Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Courtroom drama
Jury service, day 3, and at last we were in court for more than 12 minutes. Still not for more than two hours altogether, but in court all the same. Today, all the drama of the prosecution and defence cases. Actually, perhaps 'drama' is too strong a term, because if they dished this sort of thing up on The Bill or Kavanagh QC, you'd be changing channels pretty quickly. On television a court case is always conducted between commercial breaks, comprising a brief session of pointed questioning, a pair of witheringly concise speeches, an instant jury decision and a final sentence. Not so in real life, where even the simplest case seems to take forever.
Our case was adjourned this afternoon just before the judge's final summing-up. We all walked out of the courtroom bursting to talk about the case but still unable to do so. The twelve of us must wait until tomorrow before we can retire to the jury room, discuss all that we have heard and finally reach a verdict. What conclusion will tomorrow's exciting instalment bring? Which of the courtroom arguments will we believe? Will the accused be found guilty or not guilty? Maybe it does sound like a TV cliffhanger after all, but with a far far smaller audience than John Thaw normally commands. And more breaks.
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