Trial by Jury
| Published date | 01 October 1971 |
| Date | 01 October 1971 |
| Author | Alan Grant |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7104400407 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
ALAN
GRANT,
LL.B.,
of
the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law
TRIAL
BY
JURY
"Trial by
jury
is indeed the foundation of
our
free constitution,
take
that
away and the whole fabric will soon moulder into
dust."
(Lord Camden). I
"Twelve men can easily misunderstand more law in a minute than
the judge can explain in an
hour."
(Sunderlandj.f
On Monday, February 9, 1970,several armed men entered a
bank
in Ilford, Essex, and stole nearly aquarter of a million pounds in
used, untraceable bank notes which had
just
been delivered there by
a security firm engaged in bulk cash-carrying.
On Monday, October 12, 1970, eight men and one woman stood
in the dock at the Central Criminal
Court
(Old Bailey) variously
charged with conspiracy to rob, robbery, theft and handling stolen
money, as a result of the police investigation into the
bank
raid.s
It
is the purpose
of
this paper to look at trial by
jury
in action and,
through this medium, to consider whether eulogy or condemnation
is the appropriate reaction to this ancient institution.
The nine defendants appeared to plead to the counts in the
indictment without any jury, at that stage, being
empanelled-a
fact
not
without significance.
It
later appeared
that
the case for the
prosecution was that two employees of the security firm, McCarthy
and Bowman, had been introduced to
"the
robbers" by a contact
man, one Walker.
Now
Bowman and Walker pleaded "guilty" to
the conspiracy to rob and to handling stolen money, proceeds of the
robbery,
but
"not
guilty" to the actual robbery. These pleas were
acceptable to the prosecution
and
were permitted to be entered by
the judge. All the others, including the other security guard,
McCarthy, pleaded
"not
guilty". Bowman and Walker were then
stood down and six men and one woman remained in the dock.
It
then appeared from representations made by counsel appearing
for the seven defendants
that
objection would be taken to the
Crown's mentioning the fact
that
Bowman
and
Walker had pleaded
guilty, in opening the case against the other accused to the jury.
It
was contended
that
a plea
of
guilty from one defendant was
not
evidence against any other defendant. In fairness to the remaining
accused, Shaw J. ruled that, when the
jury
was eventually selected,
references in their presence to Bowman
and
Walker should
not
include the fact of the guilty pleas and the formula to be used was
318 October 1971
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