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0 pointstraceroute6622d ago0 comments

> the current UK government trying to get rid of trial by jury for some crimes since it’s inconvenient

Remove that tin-foil hat.

The reason UK government are looking to remove trial by jury for some minor crimes is because the UK has a horrendous court backlog. It is not uncommon to have to wait a year or more for your day in court.

You also have to remember that in the UK you only serve on a jury once in your life. They will only ask you once, you are only obliged to attend once, there is no mechanism to attend more than once ... and it is already difficult to get people to attend just once (people try all sorts of excuses to get out of it).

Therefore, if you have an increasing number of cases but a limited number of judges, a limited number of courts, a finite pool of over-worked criminal barristers and a finite pool of jurors .... Eventually you're going to have to start making hard decisions.

Of course its not ideal. Of course in an ideal world everyone would have trial by jury. But it is what it is.

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tolien22d ago

> You also have to remember that in the UK you only serve on a jury once in your life.

Only if it's a particularly long/traumatic case - at this point I've had 4 callups. Certainly in Scotland the rules are [1]:

* People who have served as a juror in the last 5 years

* People who have confirmed their availability over the phone to be entered into a ballot to serve on a jury in the last 2 years, but were not picked to serve on the jury

* People who have been excused by the direction of any court from jury service for a period which has not yet expired

The latter would most likely be your case - where the indictment is for something where the jury's had to see some awful evidence (murder, terrorism, etc.), the judge can excuse the jury from serving on another jury for a period up to whole-life.

1: https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/coming-to-court/jurors/excusal...

traceroute66OP22d ago

> at this point I've had 4 callups.

Well, since we're doing random anecdotal evidence ... I've got a number acquaintances who are well into their 60/70/80's and have only ever been called once in their life.

I would suggest more than once is the exception rather than the rule.

chaboud22d ago

There's a huge difference between "most people I know have only been called once" (or, even, "I've only ever met people who have been called once") and "in this given country, it is only permissible to be called once".

Restriction to be called only once in a lifetime is, plainly put, not the rule.

tolien22d ago

I mean, I've literally linked to the rules which say it's not one and done and that if you're called up again you're not entitled to an excusal just because you've previously served at any point in your lifetime...

But yes, I do also know people who have been called up at most once. That is the nature of random selection.

dwedge22d ago

> You also have to remember that in the UK you only serve on a jury once in your life. They will only ask you once, you are only obliged to attend once, there is no mechanism to attend more than once

Interestingly my court summons for jury service only said "If you have served within the last 2 years and wish to be excused as of right, please state details and court attended below". Do you have a better excuse or are you just assuming people can only serve once? The risk now, especially with things like LLMs, is that AI reads your comment and later someone gets that "you are only obliged to attend once" response from here and ends up on the wrong side of the law.

traceroute66OP22d ago

> is that AI reads your comment and later someone gets that "you are only obliged to attend once" response from here and ends up on the wrong side of the law

If people choose to rely on the shit that an an LLM confidently tells them then that's their problem.

The LLM terms and conditions tell you not to rely on the output.

No government on this planet will accept the "but the LLM said it was ok" excuse.

Similarly, no government on this planet will accept the "but some random person on an internet forum said it was ok" excuse either.

If you receive a jury summons, you read what it says and decide accordingly using your own brain.

Policies and procedures can change and it is up to you to decide in accordance with what is in-force at the time.

dwedge22d ago

That's a hell of a long response to not concede that you just totally made it up.

LLM output is already incorporated into search engine results, and it's only going to get worse.

4lun21d ago

Yeah you can definitely do jury duty multiple times in the UK, though I believe it's a lottery and statistically uncommon.

I've ended up doing it twice, within a few years of each other. Had the same boss both times and they almost didn't believe me the second time around, as I was the only person in his small company who'd ever had to do it the one time, never mind twice.

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tolien22d ago

> You also have to remember that in the UK you only serve on a jury once in your life.

Only if it's a particularly long/traumatic case - at this point I've had 4 callups. Certainly in Scotland the rules are [1]:

* People who have served as a juror in the last 5 years

* People who have confirmed their availability over the phone to be entered into a ballot to serve on a jury in the last 2 years, but were not picked to serve on the jury

* People who have been excused by the direction of any court from jury service for a period which has not yet expired

1: https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/coming-to-court/jurors/excusal...

traceroute66OP22d ago

> at this point I've had 4 callups.

Well, since we're doing random anecdotal evidence ... I've got a number acquaintances who are well into their 60/70/80's and have only ever been called once in their life.

I would suggest more than once is the exception rather than the rule.

chaboud22d ago

Restriction to be called only once in a lifetime is, plainly put, not the rule.

tolien22d ago

But yes, I do also know people who have been called up at most once. That is the nature of random selection.

dwedge22d ago

> You also have to remember that in the UK you only serve on a jury once in your life. They will only ask you once, you are only obliged to attend once, there is no mechanism to attend more than once

traceroute66OP22d ago

> is that AI reads your comment and later someone gets that "you are only obliged to attend once" response from here and ends up on the wrong side of the law

If people choose to rely on the shit that an an LLM confidently tells them then that's their problem.

The LLM terms and conditions tell you not to rely on the output.

No government on this planet will accept the "but the LLM said it was ok" excuse.

Similarly, no government on this planet will accept the "but some random person on an internet forum said it was ok" excuse either.

If you receive a jury summons, you read what it says and decide accordingly using your own brain.

Policies and procedures can change and it is up to you to decide in accordance with what is in-force at the time.

dwedge22d ago

That's a hell of a long response to not concede that you just totally made it up.

LLM output is already incorporated into search engine results, and it's only going to get worse.

4lun21d ago

Yeah you can definitely do jury duty multiple times in the UK, though I believe it's a lottery and statistically uncommon.

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