Guy goes to trial on criminal damage charges for smashing up the roof of a council building. He’s done it before. They have film of him doing it this time, he even says he did it himself (he pleaded not guilty because he wanted his day in court). For whatever reason, the jury finds him not guilty
Given the evidence stacked up against him, how is this possible? I have no RO about this case, this is a genuine question. Does this mean that if the jury becomes sympathetic with the defendant, they can clear them in the face of incontrovertible evidence, because that’s what it looks like.
Jury sympathy. They sided with him in his protest against the council. It does sound like he’s in a rather unpleasant situation and he’s a pensioner, and he’s already served a few years in prison over similar offences.
A conviction would have probably been a life sentence in this case as he’s 74, which is also likely to have influenced the jury.
The principle seems to be that of jury nullification. That’s when a jury, in spite of knowing that an individual has broken the law, nevertheless finds him not guilty because of their sympathy to him or opposition to the law.
One of the most famous cases of jury nullification, and the one that confirmed that juries had the right to do so, was the trial of William Penn in 1670. Penn was a Quaker preacher, who violated a law forbidding Quakers to preach. During his trial, he admitted to preaching before a gathering of Quakers, but said that the law forbidding Quakers to preach was itself illegal. The jury thereby found him not guilty.
They could, but does he seem like the sort of person who has £30,000 (or £1 million if you want to include everything) to hand over to the council in damages?
Could be more going on than Jury sympathy. What gets reported in the popular press can sometimes be quite an inaccurate reflection of what goes on in court.
If the decision of the council to move the truck yard was dubious then it could be seen that the law breaking by the council was what led directly to the person doing the same to defend his rights.
It would depend upon the original planning application, but, whenever land is due to substantially change use, those proposing the change are obliged by law to consult publicly to ascertain wether there are objections.
Clearly this process wasn’t carried out all that well as the coucnil must have recieved a large number of objections when it had already set up this area.
They seem to have panicked and moved it, but of course this should have led to another consultation, to allow the public to make their objections known about this new proposal.
The problem here is that when judging planning applications, its the council itself that makes the final decision, and its the council that polices any breaches of the proposals.The local council has a dog in this fight, and is probably not behaving in an even handed manner, since it was its own officers that made sure the site was moved to its present location.
Hasn’t a judge got power to overturn a jury verdict and substitute his own? I saw it happen on the TV show Conviction. (Now there’s an authority for you!)
In the US a judge can overturn a jury verdict of guilty and enter a verdict of not guilty if he finds that the jury’s verdict had no basis in law. A not guilty verdict cannot be overuled. I don’t know what the law in England is.
I mean the popular press as opposed to law reports (not that this case would be reported anyway). There is so much more that goes on in a criminal trial than is ever reported in the press, generally what appears on the BBC/in newspapers, etc is just the tip of the iceberg.
Does this kind crop up in murder trials where the defendant is a battered wife? Is there any situation where the jury cannot return an innocent verdict despite mountains of evidence?
A truly ‘perverse verdict’ is rare, which is why I’ve wondered if we’re getting the full story.
If the defendnat is a battered wife then they have a defence to murder in that their resonsibilty is diminished and they would be guilty of manslaughter instead (a verdict of guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter is always available to a jury trying an indictment of murder).
Juries are the sole judges of fact in a Crown Court trial and they can return any verdict they like. Howvere if a defendant were to plead guilty during a trial after a jury had been sworn, the judge would usually direct the jury to find the defendant guilty in such a situation it would be very difficult for them to return a verdict of anything other than guilty (it wouldn’t be unusual for the judge to pick the closest member of the jury as the foreman and say “I direct you to find the defendant gulity, how do you find the defendant?”).
Per the Penn case mentioned earlier a judge cannot direct a jury to give a verdict of Guilty; I know that the judge can direct a verdict of Not Guilty.
Can this work in reverse? If a jury can find someone not guilty, in spite of hard evidence to the contrary, can they also find someone guilty in spite of the evidence?
IANAL, I think you’re right tho’ (but there have been very modern cases where the judge has dirceted the jury to find the defendant guilty).
I should’ve repharsed what I said the judge (or more likely his clerk) would pick the nearest memebr of the jury and ask him soemthing along the lines of "This defdandt has pleaded guilty to so-and-so, how do you find the defendant. In such a situation it would take a very determined jury to return a verdict of anything other than guilty.
Well, they can, in the sense that if they are asked to render a verdict, they can say “guilty.” But if there is no credible evidence on the record that supports guilt – if the evidence, as a matter of law, cannot sustain a guilty verdict – then the judge, as mentioned above, can toss the verdict and substitue a verdict of “not guilty.” More often, what might happen is that the jury would never get the case: if the record is not sufficent to convict, then the defense will ask the judge for a directed verdict before the jury can even deliberate.
Generally speaking, in English jurisprudence, a trial judge does not reverse a jury verdict after it has been given because he disagrees, or thinks the evidence is insufficient.
The usual practice is for the defence to make a no case submission at the end of the prosecution evidence. That is where the trial judge then decides if the evidence is sufficient, and if he thinks it is not, the Crown enters a nolle prosequi, or the judge directs the jury to acquit. The jury in this situation never gets to go out and deliberate or consider the case on its merits.
Once the matter has gone to verdict, the remedy of the person convicted on flimsy evidence is to appeal.
Juries are, as observed elsewhere, perfectly free to acquit in the face of overwhelming evidence if they wish, and they sometimes do (the CSI factor is an example of a modern “reason” why they do this; another is sentimental identification with the accused). The prosecution has no real remedy when that happens, as I understand it (I last looked at the UK law on this some time ago, and there is a slight possibility that there is provision to appeal an acquittal now).
If the reverse were to happen, the remedy is an appeal, but bearing in mind that the case has likely survived a no case submission, the prospects are not as promising, and on appeal great respect is paid to jury verdicts so that if a rational basis for the verdict can be found, a jury verdict will not be overturned. Most appeals that succeed do so for technical reasons based on admissibility issues or jury directions rather than because the evidence was weak. Appellate courts consider themselves to be in a much weaker position than jurors to evaluate the evidence.