Only seen the first couple of episodes and I completely get you points, but my overriding thought when watching is that a lot of these jurors would get nowhere near a case like this in real life. Like one of the women has been a victim herself of domestic abuse so there's zero chance she would be selected for such a trial.
But you're spot on that people make assumptions and quickly choose a side based on things unrelated to the actual evidence. Once those assumptions are made, everything presented can just be aligned or flipped to suit the narrative you've created.
I don't remember anything like that sort of vetting. You have to declare if you know any parties involved in the case, but not if you've been a victim of a similar crime or anything.
Agree fully with your last para.
One of the cases I did was a woman had dipped a rag in some liquid polish, lit it, and shoved it through the letterbox of a woman's house that her husband had left her for. In the house were her husband, his new girlfriend, and her two kids. The burning rag luckily didn't burn the house down; just scorched the laminate floor a bit. Prosecution laid out their case, presented evidence (like fingerprints and CCTV from down the road that showed the defendant there at the time) and called some police to give their testimony. The woman had done other things to harass the woman and her estranged husband. It was clear that evidence pointed to woman definitely committing this act. Seemed open and shut to me.
First jury break after initial opening of the case and almost all were thinking 'guilty' - but I was flabbergasted that a couple (I remember both were women) were saying 'I don't think she's guilty' (I assumed they would come round during more discussion if we focused on the facts)
Then came the defence case and witnesses. The husband came across as an unfeeling arsehole. The defendant came across as proper downtrodden and broken. An expert in flammable materials said the polish wasn't flammable (my take was that the woman wasn't necessarily to know that so it didn't make a difference to me)
I sympathised with her, but her actions could have killed four people, including two kids. And that was what this case was about.
Next break, the 'not guilties' had risen to 3 or 4. I was trying to keep the focus on dispassionately looking at the facts of the case, but the line from the 'not guilties' was that this poor, wronged woman had just cracked but not been serious about burning the house down - because after all the polish wasn't flammable.
Over the next few hours of back and forth, I saw the 'guilties' switch one by one until it was 9-3 'not guilty'. We were called into court and the foreman advised we'd not reached a verdict. The judge said he'd accept an 11-1 majority. Back we went to our room. One of the 'guilties' flipped straight away (saying something like 'the not guilties aren't going to change their mind so I might as well say not guilty', which pissed me off. That left me and another guy sticking it out. By that point, nobody was trying to convince anyone of the other side and we just sat round chatting. Get's to mid-afternoon and we're called back in. I presumed the judge would now consider a retrial. Nope, he sent us out again and said if we didn't reach a sufficient majority within the next hour we'd be discharged for the day and have to return tomorrow.
We get back to our room, the other remaining 'guilty' lad says he's bored and can't be bothered coming back tomorrow on this case yet again and flips.
The woman was found not guilty on an 11-1 count. I thought it a travesty.
