriously it took its duty I am a big fan of jury trials, they are a cornerstone of our justice system.
I have only done Jury service once in my life and only once had the opportunity to "consider our verdict". We were split 8-4 but the end of the day was coming and none of us were going to change our minds so we filed back into the courtroom and the Jury Foreman announced our (agreed) unanimous not guilty verdict. The body language of the Judge (and prolonged stare at the paper in front of him) said that he was expecting nothing less than a guilty verdict.
Judges hear cases once or twice a week and will form their opinion based on what I would call "familiarity with the system", ie I've heard that story before. But eight of us thought the Prosecution/Police had made no effort to disprove the defendant's alibi because they wrongly thought the rest of the evidence was conclusive, which actually it wasn't. Sure we had heard an unlikely but not impossible tale but more importantly it was relatively easy to show to be false if that were the case. I think it is fair to say we thought the defendant might be guilty of 'something' but maybe not what he was being charged with. The Judge almost certainly disagreed with us that day but of course never heard our reasoning.
And your story is a perfect illustration of why the jury system must stay as it is
I totally get people thinking one party or another has instinctively better policies, and that there will be one which is clearly more incompetent or corrupt at any given time, but what I don't get is the belief that, in general, adherents of one party or another are going to be more corrupt than the other when in a position of power.
I think the truth is that you tend to get arrogance and corruption when a party is in power for a long period, irrespective of the political label. It's partly because a long period in power tends to attract shysters who have no particular political interests. This is true internationally.
Though we all thought the same about Dom as three days of headlines became four, then five...
The government logic seems to boil down to "Can you actually force us to go? No, not until 2024. So off you trot until then." From anywhere outside a bunker, that's obviously mad, and is storing up a whole world of pain. But from inside, it saves the hassle of getting a new minister up to speed and makes the Jenrick's of this world more pliable. So I can see the logic.
It depends what sort of failure you want in the end. John Major's government kept being hit by scandals and resignations. A bit like a marshmallow, it kept being dented, but was hard to break totally. It survived five years, and only then fell apart.
Boris has learned the wrong lesson from that. He seems to have set his government up like a piece of glass. Hard, unyielding, enemy shot just bounces off, no change. And that will likely continue until something random hits in the right place and the whole thing shatters unpredictably.
I don't disagree, but Cummings is absolutely central to the government's operation: Boris seems to have subcontracted the entire machinery of policy making and implementation to him. Jenrick is of no importance whatsoever.
Absolutely. So we have to conclude that the key principle is that Nobody Resigns. The government hasn't chosen "Protect Jenrick" as a hill to die on, because they are convinced that they aren't going to die (not until 2024 at least).
It's insane hubris and likely to end in tears at some point, but that's what groups of adolescents are often like. And the internal logic works. After all, who is going to stop them?
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
A neat leap-frog. It's certainly true that the Labour Party in Crosland's day (at the national level at least) was much less corrupt than in the New Labour era.
Nothing can disguise the stench in the Tory shires. A side effect of local power left unchecked for too long. Hopefully that will change. Jenrick and his support is a symptom of this complacency.
I think 12 socially distanced (Say video call) jurors would find less unanimous verdicts than 12 in a room. There might be something in that. Often wonder how much of a role peer pressure plays in reaching a verdict.
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
A neat leap-frog. It's certainly true that the Labour Party in Crosland's day (at the national level at least) was much less corrupt than in the New Labour era.
Nothing can disguise the stench in the Tory shires. A side effect of local power left unchecked for too long. Hopefully that will change. Jenrick and his support is a symptom of this complacency.
Do you have an opinion on Epping Forest? No Labour representation there... or so it has been claimed
Last Labour cllr in Epping Forest was in Shelley ward and lost their seat in 2015, Loughton also had a few Labour cllrs but is now all Loughton Residents
The show creators issued an apology and say they "regret" their "original decision to cast a white actor to voice a biracial character.”
"Ending my portrayal of Missy is one step in a life-long process of uncovering the racism in my actions," Slate said.
If a character is biracial, is a white actor less appropriate than a black actor ?! Seems like everyone is collectively disappearing up their own arseholes over this nonsense.
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
A neat leap-frog. It's certainly true that the Labour Party in Crosland's day (at the national level at least) was much less corrupt than in the New Labour era.
Nothing can disguise the stench in the Tory shires. A side effect of local power left unchecked for too long. Hopefully that will change. Jenrick and his support is a symptom of this complacency.
Newark was Labour from 1997 to 2001
Boundaries were very different then and included Retford. Sad story about what happened to the then Labour MP.
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
No they should be put in front of a jury but arguably with a right for the defendant to then appeal to an expert tribunal if they're convicted.
Better for ten guilty men to walk free than one innocent to be wrongly convicted. The right to a jury trial should never be qualified.
The problem is that most juries don’t understand financial crimes. They try to get round it with allocating expert jurors but it’s hard.
Thanks Cyclefree. This is the sort of topic I enjoy very much.
One problem you might have in your defence of the current jury system is that many of us have sat on juries. Whilst my own experiences did not make we wish to abolish trial by jury, they did make me think there is a lot wrong with them that could and should be addressed. The list is long so I'll stick to one fairly uncontroversial question.
Why does it have to be 12 jurors? What is special about that number? why not, say, 10, or perhaps the 7 that others have suggested?
And if I may be allowed a supplementary.... What is wrong with having specialist jurors for certain types of trial where specialist knowledge would be a distinct advantage? I am thinking particularly of fraud or similar financial offences where the technicalities may be beyond most people but straight forward enough for people with a financial background. Why would it be wrong for the jury to ;know its subject'?
Got to go out for a bit but back in about an hour.
I strongly disagree with you and @Charles on this and having done quite a few of the biggest and most complicated fraud and financial trials around, I’ll tell you why.
It is precisely the lack of specialist knowledge which is an advantage, the ability not to be blinded by your belief that you understand all this because you’re an expert. And that’s because the issue is not the complicated financial stuff but whether someone is dishonest or not, whether they’re lying or bullshitting etc - all the issues which come up in every trial. And ordinary people are as good, often better, than specialists at seeing through the bullshit, at assessing whether someone is lying or not.
Take one case - the Adoboli case: lots of people with oh so much specialist knowledge believed him and could not see what the jury clearly saw - that he was a lying bullshitter who had no answer to the simple question: if what he was doing was sanctioned by his bosses, as he claimed (untrue) why did he go to such lengths to hide what he was doing.
The lawyers’ job is to explain the complicated simply. Believe me - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world so complicated that someone cannot explain it simply. That is what the lawyers have to do.
So I don’t buy this stuff about financial crimes being too complicated for ordinary people. That is simply making exactly the mistake I describe - thinking that only clever people can understand this. It was clever people who made the mistakes. Ordinary people are well able to see what clever people, blinded by their own cleverness, often miss.
OK, but consider the following anecdote.
A friend sat on a long, complicated fraud trial for about three weeks. At the end, the foreman announced the jury's verdict of 'Not guilty' to which the judge responded 'Well I am surprised!' To his eternal credit the foreman said 'Well you shouldn't be. We've listened for three weeks and haven't understood a word'.
I was reminded of this when the Maxwell brothers stood trial. I recall that their defence rested mainly if not wholly on the argument that although they were directors of the businesses in question they hadn't a clue what was going on because it was all run by their Dad. Now I always thought that directors were responsible for everything that went on in a company and that you couldn't plead ignorance like that, so I couldn't help suspecting that the jury had so little acquaintance with company law and the management of businesses that they accepted the Maxwells' excuse and found them not guilty. In other words, they didn't understand what was going on so they found them not guilty.
Looks like we need to add corrupt to incompetent, mendacious, hubristic, anti-democratic and arrogant when we describe this Tory government.
It's very puzzling. Robert Jenrick's career seems a really odd hill to make a stand on. I'd have thought that if you were looking for a definition of 'expendable', Mr Jenrick would be one of the first examples to come to mind.
Not at all, you have to draw a line in the sand and stick to it. If the PM starts sacking people for corruption, misleading, law breaking, dishonesty and incompetence, there would not be many left in the cabinet, including the PM.
I wonder in what % of trials the judge privately disagrees with the verdict of the jury? 20% maybe?
Doesn't mean the judge is right though. Having been on a jury and been impressed at how seriously it took its duty I am a big fan of jury trials, they are a cornerstone of our justice system.
I have only done Jury service once in my life and only once had the opportunity to "consider our verdict". We were split 8-4 but the end of the day was coming and none of us were going to change our minds so we filed back into the courtroom and the Jury Foreman announced our (agreed) unanimous not guilty verdict. The body language of the Judge (and prolonged stare at the paper in front of him) said that he was expecting nothing less than a guilty verdict.
Judges hear cases once or twice a week and will form their opinion based on what I would call "familiarity with the system", ie I've heard that story before. But eight of us thought the Prosecution/Police had made no effort to disprove the defendant's alibi because they wrongly thought the rest of the evidence was conclusive, which actually it wasn't. Sure we had heard an unlikely but not impossible tale but more importantly it was relatively easy to show to be false if that were the case. I think it is fair to say we thought the defendant might be guilty of 'something' but maybe not what he was being charged with. The Judge almost certainly disagreed with us that day but of course never heard our reasoning.
Fascinating. I was on what I suppose you'd call the converse (mirror image?) case. We weren't sure exactly what the defendant had done but we were certain he'd done something and we were determined he shouldn't get away with it! The Court was clearly surprised by the verdict.
Yon sir knight has had an interesting month, according to Wikipedia.
Golly.
'On June 1, 2020, during the nationwide George Floyd protests, Gaetz posted on Twitter, "Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?" In response, Twitter hid the tweet and labeled it as "[violating] the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence". Gaetz called the label a "badge of honor", accused Twitter of "enabling" Antifa, and again said that "[o]ur government should hunt [Antifa] down".'
Double golly.
'Gaetz has never married.
'In June 2020, following an argument with fellow congressman Cedric Richmond, Gaetz stated he had been living with a 19-year-old immigrant from Cuba, Nestor Galbán, since Galbán was age 12, and considers him his son. He later clarified that Galbán is the brother of an ex-girlfriend of Gaetz's and that Galbán spends time with his sister, with Gaetz's family, and with Gaetz. The two are not related genetically or by legal status. Gaetz said, "Our relationship as a family is defined by our love for each other, not by any paperwork." Previously in 2016, Gaetz had called Galbán a "local student"; while in 2017, Gaetz referred to Galbán as "my helper"'
See. I'd really like to do jury service. I reckon it would be interesting. It's on my bucket list.
It is usually very boring. You spend most of the two weeks sitting around waiting to be called. You are quite likely to hear no case at all, one if you are lucky, two if you are very lucky. If you are called, the case will probably be pathetically trivial and as likely as not your fellow-jurors will mostly be mind-numbingly stupid and unsuitable for the job.
If you are called, the case will probably be pathetically trivial and as likely as not your fellow-jurors will mostly be mind-numbingly stupid and unsuitable for the job.
From my experience, I certainly wouldn't want to be subject to a jury of 12 ..... stripped away my naivete on that front pretty fast. Awfully close to a roll of the dice.
I had lunch yesterday with two very senior magistrates. Jury trials are a must - but they felt that 7 would be as good as 12.
That (and only that) seems a reasonable temporry measure during thepandemic.
But what is the logic of 12? Why is that better than, say, 7?
I've sat on four juries and I can tell you that one of them was so full of hopelessly stupid and irresponsible jurors it wouldn't have mattered how many of us there were. I gave up trying to talk sense after a while, mainly because I couldn't make myself heard about the general chatter which had nothing to do with the trial. (When we returned a Not Guilty verdict the judge virtually told us we'd got it wrong and kept us in the Court while he lectured the defendant about his future conduct.)
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
No they should be put in front of a jury but arguably with a right for the defendant to then appeal to an expert tribunal if they're convicted.
Better for ten guilty men to walk free than one innocent to be wrongly convicted. The right to a jury trial should never be qualified.
The problem is that most juries don’t understand financial crimes. They try to get round it with allocating expert jurors but it’s hard.
Thanks Cyclefree. This is the sort of topic I enjoy very much.
One problem you might have in your defence of the current jury system is that many of us have sat on juries. Whilst my own experiences did not make we wish to abolish trial by jury, they did make me think there is a lot wrong with them that could and should be addressed. The list is long so I'll stick to one fairly uncontroversial question.
Why does it have to be 12 jurors? What is special about that number? why not, say, 10, or perhaps the 7 that others have suggested?
And if I may be allowed a supplementary.... What is wrong with having specialist jurors for certain types of trial where specialist knowledge would be a distinct advantage? I am thinking particularly of fraud or similar financial offences where the technicalities may be beyond most people but straight forward enough for people with a financial background. Why would it be wrong for the jury to ;know its subject'?
Got to go out for a bit but back in about an hour.
I strongly disagree with you and @Charles on this and having done quite a few of the biggest and most complicated fraud and financial trials around, I’ll tell you why.
It is precisely the lack of specialist knowledge which is an advantage, the ability not to be blinded by your belief that you understand all this because you’re an expert. And that’s because the issue is not the complicated financial stuff but whether someone is dishonest or not, whether they’re lying or bullshitting etc - all the issues which come up in every trial. And ordinary people are as good, often better, than specialists at seeing through the bullshit, at assessing whether someone is lying or not.
Take one case - the Adoboli case: lots of people with oh so much specialist knowledge believed him and could not see what the jury clearly saw - that he was a lying bullshitter who had no answer to the simple question: if what he was doing was sanctioned by his bosses, as he claimed (untrue) why did he go to such lengths to hide what he was doing.
The lawyers’ job is to explain the complicated simply. Believe me - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world so complicated that someone cannot explain it simply. That is what the lawyers have to do.
So I don’t buy this stuff about financial crimes being too complicated for ordinary people. That is simply making exactly the mistake I describe - thinking that only clever people can understand this. It was clever people who made the mistakes. Ordinary people are well able to see what clever people, blinded by their own cleverness, often miss.
OK, but consider the following anecdote.
A friend sat on a long, complicated fraud trial for about three weeks. At the end, the foreman announced the jury's verdict of 'Not guilty' to which the judge responded 'Well I am surprised!' To his eternal credit the foreman said 'Well you shouldn't be. We've listened for three weeks and haven't understood a word'.
I was reminded of this when the Maxwell brothers stood trial. I recall that their defence rested mainly if not wholly on the argument that although they were directors of the businesses in question they hadn't a clue what was going on because it was all run by their Dad. Now I always thought that directors were responsible for everything that went on in a company and that you couldn't plead ignorance like that, so I couldn't help suspecting that the jury had so little acquaintance with company law and the management of businesses that they accepted the Maxwells' excuse and found them not guilty. In other words, they didn't understand what was going on so they found them not guilty.
You get my point?
I do. I was involved in the Maxwell case. You see you are making the sort of mistake that someone with a little expertise might well make. The test in a criminal trial is different to the issue of a director’s legal responsibility. There is a different standard of proof, for one thing, and the issue was not their role as directors. It was whether they had a reasonable belief that, when the company used the assets of the pension fund as collateral for the loans from banks, they would be able to repay those loans. And the evidence was that they did have a reasonable belief for this. They were not charged with theft of various sums where the evidence was much more conclusive but with a rather more obscure charge and the evidence simply was not up to snuff.
So knowing about directors’ legal duties does not really help you all that much and might actually distract you from focusing on what the issues in the particular case are.
Expertise is not a bar to being on a jury but it is not the be all and end all.
If you are called, the case will probably be pathetically trivial and as likely as not your fellow-jurors will mostly be mind-numbingly stupid and unsuitable for the job.
From my experience, I certainly wouldn't want to be subject to a jury of 12 ..... stripped away my naivete on that front pretty fast. Awfully close to a roll of the dice.
One unexpected discovery I made from the four trials I sat on was that the verdict depended to a large extent on just how smart the jury was, so in that sense the outcome was a bit of a roll of the dice.
I've mentioned below the trial where the jury was so stupid a manifestly guilty man got off. In another more serious case we found the defendant guilty to the obvious surpise of the court. A big factor was a number of very sharp jurors who spotted things the barristers seemed to have missed and had the courage and the intelligence to draw the right conclusions. To this day, I am sure the verdict was right but I'm equally sure the defendant was unlucky to get a clever jury!
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
No they should be put in front of a jury but arguably with a right for the defendant to then appeal to an expert tribunal if they're convicted.
Better for ten guilty men to walk free than one innocent to be wrongly convicted. The right to a jury trial should never be qualified.
The problem is that most juries don’t understand financial crimes. They try to get round it with allocating expert jurors but it’s hard.
Thanks Cyclefree. This is the sort of topic I enjoy very much.
One problem you might have in your defence of the current jury system is that many of us have sat on juries. Whilst my own experiences did not make we wish to abolish trial by jury, they did make me think there is a lot wrong with them that could and should be addressed. The list is long so I'll stick to one fairly uncontroversial question.
Why does it have to be 12 jurors? What is special about that number? why not, say, 10, or perhaps the 7 that others have suggested?
And if I may be allowed a supplementary.... What is wrong with having specialist jurors for certain types of trial where specialist knowledge would be a distinct advantage? I am thinking particularly of fraud or similar financial offences where the technicalities may be beyond most people but straight forward enough for people with a financial background. Why would it be wrong for the jury to ;know its subject'?
Got to go out for a bit but back in about an hour.
I strongly disagree with you and @Charles on this and having done quite a few of the biggest and most complicated fraud and financial trials around, I’ll tell you why.
It is precisely the lack of specialist knowledge which is an advantage, the ability not to be blinded by your belief that you understand all this because you’re an expert. And that’s because the issue is not the complicated financial stuff but whether someone is dishonest or not, whether they’re lying or bullshitting etc - all the issues which come up in every trial. And ordinary people are as good, often better, than specialists at seeing through the bullshit, at assessing whether someone is lying or not.
Take one case - the Adoboli case: lots of people with oh so much specialist knowledge believed him and could not see what the jury clearly saw - that he was a lying bullshitter who had no answer to the simple question: if what he was doing was sanctioned by his bosses, as he claimed (untrue) why did he go to such lengths to hide what he was doing.
The lawyers’ job is to explain the complicated simply. Believe me - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world so complicated that someone cannot explain it simply. That is what the lawyers have to do.
So I don’t buy this stuff about financial crimes being too complicated for ordinary people. That is simply making exactly the mistake I describe - thinking that only clever people can understand this. It was clever people who made the mistakes. Ordinary people are well able to see what clever people, blinded by their own cleverness, often miss.
OK, but consider the following anecdote.
A friend sat on a long, complicated fraud trial for about three weeks. At the end, the foreman announced the jury's verdict of 'Not guilty' to which the judge responded 'Well I am surprised!' To his eternal credit the foreman said 'Well you shouldn't be. We've listened for three weeks and haven't understood a word'.
I was reminded of this when the Maxwell brothers stood trial. I recall that their defence rested mainly if not wholly on the argument that although they were directors of the businesses in question they hadn't a clue what was going on because it was all run by their Dad. Now I always thought that directors were responsible for everything that went on in a company and that you couldn't plead ignorance like that, so I couldn't help suspecting that the jury had so little acquaintance with company law and the management of businesses that they accepted the Maxwells' excuse and found them not guilty. In other words, they didn't understand what was going on so they found them not guilty.
You get my point?
I do. I was involved in the Maxwell case. You see you are making the sort of mistake that someone with a little expertise might well make. The test in a criminal trial is different to the issue of a director’s legal responsibility. There is a different standard of proof, for one thing, and the issue was not their role as directors. It was whether they had a reasonable belief that, when the company used the assets of the pension fund as collateral for the loans from banks, they would be able to repay those loans. And the evidence was that they did have a reasonable belief for this. They were not charged with theft of various sums where the evidence was much more conclusive but with a rather more obscure charge and the evidence simply was not up to snuff.
So knowing about directors’ legal duties does not really help you all that much and might actually distract you from focusing on what the issues in the particular case are.
Expertise is not a bar to being on a jury but it is not the be all and end all.
Thank you. I never knew that about the Maxwell case. Personally I thought they were guilty as sin, but maybe I did them a disservice.
I'm not entirely convinced though that you are making a good case for non-specialist jurors. If I'm not mistaken the original idea of 12 good men and true was that they would be people judging their peers and would have a good idea of how to judge them. Things were no doubt simpler then. Nowadays can lay people really be expected to comprehend what goes on in some specialised errors.
Let me refer you to the Hacking Trials. I kind of know that journalistic world. I even had a passing acquaintance with a couple of the defendants. I can understand why their pleas of innocence appealed to the jurors, but they were fortunate I wasn't one of them!
I had lunch yesterday with two very senior magistrates. Jury trials are a must - but they felt that 7 would be as good as 12.
That (and only that) seems a reasonable temporry measure during thepandemic.
But what is the logic of 12? Why is that better than, say, 7?
I've sat on four juries and I can tell you that one of them was so full of hopelessly stupid and irresponsible jurors it wouldn't have mattered how many of us there were. I gave up trying to talk sense after a while, mainly because I couldn't make myself heard about the general chatter which had nothing to do with the trial. (When we returned a Not Guilty verdict the judge virtually told us we'd got it wrong and kept us in the Court while he lectured the defendant about his future conduct.)
So tell me what is magic about 12?
It's likely a reference to the 12 apostles.
So - like many things we're told can't change - it's because God says so and that's the way we've always done it. Not a rational basis to run a justice system.
If you are called, the case will probably be pathetically trivial and as likely as not your fellow-jurors will mostly be mind-numbingly stupid and unsuitable for the job.
From my experience, I certainly wouldn't want to be subject to a jury of 12 ..... stripped away my naivete on that front pretty fast. Awfully close to a roll of the dice.
One unexpected discovery I made from the four trials I sat on was that the verdict depended to a large extent on just how smart the jury was, so in that sense the outcome was a bit of a roll of the dice.
I've mentioned below the trial where the jury was so stupid a manifestly guilty man got off. In another more serious case we found the defendant guilty to the obvious surpise of the court. A big factor was a number of very sharp jurors who spotted things the barristers seemed to have missed and had the courage and the intelligence to draw the right conclusions. To this day, I am sure the verdict was right but I'm equally sure the defendant was unlucky to get a clever jury!
A clever move by Trump at the moment would be to leave Twitter completely, and just post on another platform like Parler. In theory his opponents could ignore him on there, but in practice they probably wouldn't be able to resist joining it in order to engage with him.
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
No they should be put in front of a jury but arguably with a right for the defendant to then appeal to an expert tribunal if they're convicted.
Better for ten guilty men to walk free than one innocent to be wrongly convicted. The right to a jury trial should never be qualified.
The problem is that most juries don’t understand financial crimes. They try to get round it with allocating expert jurors but it’s hard.
Thanks Cyclefree. This is the sort of topic I enjoy very much.
One problem you might have in your defence of the current jury system is that many of us have sat on juries. Whilst my own experiences did not make we wish to abolish trial by jury, they did make me think there is a lot wrong with them that could and should be addressed. The list is long so I'll stick to one fairly uncontroversial question.
Why does it have to be 12 jurors? What is special about that number? why not, say, 10, or perhaps the 7 that others have suggested?
And if I may be allowed a supplementary.... What is wrong with having specialist jurors for certain types of trial where specialist knowledge would be a distinct advantage? I am thinking particularly of fraud or similar financial offences where the technicalities may be beyond most people but straight forward enough for people with a financial background. Why would it be wrong for the jury to ;know its subject'?
Got to go out for a bit but back in about an hour.
I strongly disagree with you and @Charles on this and having done quite a few of the biggest and most complicated fraud and financial trials around, I’ll tell you why.
It is precisely the lack of specialist knowledge which is an advantage, the ability not to be blinded by your belief that you understand all this because you’re an expert. And that’s because the issue is not the complicated financial stuff but whether someone is dishonest or not, whether they’re lying or bullshitting etc - all the issues which come up in every trial. And ordinary people are as good, often better, than specialists at seeing through the bullshit, at assessing whether someone is lying or not.
Take one case - the Adoboli case: lots of people with oh so much specialist knowledge believed him and could not see what the jury clearly saw - that he was a lying bullshitter who had no answer to the simple question: if what he was doing was sanctioned by his bosses, as he claimed (untrue) why did he go to such lengths to hide what he was doing.
The lawyers’ job is to explain the complicated simply. Believe me - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world so complicated that someone cannot explain it simply. That is what the lawyers have to do.
So I don’t buy this stuff about financial crimes being too complicated for ordinary people. That is simply making exactly the mistake I describe - thinking that only clever people can understand this. It was clever people who made the mistakes. Ordinary people are well able to see what clever people, blinded by their own cleverness, often miss.
OK, but consider the following anecdote.
A friend sat on a long, complicated fraud trial for about three weeks. At the end, the foreman announced the jury's verdict of 'Not guilty' to which the judge responded 'Well I am surprised!' To his eternal credit the foreman said 'Well you shouldn't be. We've listened for three weeks and haven't understood a word'.
I was reminded of this when the Maxwell brothers stood trial. I recall that their defence rested mainly if not wholly on the argument that although they were directors of the businesses in question they hadn't a clue what was going on because it was all run by their Dad. Now I always thought that directors were responsible for everything that went on in a company and that you couldn't plead ignorance like that, so I couldn't help suspecting that the jury had so little acquaintance with company law and the management of businesses that they accepted the Maxwells' excuse and found them not guilty. In other words, they didn't understand what was going on so they found them not guilty.
You get my point?
I do. I was involved in the Maxwell case. You see you are making the sort of mistake that someone with a little expertise might well make. The test in a criminal trial is different to the issue of a director’s legal responsibility. There is a different standard of proof, for one thing, and the issue was not their role as directors. It was whether they had a reasonable belief that, when the company used the assets of the pension fund as collateral for the loans from banks, they would be able to repay those loans. And the evidence was that they did have a reasonable belief for this. They were not charged with theft of various sums where the evidence was much more conclusive but with a rather more obscure charge and the evidence simply was not up to snuff.
So knowing about directors’ legal duties does not really help you all that much and might actually distract you from focusing on what the issues in the particular case are.
Expertise is not a bar to being on a jury but it is not the be all and end all.
Thank you. I never knew that about the Maxwell case. Personally I thought they were guilty as sin, but maybe I did them a disservice.
I'm not entirely convinced though that you are making a good case for non-specialist jurors. If I'm not mistaken the original idea of 12 good men and true was that they would be people judging their peers and would have a good idea of how to judge them. Things were no doubt simpler then. Nowadays can lay people really be expected to comprehend what goes on in some specialised errors.
The answer to your question is yes - because it is the job of the lawyers to explain this to them so that they can understand.
I am making the argument against assuming that you need to be a specialist to understand. The issues are not, as you seem to think, all the complicated stuff about how a credit default swap works or whatever but the honesty or otherwise of the defendant. And that needs an understanding of what it is to be human - which most people have.
On the Maxwell brothers, there were other simpler charges that could have been brought where the evidence was stronger. But the prosecution wanted to bring charges re the pension funds where theft could not be alleged because the pension fund assets did not in fact belong to the pensioners. So by trying to be too clever by half, the prosecution lost its case. Over-thinking you see.
Juries are not perfect by any means. But they are very much better than the alternatives and their advantages hugely outweigh the disadvantages.
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
No they should be put in front of a jury but arguably with a right for the defendant to then appeal to an expert tribunal if they're convicted.
Better for ten guilty men to walk free than one innocent to be wrongly convicted. The right to a jury trial should never be qualified.
The problem is that most juries don’t understand financial crimes. They try to get round it with allocating expert jurors but it’s hard.
Thanks Cyclefree. This is the sort of topic I enjoy very much.
One problem you might have in your defence of the current jury system is that many of us have sat on juries. Whilst my own experiences did not make we wish to abolish trial by jury, they did make me think there is a lot wrong with them that could and should be addressed. The list is long so I'll stick to one fairly uncontroversial question.
Why does it have to be 12 jurors? What is special about that number? why not, say, 10, or perhaps the 7 that others have suggested?
And if I may be allowed a supplementary.... What is wrong with having specialist jurors for certain types of trial where specialist knowledge would be a distinct advantage? I am thinking particularly of fraud or similar financial offences where the technicalities may be beyond most people but straight forward enough for people with a financial background. Why would it be wrong for the jury to ;know its subject'?
Got to go out for a bit but back in about an hour.
I strongly disagree with you and @Charles on this and having done quite a few of the biggest and most complicated fraud and financial trials around, I’ll tell you why.
It is precisely the lack of specialist knowledge which is an advantage, the ability not to be blinded by your belief that you understand all this because you’re an expert. And that’s because the issue is not the complicated financial stuff but whether someone is dishonest or not, whether they’re lying or bullshitting etc - all the issues which come up in every trial. And ordinary people are as good, often better, than specialists at seeing through the bullshit, at assessing whether someone is lying or not.
Take one case - the Adoboli case: lots of people with oh so much specialist knowledge believed him and could not see what the jury clearly saw - that he was a lying bullshitter who had no answer to the simple question: if what he was doing was sanctioned by his bosses, as he claimed (untrue) why did he go to such lengths to hide what he was doing.
The lawyers’ job is to explain the complicated simply. Believe me - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world so complicated that someone cannot explain it simply. That is what the lawyers have to do.
So I don’t buy this stuff about financial crimes being too complicated for ordinary people. That is simply making exactly the mistake I describe - thinking that only clever people can understand this. It was clever people who made the mistakes. Ordinary people are well able to see what clever people, blinded by their own cleverness, often miss.
OK, but consider the following anecdote.
A friend sat on a long, complicated fraud trial for about three weeks. At the end, the foreman announced the jury's verdict of 'Not guilty' to which the judge responded 'Well I am surprised!' To his eternal credit the foreman said 'Well you shouldn't be. We've listened for three weeks and haven't understood a word'.
I was reminded of this when the Maxwell brothers stood trial. I recall that their defence rested mainly if not wholly on the argument that although they were directors of the businesses in question they hadn't a clue what was going on because it was all run by their Dad. Now I always thought that directors were responsible for everything that went on in a company and that you couldn't plead ignorance like that, so I couldn't help suspecting that the jury had so little acquaintance with company law and the management of businesses that they accepted the Maxwells' excuse and found them not guilty. In other words, they didn't understand what was going on so they found them not guilty.
You get my point?
I do. I was involved in the Maxwell case. You see you are making the sort of mistake that someone with a little expertise might well make. The test in a criminal trial is different to the issue of a director’s legal responsibility. There is a different standard of proof, for one thing, and the issue was not their role as directors. It was whether they had a reasonable belief that, when the company used the assets of the pension fund as collateral for the loans from banks, they would be able to repay those loans. And the evidence was that they did have a reasonable belief for this. They were not charged with theft of various sums where the evidence was much more conclusive but with a rather more obscure charge and the evidence simply was not up to snuff.
So knowing about directors’ legal duties does not really help you all that much and might actually distract you from focusing on what the issues in the particular case are.
Expertise is not a bar to being on a jury but it is not the be all and end all.
Could the charges relating to theft to which you allude in the Maxwell case have been pursued following the trial? I am aware that the accused cannot be tried for the same offence after a verdict has been delivered, but surely that would not be a bar to a new charge which the jury had not previously been invited to consider?
A clever move by Trump at the moment would be to leave Twitter completely, and just post on another platform like Parler. In theory his opponents could ignore him on there, but in practice they probably wouldn't be able to resist joining it in order to engage with him.
I don't think Trump has that much pull any more, his engagement numbers have gradually been dropping. Some people might follow him over to another platform to argue with him but most people wouldn't bother, he'd just be yelling into space.
I don't disagree, but Cummings is absolutely central to the government's operation: Boris seems to have subcontracted the entire machinery of policy making and implementation to him. Jenrick is of no importance whatsoever.
Jenrick the person is of no importance. Jenrick the symbol is essential.
If a cabinet minister can be sacked, well then, anyone is fair game.
Looks like we need to add corrupt to incompetent, mendacious, hubristic, anti-democratic and arrogant when we describe this Tory government.
It's very puzzling. Robert Jenrick's career seems a really odd hill to make a stand on. I'd have thought that if you were looking for a definition of 'expendable', Mr Jenrick would be one of the first examples to come to mind.
Just a shame he can’t be sacked for a more useful reason.
I’m old skool Labour right. Not quite a Blairite. More Crosland.
A neat leap-frog. It's certainly true that the Labour Party in Crosland's day (at the national level at least) was much less corrupt than in the New Labour era.
Nothing can disguise the stench in the Tory shires. A side effect of local power left unchecked for too long. Hopefully that will change. Jenrick and his support is a symptom of this complacency.
Not really. Quite apart from anything else, in living memory Tory shires such as Wealden have been infested with LibDems. The Labour fiefdoms have been much better examples of unchecked local power for decades (well, the remaining English and Welsh ones at least, best not to mention the former Scottish fiefdoms...)
Not really, being objective. For every case you can find in the shires (and Wealden I don’t recall ever falling?) there will be an Islington or Liverpool or Camden or Stockport. And plenty of Sevenoaks’s and Surrey’s where the Tories have never had serious challenge. In the round both major parties Can take large swathes of the country, and large chunks of the electorate, entirely for granted, and our politics is the worse for it.
See. I'd really like to do jury service. I reckon it would be interesting. It's on my bucket list.
It is usually very boring. You spend most of the two weeks sitting around waiting to be called. You are quite likely to hear no case at all, one if you are lucky, two if you are very lucky. If you are called, the case will probably be pathetically trivial and as likely as not your fellow-jurors will mostly be mind-numbingly stupid and unsuitable for the job.
You will be mightily pleased when it is all over.
That sounds sadly familiar. Yours wasn’t at Snaresbrook too, was it?
At mine there was a moment when one of the jurors exclaimed “you can’t believe what he said, he’s a policeman!” to nods from around the jury room.
"A Democratic state senator in Wisconsin said he was assaulted by protesters and “kicked in the head” on Tuesday night when he filmed a contentious demonstration outside the state Capitol.
State Sen. Tim Carpenter (D) said he was heading to the Capitol to work late when he stopped to snap a photo of protesters who suddenly confronted him.
“Punched/kicked in the head, neck, ribs. Maybe concussion, socked in left eye is little blurry, sore neck & ribs,” he wrote on Twitter.
The lawmaker's tweet was in response to an image from WKOW reporter Lance Veeser who shared a picture of a man identified as Carpenter lying in shrubs.
“We called paramedics. An ambulance is here now,” Veeser wrote."
I just built my first Hackintosh, using an Intel NUC. And despite hearing from everyone how incredibly difficult it would be, it seem sot be working fine off just a couple of hours of work.
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
Under no circumstances should trial by jury be limited or end. None whatsoever. No if's, no buts.
There are zero grounds I would support this on and if the government proposes this I would be disgusted. Hopefully this is a kite quickly shot down this must not happen.
Financial crimes should be in front of an expert tribunal
No they should be put in front of a jury but arguably with a right for the defendant to then appeal to an expert tribunal if they're convicted.
Better for ten guilty men to walk free than one innocent to be wrongly convicted. The right to a jury trial should never be qualified.
The problem is that most juries don’t understand financial crimes. They try to get round it with allocating expert jurors but it’s hard.
Thanks Cyclefree. This is the sort of topic I enjoy very much.
One problem you might have in your defence of the current jury system is that many of us have sat on juries. Whilst my own experiences did not make we wish to abolish trial by jury, they did make me think there is a lot wrong with them that could and should be addressed. The list is long so I'll stick to one fairly uncontroversial question.
Why does it have to be 12 jurors? What is special about that number? why not, say, 10, or perhaps the 7 that others have suggested?
And if I may be allowed a supplementary.... What is wrong with having specialist jurors for certain types of trial where specialist knowledge would be a distinct advantage? I am thinking particularly of fraud or similar financial offences where the technicalities may be beyond most people but straight forward enough for people with a financial background. Why would it be wrong for the jury to ;know its subject'?
Got to go out for a bit but back in about an hour.
I strongly disagree with you and @Charles on this and having done quite a few of the biggest and most complicated fraud and financial trials around, I’ll tell you why.
It is precisely the lack of specialist knowledge which is an advantage, the ability not to be blinded by your belief that you understand all this because you’re an expert. And that’s because the issue is not the complicated financial stuff but whether someone is dishonest or not, whether they’re lying or bullshitting etc - all the issues which come up in every trial. And ordinary people are as good, often better, than specialists at seeing through the bullshit, at assessing whether someone is lying or not.
Take one case - the Adoboli case: lots of people with oh so much specialist knowledge believed him and could not see what the jury clearly saw - that he was a lying bullshitter who had no answer to the simple question: if what he was doing was sanctioned by his bosses, as he claimed (untrue) why did he go to such lengths to hide what he was doing.
The lawyers’ job is to explain the complicated simply. Believe me - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world so complicated that someone cannot explain it simply. That is what the lawyers have to do.
So I don’t buy this stuff about financial crimes being too complicated for ordinary people. That is simply making exactly the mistake I describe - thinking that only clever people can understand this. It was clever people who made the mistakes. Ordinary people are well able to see what clever people, blinded by their own cleverness, often miss.
OK, but consider the following anecdote.
A friend sat on a long, complicated fraud trial for about three weeks. At the end, the foreman announced the jury's verdict of 'Not guilty' to which the judge responded 'Well I am surprised!' To his eternal credit the foreman said 'Well you shouldn't be. We've listened for three weeks and haven't understood a word'.
I was reminded of this when the Maxwell brothers stood trial. I recall that their defence rested mainly if not wholly on the argument that although they were directors of the businesses in question they hadn't a clue what was going on because it was all run by their Dad. Now I always thought that directors were responsible for everything that went on in a company and that you couldn't plead ignorance like that, so I couldn't help suspecting that the jury had so little acquaintance with company law and the management of businesses that they accepted the Maxwells' excuse and found them not guilty. In other words, they didn't understand what was going on so they found them not guilty.
You get my point?
I do. I was involved in the Maxwell case. You see you are making the sort of mistake that someone with a little expertise might well make. The test in a criminal trial is different to the issue of a director’s legal responsibility. There is a different standard of proof, for one thing, and the issue was not their role as directors. It was whether they had a reasonable belief that, when the company used the assets of the pension fund as collateral for the loans from banks, they would be able to repay those loans. And the evidence was that they did have a reasonable belief for this. They were not charged with theft of various sums where the evidence was much more conclusive but with a rather more obscure charge and the evidence simply was not up to snuff.
So knowing about directors’ legal duties does not really help you all that much and might actually distract you from focusing on what the issues in the particular case are.
Expertise is not a bar to being on a jury but it is not the be all and end all.
Thank you. I never knew that about the Maxwell case. Personally I thought they were guilty as sin, but maybe I did them a disservice.
I'm not entirely convinced though that you are making a good case for non-specialist jurors. If I'm not mistaken the original idea of 12 good men and true was that they would be people judging their peers and would have a good idea of how to judge them. Things were no doubt simpler then. Nowadays can lay people really be expected to comprehend what goes on in some specialised errors.
The answer to your question is yes - because it is the job of the lawyers to explain this to them so that they can understand.
I am making the argument against assuming that you need to be a specialist to understand. The issues are not, as you seem to think, all the complicated stuff about how a credit default swap works or whatever but the honesty or otherwise of the defendant. And that needs an understanding of what it is to be human - which most people have.
On the Maxwell brothers, there were other simpler charges that could have been brought where the evidence was stronger. But the prosecution wanted to bring charges re the pension funds where theft could not be alleged because the pension fund assets did not in fact belong to the pensioners. So by trying to be too clever by half, the prosecution lost its case. Over-thinking you see.
Juries are not perfect by any means. But they are very much better than the alternatives and their advantages hugely outweigh the disadvantages.
I strongly agree with you on this.
There is also the disturbing element of experts not regarding the rest of humanity as their peers when it comes to being judged on criminal culpability. It has a similar smell to politicians’ disdain for the electorate.
91 Fahrenheit means absolutely nothing to me or indeed anyone under the age of about 100
I’ve recently adopted it since I bought a barbecue cookbook. All the best barbecue books are from the States and therefore in Fahrenheit only.
My meat thermometer is now permanently set to Fahrenheit and I test everything in Fahrenheit only.
That’s not to say I understand it. I don’t. It’s complete gobbledegook. It’s just pointless converting it.
The Fahrenheit system is very simple.
100 is the hottest you'd want it on a beach holiday, 0 is as cold as you'd want it on a ski holiday.
And 16 is cold enough to scare the bejesus out of a Californian teenge school group flying to London in June, when the pilot gives a destination weather update.
I wonder in what % of trials the judge privately disagrees with the verdict of the jury? 20% maybe?
Doesn't mean the judge is right though. Having been on a jury and been impressed at how seriously it took its duty I am a big fan of jury trials, they are a cornerstone of our justice system.
I have only done Jury service once in my life and only once had the opportunity to "consider our verdict". We were split 8-4 but the end of the day was coming and none of us were going to change our minds so we filed back into the courtroom and the Jury Foreman announced our (agreed) unanimous not guilty verdict. The body language of the Judge (and prolonged stare at the paper in front of him) said that he was expecting nothing less than a guilty verdict.
Judges hear cases once or twice a week and will form their opinion based on what I would call "familiarity with the system", ie I've heard that story before. But eight of us thought the Prosecution/Police had made no effort to disprove the defendant's alibi because they wrongly thought the rest of the evidence was conclusive, which actually it wasn't. Sure we had heard an unlikely but not impossible tale but more importantly it was relatively easy to show to be false if that were the case. I think it is fair to say we thought the defendant might be guilty of 'something' but maybe not what he was being charged with. The Judge almost certainly disagreed with us that day but of course never heard our reasoning.
We thought the defendant might be guilty but the case against him had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt. I thought it was impressive that everyone on the jury understood that distinction. The fact it was a pretty minor drugs offense with no violence involved made it easier to let a potentially guilty person walk free.
Looks like we need to add corrupt to incompetent, mendacious, hubristic, anti-democratic and arrogant when we describe this Tory government.
It's very puzzling. Robert Jenrick's career seems a really odd hill to make a stand on. I'd have thought that if you were looking for a definition of 'expendable', Mr Jenrick would be one of the first examples to come to mind.
Not at all, you have to draw a line in the sand and stick to it. If the PM starts sacking people for corruption, misleading, law breaking, dishonesty and incompetence, there would not be many left in the cabinet, including the PM.
Or indeed any Cabinet, I think.
This cabinet takes it to an elite level. Some have spent their whole lives practising deceit and incompetence, and the criteria for entry were very strict. A quarter of the jobs were reserved for those who had not just lied, but were caught lying and blustered their way through it despite the consequences. These are special talents, special people.
Excellent article, btw. I can only think that those who complain about its length simply aren't very good readers, or have spent too long on Twitter.
I'm not commenting on this thread as I haven't read it but generally apart from Mike Smithson (who is excellent) most threads could be edited by a third and be much better reading for it. Piling in adjectives, adverbs and waffle doesn't make something a better read. Usually it makes it far worse.
Everyone else would do well to take a leaf out of Mike's book. His threads are concise and to the point.
(I'm a published bestselling author who has won prestigious literary prizes in case you doubt my right to make this comment.)
Comments
Arrogant and thick as pigshit.
Even the thickest Trump voter must have noticed by now that that covid-19 infections didn't reduce to zero weeks ago as the Orange one told them it would.
What I have found surprising is that the adamant opposition to the withdrawal of Juries maintained by the bar, even although it has meant no High Court trials in Scotland for 3 months and consequentially minimal income. It’s almost as if the Scottish bar at least is not quite as cynical as @cyclefree suggests.
The government logic seems to boil down to "Can you actually force us to go? No, not until 2024. So off you trot until then." From anywhere outside a bunker, that's obviously mad, and is storing up a whole world of pain. But from inside, it saves the hassle of getting a new minister up to speed and makes the Jenrick's of this world more pliable. So I can see the logic.
It depends what sort of failure you want in the end. John Major's government kept being hit by scandals and resignations. A bit like a marshmallow, it kept being dented, but was hard to break totally. It survived five years, and only then fell apart.
Boris has learned the wrong lesson from that. He seems to have set his government up like a piece of glass. Hard, unyielding, enemy shot just bounces off, no change. And that will likely continue until something random hits in the right place and the whole thing shatters unpredictably.
It is precisely the lack of specialist knowledge which is an advantage, the ability not to be blinded by your belief that you understand all this because you’re an expert. And that’s because the issue is not the complicated financial stuff but whether someone is dishonest or not, whether they’re lying or bullshitting etc - all the issues which come up in every trial. And ordinary people are as good, often better, than specialists at seeing through the bullshit, at assessing whether someone is lying or not.
Take one case - the Adoboli case: lots of people with oh so much specialist knowledge believed him and could not see what the jury clearly saw - that he was a lying bullshitter who had no answer to the simple question: if what he was doing was sanctioned by his bosses, as he claimed (untrue) why did he go to such lengths to hide what he was doing.
The lawyers’ job is to explain the complicated simply. Believe me - there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this world so complicated that someone cannot explain it simply. That is what the lawyers have to do.
So I don’t buy this stuff about financial crimes being too complicated for ordinary people. That is simply making exactly the mistake I describe - thinking that only clever people can understand this. It was clever people who made the mistakes. Ordinary people are well able to see what clever people, blinded by their own cleverness, often miss.
I’m predicting a Trump victory and can barely think of anything worse.
Lots of Trumpton Butts on PB - those who claim to dislike him but would still vote for him.
It is the masons and the mafia code.
Judges hear cases once or twice a week and will form their opinion based on what I would call "familiarity with the system", ie I've heard that story before. But eight of us thought the Prosecution/Police had made no effort to disprove the defendant's alibi because they wrongly thought the rest of the evidence was conclusive, which actually it wasn't. Sure we had heard an unlikely but not impossible tale but more importantly it was relatively easy to show to be false if that were the case. I think it is fair to say we thought the defendant might be guilty of 'something' but maybe not what he was being charged with. The Judge almost certainly disagreed with us that day but of course never heard our reasoning.
It's insane hubris and likely to end in tears at some point, but that's what groups of adolescents are often like. And the internal logic works. After all, who is going to stop them?
My meat thermometer is now permanently set to Fahrenheit and I test everything in Fahrenheit only.
That’s not to say I understand it. I don’t. It’s complete gobbledegook. It’s just pointless converting it.
https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1275784024825479168?s=20
I made my excuses to the judge, which were upheld (I was in charge of a team of six people at work).
The judge warned me that I wouldn’t be able to bail out again, so next time I’ll be up regardless of the longevity of the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX8u9-asJpA
https://youtu.be/0jxVnlRdelU?t=6
"Ending my portrayal of Missy is one step in a life-long process of uncovering the racism in my actions," Slate said.
If a character is biracial, is a white actor less appropriate than a black actor ?!
Seems like everyone is collectively disappearing up their own arseholes over this nonsense.
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1275551360868548611?s=20
On topic, jury trials should go. Better one professional than 12 thickies off the street
100 is the hottest you'd want it on a beach holiday, 0 is as cold as you'd want it on a ski holiday.
So long as you can get yourself a serious criminal offence under the belt, you'll avoid being a juror.
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1275912010555932672
A friend sat on a long, complicated fraud trial for about three weeks. At the end, the foreman announced the jury's verdict of 'Not guilty' to which the judge responded 'Well I am surprised!' To his eternal credit the foreman said 'Well you shouldn't be. We've listened for three weeks and haven't understood a word'.
I was reminded of this when the Maxwell brothers stood trial. I recall that their defence rested mainly if not wholly on the argument that although they were directors of the businesses in question they hadn't a clue what was going on because it was all run by their Dad. Now I always thought that directors were responsible for everything that went on in a company and that you couldn't plead ignorance like that, so I couldn't help suspecting that the jury had so little acquaintance with company law and the management of businesses that they accepted the Maxwells' excuse and found them not guilty. In other words, they didn't understand what was going on so they found them not guilty.
You get my point?
'On June 1, 2020, during the nationwide George Floyd protests, Gaetz posted on Twitter, "Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?" In response, Twitter hid the tweet and labeled it as "[violating] the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence". Gaetz called the label a "badge of honor", accused Twitter of "enabling" Antifa, and again said that "[o]ur government should hunt [Antifa] down".'
Double golly.
'Gaetz has never married.
'In June 2020, following an argument with fellow congressman Cedric Richmond, Gaetz stated he had been living with a 19-year-old immigrant from Cuba, Nestor Galbán, since Galbán was age 12, and considers him his son. He later clarified that Galbán is the brother of an ex-girlfriend of Gaetz's and that Galbán spends time with his sister, with Gaetz's family, and with Gaetz. The two are not related genetically or by legal status. Gaetz said, "Our relationship as a family is defined by our love for each other, not by any paperwork." Previously in 2016, Gaetz had called Galbán a "local student"; while in 2017, Gaetz referred to Galbán as "my helper"'
You will be mightily pleased when it is all over.
I've sat on four juries and I can tell you that one of them was so full of hopelessly stupid and irresponsible jurors it wouldn't have mattered how many of us there were. I gave up trying to talk sense after a while, mainly because I couldn't make myself heard about the general chatter which had nothing to do with the trial. (When we returned a Not Guilty verdict the judge virtually told us we'd got it wrong and kept us in the Court while he lectured the defendant about his future conduct.)
So tell me what is magic about 12?
So knowing about directors’ legal duties does not really help you all that much and might actually distract you from focusing on what the issues in the particular case are.
Expertise is not a bar to being on a jury but it is not the be all and end all.
I've mentioned below the trial where the jury was so stupid a manifestly guilty man got off. In another more serious case we found the defendant guilty to the obvious surpise of the court. A big factor was a number of very sharp jurors who spotted things the barristers seemed to have missed and had the courage and the intelligence to draw the right conclusions. To this day, I am sure the verdict was right but I'm equally sure the defendant was unlucky to get a clever jury!
I'm not entirely convinced though that you are making a good case for non-specialist jurors. If I'm not mistaken the original idea of 12 good men and true was that they would be people judging their peers and would have a good idea of how to judge them. Things were no doubt simpler then. Nowadays can lay people really be expected to comprehend what goes on in some specialised errors.
Let me refer you to the Hacking Trials. I kind of know that journalistic world. I even had a passing acquaintance with a couple of the defendants. I can understand why their pleas of innocence appealed to the jurors, but they were fortunate I wasn't one of them!
So - like many things we're told can't change - it's because God says so and that's the way we've always done it. Not a rational basis to run a justice system.
Nite all.
I am making the argument against assuming that you need to be a specialist to understand. The issues are not, as you seem to think, all the complicated stuff about how a credit default swap works or whatever but the honesty or otherwise of the defendant. And that needs an understanding of what it is to be human - which most people have.
On the Maxwell brothers, there were other simpler charges that could have been brought where the evidence was stronger. But the prosecution wanted to bring charges re the pension funds where theft could not be alleged because the pension fund assets did not in fact belong to the pensioners. So by trying to be too clever by half, the prosecution lost its case. Over-thinking you see.
Juries are not perfect by any means. But they are very much better than the alternatives and their advantages hugely outweigh the disadvantages.
If a cabinet minister can be sacked, well then, anyone is fair game.
Never explain. Never apologise. Fuck the plebs...
At mine there was a moment when one of the jurors exclaimed “you can’t believe what he said, he’s a policeman!” to nods from around the jury room.
On of the civvie surge fleet A330s (G-VYGK) has been taken back into service at vast expense to make up the AAR shortfall.
State Sen. Tim Carpenter (D) said he was heading to the Capitol to work late when he stopped to snap a photo of protesters who suddenly confronted him.
“Punched/kicked in the head, neck, ribs. Maybe concussion, socked in left eye is little blurry, sore neck & ribs,” he wrote on Twitter.
The lawmaker's tweet was in response to an image from WKOW reporter Lance Veeser who shared a picture of a man identified as Carpenter lying in shrubs.
“We called paramedics. An ambulance is here now,” Veeser wrote."
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/504269-wisconsin-state-senator-kicked-in-the-head-during-protests
The abolition of trial by jury is foolish.
There is also the disturbing element of experts not regarding the rest of humanity as their peers when it comes to being judged on criminal culpability.
It has a similar smell to politicians’ disdain for the electorate.
I can only think that those who complain about its length simply aren't very good readers, or have spent too long on Twitter.
Everyone else would do well to take a leaf out of Mike's book. His threads are concise and to the point.
(I'm a published bestselling author who has won prestigious literary prizes in case you doubt my right to make this comment.)