The jury system is often bonkers and perverse.

Oct 28, 2022

The British writer and broadcaster Simon Hoggart served on five different juries during his long, productive life. Many of his fellow jurors, he once said, were bonkers in their own way.

But of course, it only takes one, doesn’t it?

We can’t reasonably comment on the trial of Bruce Lehrmann for the sexual assault of Brittany Higgins because his lawyers are an excellent chance to collect anything written here, or on the socials or in the mainstream press, hoping to convince the court next year that Lehrmann should go free because a fair trial is impossible.

Or maybe they’d refer everyone to the AFP.

So I don’t intend to talk about the Lehrmann trial and whether it felt more like the Higgins trial.

I do want to talk about juries, though, because Simon Hoggart was right. They can be a little bonkers, even perverse. I know this from personal experience, having sat on a jury that released a young man accused of a crime we all agreed he’d committed. Sort of.

This was a long time ago when I was a student and still had time to sit on juries, when I was poor enough that scoring the fifteen or twenty bucks a day they paid you, plus a free lunch from the pub down the street, seemed like falling arse backwards into a pot of gold.

My jury service was in Ipswich, and I was chosen for three trials. Because I was reading a novel while we waited to be taken into the room for the first trial, my fellow townsfolk decided I should be the foreman.

Wondering if the foreman—that’s what they were called back then—got paid more, I said yes.

The first two trials, including a case of child sexual assault, were kind of gruelling, but we did our job.

The third trial was… bonkers.

A young aboriginal kid was accused of stealing a jacket. The facts of the case, agreed to by both sides, were as follows. The kid, an apprentice of some sort as best I recall, was at the local footy competition with his old man, watching their team go around. They shared a six-pack but didn’t finish it. Leaving the game with a couple of cans of beer—I’m sorry, I don’t remember how many or what brand, but it was probably Fourex—the boy saw an old windcheater on the ground. It was covered in mud and leaves and looked like it had been abandoned. His dad suggested wrapping it around the beers to keep them cold for the walk home.

So he did.

A little further on, they heard a commotion, someone yelling, “That black bastard stole my jacket.”

A police officer approached them and asked if the jacket was theirs. They said no; they’d thought it was a rag and picked it up to keep their beers cold. The cop said, “That bloke reckons it’s his.”

He pointed to an agitated white male, one of the visiting players from the game.

The boy with the beers and the jacket shrugged an apology and gave the windcheater to the cop; he said thanks and passed it back to the visiting player.

The boy and his father turned to leave, as did the cop. But the player yelled, “NO, that black bastard stole my jacket. I want him arrested.”

From the vantage point of years and some life experience, I don’t know why the cop didn’t just tell him to calm down, get his jacket washed, and maybe take better care of it next time.

But he was a young constable, and he didn’t, and a few weeks or months later, we all found ourselves in the Ipswich District Court for the third trial of my two-week service.

It was the last day of the fortnight session, and I’d become familiar with the judge, the prosecutor and, of course, my fellow jurors.

It seemed obvious that nobody but this fucking nimrod of a rugby league player was interested in trying the case. The prosecutor ran dead. The arresting constable was abject and apologetic. The judge was pissed off with having his time wasted.

The evidence was done within an hour.

We retired to the jury room, and I wondered if we’d even have time for morning tea. I think the pub, the Criterion Hotel, also catered morning tea, which was great. Hot buttered scones and jam and biscuits and cake. It seemed a shame not to get that last feed, but I didn’t see how we could justify hanging on for it. That poor kid would be shitting himself. Best to just let him go, collect our fifteen or twenty bucks or whatever it was, and head home for the weekend.

I didn’t feel the need to resume the throne of Lord High Jury Foreman, so I asked this bloke I’d been a bit hard on in one of the other cases if he’d like to do it.

Would he ever!

“These black cunts have to be taught a lesson,” he said. Or something like that. I vaguely recall he had theories about the black mind not comprehending property rights.

Anyway, we were off to the races.

To my shock, ten of my fellow jurors wanted to hang him high. Only me and an old bloke called Arty thought the whole thing was a sick joke. Arty had seen off Rommel in North Africa and knew what a bunch of fucking fascists looked like. He declared he was never going to vote for conviction.

I stood with Arty, and we went at it with the others for the rest of the day.

They eventually brought us lunch, which was great, as always. The full fuck-off menu of the Criterion Hotel, including trifle for dessert.

More importantly, however, they brought beer.

Irony much?

In those days, juries in Queensland got beer. Possibly even one carton per day. Arty and me, we leaned into those beers after lunch, necking one nasty tube of bitter ale after another. By four-thirty, when the bailiff, or the clerk, or whoever it was had the job of checking in on us, did just that, we were pretty fucking munted.

He asked if there was any chance of reaching a decision today.

Give us a few minutes, we said.

The door closed behind him. The other ten could barely look at us, let alone speak. I weaved around the table to grab another cold one.

I said something like, “You know if we don’t make a decision, they’ll keep us here all weekend.”

Arty and me? We were okay with that because they’d keep bringing us pub food and free beer.

We let them know.

They acquitted the kid two minutes later.

That’s how perverse and bonkers the jury system can be.

In that case, I’d argue it worked out for the best.

But, of course, that doesn’t always happen.

I felt sorry for that kid all those years ago.

I feel worse for Brittany Higgins now.

22 Comments

Alien Sideboob

The jury system is often bonkers and perverse.