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VASILIKI PRYCE
JURY QUESTIONS
QUESTION 1
You have defined the defence of marital coercion at page 5 and also explained what does not fall within the definition by way of examples.
Please expand upon the definition (specifically “will was overborne”), provide examples of what may fall within the defence, and does this defence require violence or physical threats.
QUESTION 2
In the scenario where the defendant may be guilty but there is not enough evidence provided by the prosecution at the material time of when she signed the NIP (between 3rd and 7th May 2003) to feel sure beyond reasonable doubt what should the verdict be = not guilty or unable/unsafe to provide a verdict?
QUESTION 3
If there is debatable evidence supporting the prosecution’s case, can inferences be drawn to arrive at a verdict? If so, inferences/speculation on the full evidence or only where you have directed us to do so (eg circumstantial evidence, lies, failure by VP to mention facts to the police).
QUESTION 4
Can you define what is reasonable doubt?
QUESTION 5
Can a juror come to a verdict based on a reason that was not presented in court and has no facts or evidence to support it, either from the prosecution or defence?
QUESTION 6
Can we infer anything from the fact that the defence didn’t bring witnesses from the time of the offence, such as au pair, neighbours?
QUESTION 7
Does the defendant have an obligation to present a defence?
QUESTION 8
Can we speculate about the events at the time VP signed the form or what was in her mind at that time?
QUESTION 9
Your Honour, The jury is considering the facts provided but have continued to ask the questions raised by the police. Given the case has come to court without answers to the police’s questions, please advise on which facts in the bundle the jury shall consider to determine a not guilty or guilty verdict.
QUESTION 10
Would religious conviction be a good enough reason for a wife feeling that she had no choice i.e. she promised to obey her husband in her wedding vows and he had ordered her to do something and she felt she had to obey?
10 Responses to Vicky Pryce: the Jury Questions
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Some people seem to be giving the jury a bit of “stick” over these questions. Which is a little harsh: I’d like to see anyone give a decent “definition” or explication of “reasonable doubt”, for example. The only, honest, response to question four is “No. I’ve not the faintest idea how to define reasonable doubt”.
A professor at the University of Texas School of Law, Larry Laudan, has even suggested dispensing with the concept altogether. (Nice paper on it here: http://bit.ly/YnmPct – I’m particularly taken with the Allen and Pardo “minimally plausible narrative” account).
When I was a juror we asked a question of the judge. It was a burglary case. We were told that “burglary” was entering a premises with the intention of stealing. The “charge sheet” said “entered and took”. We asked whether the prosecution had to prove intention to take or actually took.
The judge seemed pretty condescending when answering (I paraphrase) “it says ‘took’ so they have to prove ‘took’ (God! Why do I have to work with these amateurs)”. But then we were sent out so that the judge and the chaps in wigs could have a row about whether the prosecution did have to prove ‘took’. They thought us thick because we didn’t know, but they didn’t know themselves.
I think there’s a lot of that with these questions.
I’ve been following this case with interest, and am hoping you can clarify something for me. From what I’ve read about marital coercion, the burden of proof is on the defence to show, on the balance of probabilities, that the defendant was coerced. Yet the judge, in his summing up, said the burden of proof was on the prosecution to show beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant wasn’t coerced. It seems to me quite understandable that the jury was confused, as it’s very hard to prove a negative.
Yet I haven’t seen any commentary saying that the judge was wrong in his summing up, and it would be extraordinary if the judge had made such a basic mistake! So what does the law actually say?
I too have been following this case and keen to find someone else out there who might think the judge had summed up incorrectly so interested to find Kim’s comment – the burden is clearly on the defence to prove marital coercion which seems very different from duress where the burden is very much on the prosecution to prove the LACK of duress…
Do you have any update on this point or replies you could share?
I too had noticed this alarming anomaly at the first trial.
I wonder if the same directions are being given at the retrial.
I also am stunned that none of the media are picking up on “open goal” this given the general degree of press attention.
Just to be clear, it is not simply the judge who is responsible; the prosecution are also allowing the judge to misdirect the jury.
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I have been summoned to sit on Juries five times and been on three, The Old Bailey, Southwark Crown Court and Wood Green (when it was in temporary buildings), and in that order, so a spiral from hardened criminality to those who are incompetent rather than the wicked.
Fresh juries are more inclined to acquit, after a week we were readier to convict. But apart from that I found my fellow jurors took their responsibilities seriously. I was amazed at how few took notes.
What I did object to, was that on the one Jury I acted as foreman, after we had been asked to leave the court and then called back, the judge directed us to find the defendant not guilty. I don’t mind that, I understand the judge may have to stop the trial; but the clerk then put the question to me as foreman as to whether the jury found the defendant “guilty or not guilty?”
This was a pantomime which left me unhappy, the judge had ducked his responsibility for making the decision, and then getting the jury foreman to lie that the jury had decided to find the defendant not guilty. It shook my belief in the rationality of the criminal trial process. We had taken an oath and here was the judge instructing me to lie.
does this suggest that juries need legal education before becoming jurors?
Time to get rid of this outdated institution.
I’ve also seen the answers somewhere else. Once of them didn’t look quite right, it suggested that it was for the prosecution to prove the case and the defence didn’t have to prove anything. Whereas in this case the defence is relying on a special defence, and it is a relevant question what level of proof is necessary for the special defence to succeed. What I haven’t seen is what was the advice of the judge to the jury on the special defence (the page 5 referred in Q1) is.
One interpretation of this set of questions is that there were certain jurors justifying their positions in ways that other jurors had correctly identified as not permissible, and these other jurors put these questions to the judge to tell those other jurors they couldn’t argue like that. I think that the judge’s comment he’d never come across such a daft jury was quite out of order. I suspect rather that this jury was trying very hard to come to a rational decision on a rather difficult point, on which I suspect the judge had not sufficiently advised them, despite the (perfectly normal) presence of a few people on the jury who see things in a more Daily Mail way.
@Ivan: “I think that the judge’s comment he’d never come across such a daft jury was quite out of order. I suspect rather that this jury was trying very hard to come to a rational decision on a rather difficult point, on which I suspect the judge had not sufficiently advised them,”
I completely agree. Despite all the tutting from various quarters that this was a simple case, to me it seems unusually complicated. Neither side presented very much in the way of evidence, so the jury was left struggling with the concepts of reasonable doubt and the burden of proof. Yes, Vicky Pryce had admitted to taking the points, but she said she had been coerced. I think the jury genuinely didn’t know (and quite frankly, neither do I), whether it was up to the defence to prove she had been coerced, or up to the prosecution to prove she hadn’t.