That was the question posed by the Ministry of Justice. Even though juries decide less than 1% of all criminal cases in England and Wales, defendants in these cases are charged with the most serious criminal offences and face the greatest possible loss of liberty. The fairness of jury decision-making is of fundamental importance to the criminal justice system. The MoJ  therefore commissioned research from a University College London team led by Professor Cheryl Thomas, who presented their report last week. And the broad conclusion is that juries are indeed fair and efficient.

 The scope of  the UCL research is impressive. It involved case simulation with real juries at Crown Courts (involving 797 jurors on 68 juries), large-scale analysis of all actual jury verdicts in 2006–08 (over 68,000 verdicts) and post-verdict survey of jurors (668 jurors in 62 cases). As to efficiency, once a jury is sworn it reaches a verdict by deliberation on 89% of all charges (judges direct jury verdicts on 11% of charges) and they reach verdicts on virtually all charges (only 0.6% of all verdicts are hung juries). Juries convict on almost two-thirds (64%) of all charges presented to them and are rarely discharged (less than 1% of sworn juries).

 The research examined how fair the jury decision-making process is, specifically whether all- white juries discriminate against BME defendants, who are three and half times more likely to face a jury verdict in the Crown Court relative to their representation in the general population, and whether jurors racially stereotype defendants. The key finding was that verdicts of all-white juries do not discriminate against BME defendants. Jury verdicts showed only small differences based on defendant ethnicity. White and Asian defendants both had a 63% jury conviction rate; Black defendants had a 67% jury conviction rate.

 On specific offences, the category of homicide-related offences has some of the lowest jury conviction rates (threatening to kill 36%, manslaughter 48%, attempted murder 47%) but also some of the highest jury conviction rates (death by dangerous driving 85%, murder 77%). Offences where the strongest direct evidence is likely to exist against a defendant appear to have the highest conviction rates (making indecent photographs of a child 89%, drugs possession with intent to supply 84%, death by dangerous driving 85%). Contrary to popular belief and previous government reports, juries actually convict more often than they acquit in rape cases (55% jury conviction rate). Other serious offences (attempted murder, manslaughter, GBH) have lower jury conviction rates than rape.

 The team also looked at whether or not jurors understood judge’s legal advice. Most jurors at Blackfriars (69%) and Winchester (68%) felt they were able to understand the directions, while most jurors at Nottingham (51%) felt the directions were difficult to understand. While over half of the jurors perceived the judge’s directions as easy to understand, only a minority (31%) actually understood the directions fully in the legal terms used by the judge. Younger jurors were better able than older jurors to comprehend the legal instructions, with comprehension of directions on the law declining as the age of the juror increased. The review also found that in high profile cases almost three-quarters of jurors will be aware of media coverage of their case, and 20% of jurors said they found it difficult to put these reports out of their mind while serving as a juror. All jurors who looked for information about their case during the trial looked on the internet, thereby admitting to something they should have been told by the judge not to do.  

The full text of this fascinating report ‘Are Juries Fair?’ can be found at:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/about/docs/are-juries-fair-research.pdf