Channel 4’s docudrama The Jury: Murder Trial, broadcast last week, was billed as a ‘landmark experiment’ that would deliver valuable insight into how juries make decisions.
The concept of the show, on the face of it, seemed quite appealing for lawyers, students and even the public. Sadly, it failed to deliver on this.
Channel 4 assembled two separate juries, each unaware of the other, to decide whether the defendant was guilty of murder. It sought to explore whether the juries would reach the same verdict and, depending on the outcome, invited viewers to judge whether they could ‘trust our justice system’.
The pretence for so many interviews mid-trial? Presumably, they assumed the jurors wouldn't question this, perhaps assuming it was live reporting. On the acting, I'm really not sure how anyone could believe it. It's like watching Made in Chelsea and thinking that's how people really act down south. In reality, juries are told to discuss the case only when they are all together and not in groups, and to keep an open mind until they have heard all the evidence, speeches and legal directions.
The four-part series was so flawed, with authenticity sacrificed on the altar of drama and ratings, that it was potentially damaging to the public’s respect for the justice system.  The damage in reputation may lead the public away from Jury trials, if they believe them to be flawed.
If that were to happen, what would we be left with? Well, the statistics show As of 2023, around 90.1 percent of court judges in England and Wales were white, with 9.9 percent from Black, Asian, mixed, or other ethnic backgrounds. In 1956 Lord Devlin described them as ‘the lamp that shows that freedom lives’.
The right to a fair trial is enshrined in British and international law. Article 6 of the Human Rights Act protects our right to a fair trial, it is fundamental to the rule of law and democracy. It's means court cases must be heard in public by an independent and impartial judge, in a reasonable amount of time.
Judges play a key role in the criminal justice system, presiding over the trial process to ensure fairness and that the jury has arrived at a decision in the correct manner. Before the trial,a judge will read the relevant papers to familiarise himself or herself with the details of the case. They will never use a gavel.
Such paperwork will include the indictment setting out the charges on which the defendant is to be tried, exhibits (evidence) and witness statements. In court, the judge keeps the jury informed and comfortable with proceedings, ensures the witnesses and defendants give the best account of the facts they can and controls the advocates.
The series deployed the transcript of a real case, with actors playing the judge, barristers, defendant and witnesses. Channel 4 would not confirm identities, but a spokeswoman said that those involved in the real trial were told about the series in advance.
Whilst the Judge did not bang a gavel, thankfully, there were multiple errors with authenticity. The Prosecutor wandered around the Courtroom, in a style more fitting for a US Courtroom or Suits, rather than being sedentary and reserved. A witness gave evidence after sitting in the back of the courtroom as if an observer than a witness who would not be sat observing the case from the Courtroom itself. To top it off, snippets of the show had the defence counsel preceed the prosecution, a complete reverse of a real trial.
The wardrobe department made a couple of errors, they put the prosecutor in a US style gown with bands around the collar of a normal shirt and the Judge donned a Barristers wig.
There was no proper summing up from the judge, who provided no legal directions on what in law constituted the ‘qualifying trigger’ required to show a loss of control. Nor was a ‘route to verdict’ giving the juries a structured series of questions to help with their deliberations.
This Jury was not made up of randomly selected members of the public, they had applied to go on television and were picked by media execs for how they would act and be perceived on TV.
Some ministers, battling to find courts, judges and criminal lawyers to reduce the backlog of more than 65,000 Crown court cases, would be glad to see the back of jury trials – they are more expensive and longer than the alternative (trials in front of a judge or magistrate).
These ministers may sit on the front bench of the current Government who brought Channel 4 under public control and make financial decisions for the programming and events schedule, but that is mere speculation.
Anyone backing their abolition must consider what would replace them. A 2020 report from Labour’s David Lammy showed that jury trials were the one part of the criminal justice system that did not discriminate against those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
In other cases, judges have limited what protesters can tell juries about the motivation for their actions, with some defendants imprisoned for disobeying such orders. Only last week, a judge threatened jurors with criminal charges if they sought to try climate change protesters charged with causing criminal damage to JP Morgan on the basis of their conscience rather than the evidence.
Poster for The Jury: Murder Trial | Channel 4