Is it right for two jurors to speak out in a case pending appeal? 2 Jurors spoke out but the others' didn't. The case contained a majority verdict.
"In an unprecedented move, two jurors recently spoke out to condemn the conviction of Keran Henderson, a childminder, for the manslaughter of 11-month-old Maeve Sheppard while in her care. Their comments, revealed by The Times, were made anonymously. Now, in an exclusive article, the foreman, a lecturer living in Berkshire, questions the practical workings of the jury system"
Read the story here.
An interesting debate on the impartiality of the jury system is raised in the Times article here.
The Keran Henderson campaign trail were obviously happy that the minority of the jurors gave them some hope. We could twist this round and state that the line of hope is the publicity which may even influence the appeal judges. Afterall, all judges read the Times don't they? In the BBC article the juror stated "I will never know as long as I live whether the verdict was right or not because I haven't, we haven't, got all this medical expertise".
Does this mean that the Lord Chancellor should review every jury that has sat on every criminal trial containing medical evidence? Lets face it, every criminal trial has some form of medical evidence. Of course, there are juries who actually go away and read up and there are those who simply sit there and plead naivety. If that is so, this juror should write to the Lord Chancellor and tell him to retry all criminal cases based on the fact that no one understands anything about medicine and they are all incapable of using the Internet or lifting a textbook after the trial. So instead of making these admissions during the trial and asking for more information from the judge/counsels they make their admission of intellectual inferiority after the fact. They could have sought clarification at the hearing itself. They opted not to do so. Nothing is a coincidence of course. I suspect simply telling the CPS by letter or verbally was out of the question was it? No, what they felt compelled to do was advertise it to the entire media.
The Henderson campaign trail has not to date denied a connection with the jurors. There may be no merit in this speculation but nevertheless it has never been excluded.
This has the net effect of influencing the appeal in the Henderson case. I suppose when you have nothing by way of factual evidence then you have to rely on other alternatives such as blinding the public.
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