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Diversity and Fairness in the Jury System

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Diversity and Fairness in the Jury System Diversity and Fairness in the Jury System Cheryl Thomas with Nigel Balmer Ministry of Justice Research Series 2/07 June 2007 Diversity and Fairness in the Jury System Cheryl Thomas with Nigel Balmer The Research Unit, Mini stry of Justice, was formed in April 1996. Its aim is to develop and focus the use of research so that it informs the various stages of policy-making and the implementation and evaluation of policy. Crown Copyright 2007. Extracts from this document may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes on condition that the source is acknowledged. First Published 2007 ISBN 978 1 84099 079 9 Acknowledgements A study of this scale and nature required considerable cooperation and good will from many people over a number of years. Research with jurors inevitably carries with it concerns about possible interference with the secrecy of the jury process, and I am grateful to Sir Igor Judge, then Senior Presiding Judge, for his review of the research at the outset of the project, and to Her Majesty’s Courts Service for facilitating my work with jurors over four years. I am particularly grateful to Gary Hopper, then Head of the Jury Central Summoning Bureau, for his invaluable advice throughout the project and for facilitating the two summoning surveys. Four Crown Courts played key roles in the jury service and jury decision-making studies. At Blackfriars Crown Court, I am grateful to Court Managers, Marilyn Reed and Karl Liddle, for allowing me to conduct research there over four years, and to Jury Managers Siobhan Kendall- Morris, Alison Ward and John O’Brien for their assistance and patience. At Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, Sandra Risby, Ian Jordan and Regional Director, Christine Mayer, kindly allowed me to survey jurors and pilot the decision-making study there. At Reading Crown Court, Sue Heath, Jane Burnham, John Schofield and Ros Weterhold provided valuable support with the juror survey. At Southwark Crown Court, I am grateful to Chris Harper, Maisie Wright and Colin Turner for helping to pilot the jury decision-making study. Given the sensitivity of working with real jurors in the jury decision-making study, a special Advisory Group was established for this part of the research, and I am particularly grateful for the time and guidance provided by His Honour Judge John Samuels QC, His Honour Judge Nicholas Lorraine-Smith, Tony Apperley from the Home Office and Lawrence Gouldbourne from the Crown Prosecution Service. I am indebted to Miranda Hill from the Chambers of Roy Amlot QC, 6 King’s Bench Walk, and Lydia Jonson from the Chambers of David Etherington QC, 18 Red Lion Court, who were instrumental in developing the case materials for this study. I am also grateful to Sgt. Andrew Ricketts of the Metropolitan Police and HMCS staff Tim Grigg, Lee Clark, Olu Adedeji, Hassan Noshib, Rahim Ahmed, Frank Ajoku, Yvonne Gayle, Lyn Stripling, Robert Palk, Sean Duke, Dave Togood as well as Kay Hernaman and Travers McNaught for their participation in the case reconstruction. Nigel Balmer of the Legal Services Commission Research Centre played an important role in modelling the regression analysis for the summoning survey and jury decision-making study, and I am grateful to him for this. Professor John Baldwin deserves a special note of thanks for his support and advice during the writing of this report, and I am also grateful to Professor Michael Zander, Professor Hazel Genn, Pascoe Pleasence and the members of the Steering Group from DCA (now Ministry of Justice) and OCJR for their comments on earlier drafts. Electronic Data Services supplied juror and court databases and produced the summoning surveys, and I am grateful to Chris Wright, Linda Wilkinson, Barry Gate, Kay Sawyer and Valerie Bailey for facilitating this. I would also like to thank the Legal Services Commission for producing the juror catchment area maps in Chapters three and five, and Sally Lloyd-Bostock for her contribution to the original proposal for the research, which benefited from her work in law and psychology. At DCA’s Research Unit, I am particularly grateful to Sohagini Shah for her management of the later stages of this project, as well as to Michelle Diver, Mavis Maclean and Sally Attwood. Finally, I would like to thank all the jurors who agreed to participate in the studies and so generously gave their time to assist with the research. Cheryl Thomas Author Cheryl Thomas is Honorary Professor at the Centre for Empirical Legal Studies in the Faculty of Laws at University College London, and has been Director of the Jury Diversity Project and the Judicial Appointments Project at the University of Birmingham School of Law. She is a specialist in comparative judicial studies, and has conducted research in the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions on juries, the appointment, evaluation and training of judges, the role of diversity in the justice system, and legal decision-making. She conducted the first study in this country to examine the impact of diversity on the judicial appointments process: Judicial Diversity and the Appointment of Deputy District Judges (2006). She is author of Judicial Diversity in the United Kingdom and Other Jurisdictions (2005), and editor of The Power of Judges (2002). She has recently acted as consultant to Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, interviewing jurors on behalf of the official review of the Jubilee Line Case. She has also recently carried out a review of judicial training and education in 12 common and civil law jurisdictions on behalf of the Judicial Studies Board, and previously conducted research on judicial independence in Europe for the Council of Europe and judicial appointments for the Lord Chancellor’s Department: Judicial Appointments in Continental Europe (1997). She is currently evaluating the future recruitment and training needs of judges in Europe for the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), and is a member of the international team advising the French government on judicial training. Disclaimer The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily shared by the Ministry of Justice. Contents List of Figures List of Tables Page No. Executive Summary i Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Background to the Jury Diversity Project 1 The jury system 2 Jury selection and composition 5 Ethnic representation on juries 6 Ethnicity and jury impartiality 12 Why is diversity necessary? 16 The research brief 17 Diversity and ethnicity 20 The report 23 Chapter 2. The study methods 24 Project objectives 24 Juror summoning survey 28 Jury service study 34 Jury decision-making study 37 Jury decision-making research 38 Jury verdict study 44 Chapter 3. Juror summoning 46 Aims and objectives 46 Juror catchment areas and source lists 47 Summoning process 50 Conduct of the research 50 Juror summoning findings 52 Ethnicity and summoning 54 Court-based representation 56 High Ethnicity and Low Ethnicity Courts 58 Non-returns and willingness to serve 72 Summary 76 Chapter 4. Jurors who serve and do not serve 80 Aims and objectives 80 Findings on serving and not serving 82 Relative importance of ethnicity 89 Reasons for not serving 102 Changes to juror eligibility 107 Irish and Welsh representation 110 Summary 114 Chapter 5. Jurors at court: pools, panels and juries 118 Aims and objectives 118 The study 119 Ethnicity and jury pool representation 123 Religion 132 Employment status 134 Occupation 137 Income 139 Age 142 Gender 144 Prior Jury Service 144 Jury panels and juries 145 Juror selection in open court 151 Summary 153 Chapter 6. Jury decision-making 157 Aims and objectives 157 Case simulation study 159 Jury verdicts and ethnicity 162 Juror votes and ethnicity 164 Race saliency 166 Jury versus juror bias 167 Deliberation 169 Juror attitudes 172 Court-based differences 177 Disaggregating ethnicity 179 Victim ethnicity 182 Number and severity of charges 184 Other juror characteristics 185 Summary 187 Chapter 7. Summary and Discussion 191 Jury representation and decision-making 191 Myths of jury service: summoning and serving 192 High Ethnicity and Low Ethnicity Courts 193 Relative importance of juror ethnicity 197 Jury pools, panel and juries 198 Ethnicity and jury decision-making 201 Diversity and fairness in the courts 205 Appendices 1. BME population, BME summoned and serving jurors in each Crown Court 209 2. Probability of BME jurors being on jury panels in each Crown Court 213 3. Analysis output of interaction between BME population, rental housing and summons response 217 4. BME population levels in Ethnicity Concentration Courts 219 5. Logit regression output for serving and non-serving jurors 221 6. Regression and probability outputs for juror decision-making 223 7. Juror summoning survey questionnaire 225 List of Figures Page No. Chapter 2. Figure 2.1 Stages of the juror selection process covered by each study 26 Figure 2.2 Elements of jury decision-making covered by each study 27 Chapter 3. Figure 3.1 Response rate to questionnaire by court region 54 Figure 3.2 Ethnic groups summoned in relation to population for all courts combined 55 Figure 3.3 Asian and Black ethnic groups summoned in relation to population for all courts combined 56 Figure 3.4 BME population in a High Ethnicity Court: Blackfriars Crown Court 59 Figure 3.5 BME population in a Low Ethnicity Court: Durham Crown Court 60 Figure 3.6 Distribution of BME population in juror catchment area for Blackfriars Crown Court 62 Figure 3.7 Distribution of BME population in juror catchment area for Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court 62 Figure 3.8 Ethnic groups summoned in relation to population for London Crown Courts combined 63 Figure 3.9 Ethnic group breakdown of those summoned for London Region 64 Figure 3.10 BME population in General Low Ethnicity Court: Durham 66 Figure 3.11 Overall BME population in Nottingham juror catchment area 67 Figure 3.12 Distribution of BME population in Nottingham juror catchment area 68 Figure 3.13 Summons return rate in survey by court region 73 Figure 3.14 Relationship between housing tenure, ethnicity and non-return of summonses 76 Chapter 4.
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