Tuesday, 5 December 2006

Hi ho, Hi ho... I'm not off anywhere...

What happens if a jury member falls sick? (While I'm not the former, I am the latter today.) Do they get in a replacement? Who has obviously missed some of the trial. Do they wait? Awfully inconvenient, especially in the extreme case of, say, hospitialisation or worse. Do they force the jury member to attend anyway? "You wuss, it's only a collapsed lung."

Or do they go ahead with only 11 members? Which raises the question, why 12 members in the first place? Why not 10 or 14? 23 or 7?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

2 comments:

Paul Scoones said...

My understanding is that the case proceeds with 11 jury members. There was a story in the paper last week about how someone had been dismissed from the jury for snapping the evidence on his/her mobile phone. The case continued with the remaining jury members. It does however raise the question as to how many jury members can be lost!

Jamas Enright said...

Interesting... Thanks Paul!