CALLED up for jury service recently it struck me as excessive that Scotland needs 15 jurors to decide what 12 are quite capable of doing in Australia, Canada, the USA and other parts of the UK.
Substantially more than the 15 people need to be called up to form the panel from which the jurors are selected. On one day, I was one of 75 potential jurors who attended the sheriff court, sat around and were then sent home with instructions to phone the following evening.
I understand that 75 people is a sufficient panel from which to create three juries. If the jury was smaller, fewer people would need to be inconvenienced to form the panel.
A Scottish jury can reach a guilty verdict on the say-so of just eight jurors with as many as seven jurors disagreeing. A dispassionate observer might well think that seven out of 15 disagreeing was in one sense "reasonable doubt".
Gordon Jackson, QC, dean of the Faculty of Advocates, has called for weighted majority verdicts in Scotland. England is ahead of us in this respect with a Crown Court judge being able to accept a majority verdict provided 10 members of the jury are in agreement.
We in Scotland should study how other jurisdiction both in the UK and abroad deal with legal matters and, where their arrangements are better, reform our laws; juries would be a good place to start.
Otto Inglis, Edinburgh EH4.
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