Majority jury verdicts in England and Wales: a vestige of white supremacy?
Research conducted by Appeal suggests that the introduction of majority verdicts was partially motivated by a desire to dilute the influence of racially minoritised jurors.
Details
Majority verdicts were first introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 1967 and later consolidated in the Juries Act 1974. The case for majority verdicts was initially made on the basis that disagreements between jurors were resulting in substantial costs to the criminal justice system. However, the argument in favour of their introduction later changed to majority verdicts being a necessary tool in the fight against ‘jury nobbling’. At the time, it was reported that there were a growing number of cases in which there had been attempts to bribe or intimidate jurors. The Metropolitan Police also echoed these concerns around corruption.
However, as part of this research, Appeal considered government files and archives, including correspondence between the Home Secretary and the police, and found that there was little evidence to suggest that jury nobbling was wide spread. Appeal’s research suggests that the Home Secretary at the time was challenged by other members of parliament on his inability to demonstrate evidence of wide spread ‘jury nobbling’. However, this challenge was followed by a deeply troubling argument in favour of majority verdicts; majority verdicts were the ‘solution’ to jury diversity.
Appeal found that some of the arguments advanced during parliamentary debates throughout this period were strikingly similar to those advanced in America; a country in which it has been found that the adoption of majority verdicts was racially motivated and an effort to dilute the influence of ‘racial and ethnic minorities on [..] juries’. Appeal concluded that some members of parliament overtly supported the introduction of majority verdicts not on the basis of nobbling, but because of the diversification of juries with regard to race and class.
Commentary
Appeal’s research provides a different, and alarming, perspective on the reasons why majority verdicts were introduced and invites us to challenge the well-established narrative. Regularly published statistics do not provide data on the number of convictions, or acquittals, reached by majority verdicts in England and Wales. However, through freedom of information requests, Appeal found that between 2014 and 2019, between 12% and 16% of guilty verdicts every year were reached by majority, amounting to thousands of convictions every year. Acquittals by majority verdicts are not recorded and there is insufficient data to establish whether there is any correlation between the ethnicity of the defendant and conviction, or acquittal, by majority verdict.
In the United States of America, majority verdicts have been seen to remove an important safeguard against wrongful convictions. In the UK, it has been argued that majority verdicts could actually safeguard against juror bias by preventing one or two prejudiced jurors from dominating decision making. However, it has equally been acknowledged that it could also ‘silence a minority who opposed a racist majority’. Appeal calls for ‘better data gathering and analysis on majority verdicts in England and Wales, and further critical enquiry into the relationship between Britain’s colonial history and the jury system’. In the wake of a number of miscarriages of justice where verdicts have been reached by a majority, there is no better time than now.
Written by Sabrina Neves, Solicitor at GT Stewart Solicitors