The defendant appealed against his convictions on allegations of mortgage fraud conspiracy. Two jurors had been discharged after retirement, and the defendant Said that the remaining jurors should have been warned not to take account of any comments previously made by the two departing jurors.
Held: No such direction was needed. It would be impossible for a jury to comply, and: ‘ Before reaching their decision, they will have reflected on the arguments they have heard advanced by both, and in a multi-handed case by all the parties at trial, and then, in the privacy of their retiring room, the opinions and views expressed by each member of the jury. This is, as counsel for the Crown, Mr Brooke, put it in his written submission, a ‘dynamic’ process. Of course the jurors who have been discharged cannot be, and are not responsible for the eventual verdict. But until their discharge they are entitled to express their views, favourable or adverse to the prosecution or to some parts of the prosecution case, or favourable or adverse to the defendant or some part of the defence case. As the discussions proceed, the views expressed at an earlier stage may well develop and change. It is a continuing process. But while jurors are properly empanelled, the views of each and every one of them are entitled to the same careful analysis and respect as those expressed by any juror, including jurors who are later discharged. On discharge they cease to have any responsibility for the verdict, but there is no reason to imagine that the views expressed at a time when they believed that they would be responsible for the verdict were expressed any less conscientiously and responsibly than those of any other juror. Those views become part of the fabric of opinions under consideration, impossible to isolate and compartmentalise. It would therefore be wholly unrealistic for a direction to be given to the remaining members of the jury to ignore the views expressed on any subject by the departed jurors. What matters is that the discussion between the remaining jurors will continue to ebb and flow and, on refection, the views expressed by the departing juror (or jurors) would have been examined and either accepted wholly or in part, or rejected wholly or in part, or treated as irrelevant by the remaining jurors in the course of reaching the decisions to which their conscience impels them. The eventual verdict, however, is no more than that of the jurors who have been party to it as a result of the process of discussion in the privacy of the jury room. The views expressed by the departed jurors will only be relevant to the extent that the remaining jurors will have adopted or assimilated those views as their own.’
Judges:
Lord Judge LCJ, Penry-Davey, Irwin JJ
Citations:
[2010] EWCA Crim 201, [2010] 1 Cr App Rep 33, [2010] 4 All ER 285, [2010] 1 Cr App R 33, [2010] 1 WLR 1577
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Regina v LS CACD 2009
After a juror had been discharged during the jury’s retirement, the judge directed the remaining members as follows: ‘I do not know and I am not going to enquire as to whether the juror whom I have discharged took part to any great extent in the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Criminal Practice
Updated: 21 August 2022; Ref: scu.420214