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| Senior lawyers defend jury system after judge orders Vicky Pryce retrial | Senior lawyers defend jury system after judge orders Vicky Pryce retrial |
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| Two of the most senior lawyers in the country have defended the jury system after the judge in the Vicky Pryce case discharged the jurors, noting that they had displayed "absolutely fundamental deficits in understanding". | Two of the most senior lawyers in the country have defended the jury system after the judge in the Vicky Pryce case discharged the jurors, noting that they had displayed "absolutely fundamental deficits in understanding". |
| Mr Justice Sweeney, who on Wednesday discharged the panel of eight women and four men a day after they submitted 10 questions that indicated they had not grasped the basics of their task, said he had not come across a similar situation in more than 30 years of criminal trials. | Mr Justice Sweeney, who on Wednesday discharged the panel of eight women and four men a day after they submitted 10 questions that indicated they had not grasped the basics of their task, said he had not come across a similar situation in more than 30 years of criminal trials. |
| However, the former lord chief justice of England and Wales, Lord Woolf, and the former director of public prosecutions (DPP), Lord Macdonald, have insisted the jury system is the fairest and best way to try people. | |
| Woolf told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that juries generally did their job very well and described the Pryce trial as "an exceptional case", adding: "The judge so regarded it with all his experience … and I certainly would not want to condemn a well tried jury system on the basis of one particular case." However, he said the jury system should be subject to constant review as it formed such an important part of the legal process. | |
| Macdonald also said people should not rush to condemn the Pryce jury: "I'm not sure that all [their] questions were so crazy," he said, as he insisted the case should not "knock our faith" in the jury system. | |
| "I think it's one of the greatest strengths of our system that we bring citizens into its heart," he added. "The feeling of most criminal lawyers is that, by and large, most juries come to the right decision and that most criminal trials end in the right verdict." | |
| But the former DPP also said the system could be improved through better research and by opening up the jury room to researchers. "We should perhaps allow a bit more access to jury reasoning than we do," he said. "If we had a better understanding of that, then perhaps it would be easier to frame questions to direct them." | |
| Woolf agreed that more research would help judges to better advise jurors – as long as "it does not result in the jury room leaking as other institutions in this country [do] so that the media get more information than would be to the benefit of the public". | Woolf agreed that more research would help judges to better advise jurors – as long as "it does not result in the jury room leaking as other institutions in this country [do] so that the media get more information than would be to the benefit of the public". |