‘The Jury’ is a five-part series being shown from Monday to Friday on ITV1 this week, and it’s making me think of the two separate occasions on which I served as a juror while living in London.

Not that I ever had to deal with the retrial of a man accused of three horrific murders; nor was I masquerading as my boss, who claimed to be too busy for jury service; nor indeed did anyone try to nobble me so that I would vote the way they wanted.

This doesn’t mean that they weren’t memorable experiences, the first in particular.  The defendant was a black guy, in his early 20s, accused of being in possession of a piece of cannabis resin ‘not big enough for a decent night out’, as the man next to me whispered while it was being handed round the jury box.

It seems that a party was taking place in a large house in Notting Hill. The first witness for the prosecution (a certain Sergeant Pepper, would you believe) explained how, acting on a tipoff, they broke down the front door, allowing a group of some six officers to run along the hallway, then down a set of narrow stairs to the basement where the defendant was found with the cannabis on his person.

We were allowed a break at this time and I asked the clerk if there was any way the judge could put a question to a witness on behalf of the jury. The thing was that there was something rather dodgy-sounding about Sergeant Pepper’s evidence  (‘suppose they’ll be calling Harry the Horse next’, my neighbour muttered).  Would the people in the basement really not have heard the door being sledgehammered open, then the sound of six hefty pairs of boots pounding over their heads, at least in time for any gear to be dropped on the floor?

It appeared that this was permitted.  So I was given a piece of paper on which I wrote a note to the judge asking her if she would put the following question to the sergeant:

As you were waiting for the door to be broken open, what - if anything - could you hear?

Now, if he replied something along the lines of ‘Yes, about a thousand decibels of reggae’ I would have been more prepared to give credence to his testimony.  Otherwise, forget it. And, as we resumed our seats in the jury box, I was really looking forward to hearing what his answer would be. Unfortunately the case - at least as far as the jury was concerned - ended at this point.  Her Honour mentioned that she had been passed a very interesting question to which the jury would like a reply. However, for reasons she did not go into, the trial would not go forward at this point. Whether she would be allowing the CPS more time to refine their case, or it would simply be dismissed, we were not to know.

The following case did come to a conclusion, but not one of which I am particularly proud.  A young woman was accused of stealing from her employers, a department store.  Witness after witness - her fellow sales personnel as well as managers and, I seem to recall, the odd member of the public - produced what amounted to some pretty damning and totally credible testimony. For her not to be guilty would have meant a substantial number of people conspiring to frame her. And it was pretty obvious from her summing-up that this was the judge’s opinion, too.

The first thing we did on retiring to the jury room was choose a foreperson, which turned out to be me. So I decided to let everyone have their say before taking the first vote.  My God! I was horrified to hear the extent to which people’s prejudices simply overpowered their ability, or indeed willingness, to listen to the facts and come to a dispassionate conclusion. ‘You can never trust managers; they’re always out to get you’, was one of the typical comments.  And when we came to the vote (done, at my suggestion, by secret ballot) it turned out that there were 11 votes for ‘not guilty’ and just one, mine, for ‘guilty’!

Have you ever seen the  American film ‘Twelve Angry Men’?  It takes place in a jury room. where they are to decide the innocence or guilt of a young Latino man accused stabbing his father to death.

Well, when they vote for the first time the results are the exact opposite of my experience as foreperson, 11 voting ‘Guilty’ and only one ‘Not Guilty’.  This dissenting vote comes from ‘Juror number 8’, played by Henry Fonda, 5th from the left in the still above.   Not that at this stage, the Fonda character is convinced of the kid’s innocence; he just believes that guilt has not been proved ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. And, as the film progresses, the other jurors gradually come over to his point of view.

(Incidentally, if you’re wondering why there are only eleven jurors in the pic, this is because they are all staring at the 12th juror - played by Lee J. Cobb - who has just revealed the full extent of his ignorance and prejudice, before changing his vote to that of the other eleven).

Now I might have done a Henry Fonda if I had been in his place. But was I prepared to spend hours trying to persuade my fellow jurors that this young woman was guilty?  No way, especially as judges usually accept an 11-1 decision.  So, rather shamefacedly, when asked to give our verdict I said ‘Not Guilty’, and caught a brief flicker of disbelief on the face of the judge. And outside, when the defendant’s solicitor wanted to thank us for our verdict, I just walked by and cycled home.

A year or so later I served as juror in a different court, and recall a case of rather more complexity than this.  There were four different defendants (each with their own barrister) charged with anything from one to three different offences, all involving various degrees of violence.

It seems that, early one evening on the communal space of a housing estate in east London, something approaching a recreation of the Battle of the Alamo took place. It started, apparently, when one person, on a balcony overlooking the area ‘made the wanker sign at me’, as one of the defendants put it. (‘For the benefit of the jury, could you demonstrate what you mean by “the wanker sign” ?‘asked the judge.)

By the time the police finally broke it up, a rather large proportion of the residents had - with varying degrees of enthusiasm - joined in the high jinks. One of them, when one of the barristers said “I put it to you that you entered the communal area intent on getting involved in any violence going”, replied: “If I’d wanted to get involved in violence I’d ‘ve taken an iron bar and my pit bull with me, wouldn’t I’.  And that was a witness, not a defendant.

After a day or so we retired to consider our verdict, spending a number of hours on our deliberations.  And despite the complexities, the differing and often contradictory stories, we eventually came to an absolutely unanimous series of decisions. Something along the lines of: defendant A was guilty of charges 1 and 2, but not guilty of 3; defendant B was guilty of all charges; defendant C was not guilty of charges 1 and 2, but guilty of 3.  Makes you proud to be British.