Archive for jury
A female juror has been dismissed from a trial after posting details of the case on Face book and asking friends if they thought the defendants were guilty.
The woman went against strict rules forbidding jurors from discussing cases with family and friends and posted details of the sexual assault and child abduction trial on the popular social networking site.
“A juror was dismissed from a case on November 18 for discussing a case outside the court”
After the juror’s actions were discovered, she was removed from the case at Burnley Crown Court in Lancashire. The trial continued with a jury of 11 ...
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The country’s top appeal judges are failing to correct miscarriages of justice where they suspect the jury has come to a wrong verdict, the head of the body charged with investigating wrongful convictions has warned.
Professor Graham Zellick, the outgoing chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), said the Court of Appeal should order retrials in cases that have a “lurking doubt” about the safety of the conviction.
In an interview with The Independent, Professor Zellick also called on judges to prevent “very dubious” expert evidence, including lip-reading and ear-prints, being presented to the jury. He argued: “It is far better ...
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There are two excellent articles in todays Times
When puzzles are more interesting than working out the truth
by David Pannick QC
This is an worrying but in many ways humouress account of misconduct by jurors
A moving response to our family justice campaign by Camilla Cavendish. The article begins …
“I am awed by the response to the family justice campaign that The Times launched last week. So many readers have e-mailed their MPs that I am getting calls from all three main parties. Several MPs have also raised their private concerns about how their own local authorities behave. It is uplifting to see democracy ...
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There is an excellent article in the Times (29th Jan 2008) concerning the decision of two jurors to speak out against the conviction of child minder Keran Henderson for killing a baby in her care.
In an unprecedented move, two jurors recently spoke out to condemn the conviction of Keran Henderson, a childminder, for the murder of 11-month-old Maeve Sheppard while in her care. Their comments, revealed by The Times, were made anonymously. Now, in an exclusive article, the foreman, a lecturer living in Berkshire, questions the practical workings of the jury system …… (more)
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For those who missed it there is disturbing story of Keran Henderson’s conviction of the manslaughter of a little girls she was childminding, in Daily Mail on the 20th January.
Keran and Iain Henderson were the ideal couple: he was a police officer and she a mother who loved children so much that she looked after them for a living.But, in a case that has terrible echoes of previous miscarriages of justice, Keran suddenly found herself accused of manslaughter, and the family’s nightmare began…
Shortly after 8am, I answered a knock on the door of our Buckinghamshire home. Two police officers flashed ...
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A jury foreman has voiced doubts that a childminder jailed for shaking an 11-month old baby to death was guilty.
Keran Henderson, 43, of Iver Heath, Bucks, was jailed for three years for the manslaughter of Maeve Sheppard on a verdict based on a 10-2 majority.
The foreman, who cannot be named, said the verdict was not safe and that juries needed to be better trained.
In December another juror in the Henderson trial said a “miscarriage of justice had occurred”.
Maeve, whose parents, Ruth and Mark, live in Slough, Berks, was taken unconscious to hospital in 2005 from Henderson’s home where she ...
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