My Time on Jury Service... !TW!

Hey there... So this blog post is going to be slightly different than usual. The last two weeks I have been on jury service and I wanted to express my thoughts on it, since it was my first time doing it.

Today (30/07/2019) I finished my first ever trial, as being part of a jury. If you don't know what a jury is and what they do, a jury is a group of 12 people who sit in on a trial and watch the evidence being given, they sit through every piece of evidence until both Prosecutor and Defense are done. Then the jury retire to deliberate (also known as, discussing) the evidence that have been given to them and decide if its enough to decide whether the Defendant is guilty or not guilty.

For the process of picking the jury, 15 people's names are called and they get taken to the court, where 12 peoples names are randomly picked and called to sit in the jury bench then they are sworn in, either by Bible, Affirmation or any other Bible if necessary.

I will try not to give too much information about the people who were involved in the trial but I'll give the basics about what it was about, how the jury felt, how I felt and the verdict. So the trial was a Rape/Sexual Allegation, 3 sisters were accusing their half brother of Sexual Assault, Penetration and Rape. There were 12 counts altogether. This happened about 12 years ago, the Defendant pleaded not guilty so it was taken to trial instead. The jury didn't know what they were walking into after being read the allegations and charges that were against him. The evidence took about 2 and a half days to be given, then on Friday the Prosecutor, Defense and The Judge gave their summary on the trial and what was said, deliberating started on Monday. Throughout the deliberation a lot of the jury were very emotional about what we had to do and what the case was about. At first there were 2 people who said he was guilty but with looking more into the evidence, only one person changed their mind to not guilty but the other stayed as guilty to 11 counts but not guilty to one count. The Judge was looking for an unanimous decision but we went to him twice with the same amount so he took it. Two people of the jury were sure he was innocent whereas the other 8 of us were unsure if he was. During the verdict being given I kept looking over at the defendant seeing his reaction to every 'not guilty' that he heard, he walked out with tears in his eyes. In the end there wasn't enough evidence to convict him, we couldn't send a young man to prison for a crime he could possibly haven't done. But I do hope to God he didn't do it.

I felt very connected to the trial, it's weird... You get so involved in someone's life and family that you feel like your apart of it all. During the verdict I was nearly crying myself, just praying to God he didn't do it.

I'm not sure what else to say. It was an emotional experience

My second trial, was similar to the first. It was a sexual assault and ABH (Actual Bodily Harm) a Polish man was accused of touching his girlfriend without her consent and biting her on the upper thigh. Yet again there wasn't enough evidence to convict him but after going through the first trial I had an idea on what to do. I was actually the foreperson to give the Clark the verdict. It was nervewracking but I managed to get through it. I'm proud of myself to getting through it all, the waiting, the emotions and the mentality of hearing such things being described.

Thanks for reading.

Courtney