Jury In Crown Court

[leahbee]

If a case rape case is to be held in a crown court will there be a jury.

[jackthehat]

Yes.

[hammerman]

yes

[Kassee]

Only if he pleads not guilty. The jury decide if he is guilty or not.

[leahbee]

Thank you jack.

[tonyav]

Most definitely will leahbee, I've been on one.

[leahbee]

Can any member of the public be a spectator at a crown court case?
I would like to see how much it differs from the TV cases.

[tonyav]

There were members of the public in the public gallery when I was on jury service, leahbee.

[FredPuli43]

All cases in the Crown Court are tried by judge and jury, from the quite trivial; stealing a bottle of milk, for example; to murder. Once it is there it is heard by a jury. Some cases could have been tried in the magistrates' court instead, but that depends on what crime is alleged, how serious it is, , and whether the defendant chooses to be tried in the magistrates' court.

[hc4361]

The public is excluded some from some Crown Court cases but the public were allowed in when I was present at the trial of a man accused of raping his 11 year old step daughter.

[FredPuli43]

Public exclusion from the Crown Court must be very rare; it could conceivably happen in cases involving national security, I suppose. No rape case should involve such a concern. You may find, rarely, that a witness in the trial is shielded from view.

The old TV series Crown Court was nowhere near reality. Lawyers regretted that their own cases didn't have dramatic music or only lasted less than an hour a day but in instalments, or always got adjourned at the most dramatic moment ! The old senior prosecutor at the Old Bailey, Edward Cussen, could produce the last by timing his killer question exactly, so it was the last thing the jury heard before an adjournment ; that left them an hour, or overnight, to be thinking about it and the defendant's inadequate answer.

Modern TV representations of Crown Court trials are a nearer, but the barristers wear new, clean,white wigs; the more experienced they are in real life, the greyer these get; there is some misuse of terms sometimes (e.g. witnesses do not 'take the stand' here, because there is no stand), and the examination and cross-examination of witnesses is sometimes more theatrical than legally correct by rules of evidence or professional procedure (or tactically). Otherwise they give a fairly good approximation.

[leahbee]

Thank you all. Your reply was really interesting,I will definitely have to go and watch a case.
How do you find out what cases are to be heard and when please?
It seems strange that you can get to my age and still be ignorant of so much.

[FredPuli43]

By the way, and curiously to outsiders, big American trials televised are closer to any fictional Crown Court. Of course, the attorney walks around when asking questions or making a speech, and the defendant sits by him, but otherwise the examination and cross-examination is exactly right, the rules of evidence are the same, the law is exactly the same in principle, and the judges give guidance to the jury in the same way. Even the "objection you honor" is the same, though a lot of our objections to evidence are made before the jury hears it, often before the trial starts, ones cropping up in the trial are the same as ours.

[FredPuli43]

Trials either have fixed date on which they start, in which case the press and the court know well in advance, or they go " into the lists", in which case they are supposed to start on some date unknown but within a set period between two dates. The first anyone involved knows of the date of those is the night before they are to be tried, and the cases will be listed at the court on the day. So ringing the court, unless you do it after 4.00pm, the day before, won't help you much.

[EDDIE51]

The 'newsworthy' ( of well known people or example) trials are so popular that you will be lucky to get into the public gallery. On the other hand at a 'mundane' trial of an unknown you may well be the only member of the public who wants to watch.