In July of this year I received a summons from The Crown Court that required me to serve as a juror at Reading Crown Court in September and that it would last for ten working days, my first thought was that I needed to talk to my employer as I needed to take time off work, and I was wondering how my income would be affected as employers have to give you the time off but are not obliged to pay you for it, some do and some don’t, and I found out that my firm does not pay for jury service, but I can claim from the court for loss of earnings. I also discovered that you can defer doing jury service if you have a good reason such as you have a holiday that is already booked but it is almost impossible to get out of it. I promptly responded to the letter as you have about 30 days in which to tell them that you are able to attend or if you wish to defer to a later date, I opted to attend and was sent a confirmation letter telling me to be at the court on Monday 27th of September at 9.00am.
I decided to travel by train and although I would be reimbursed for traveling expenses, there is no parking at the court and they would not pay for parking in Reading town center as it was too expensive, so going by train was a better option as it was only a short walk to and from the station at both ends of the journey and took me approximately one hour each way door to door. When I arrived on the first day I was searched at the door by the security and was told that the book I had brought with me to read was not thick enough as I would be doing a lot of sitting around waiting. I went in to the Jury reception area and registered at the desk and I had to show photo ID and then went in to the waiting area and was given an induction along with about 100 other new jurors.
Shortly after this one of the court usher’s announced that there was a long trial about to start and gave out a questionnaire that asked us all if we could attend for a long period and it asked questions like ‘are you going on holiday?’, ‘are due for a stay in hospital?’ and ‘would you be caused financial hardship?’ etc and as I answered no to all of these I was picked to be a juror on this case, of course at this stage I did not have a clue what it was about. There were about twenty people that were called and sent up to the court room, and then twelve were picked out randomly, me being one of them. The ones that were not picked were sent back down stairs and us twelve that were left were sworn in and told that it was a murder trial and a list of witness’s was read out and we were all asked if we knew any of the names on the list.
By now it was time for dinner and we were told to come back at 2pm and we all went down to the jury waiting area and were given a smart card that was to be used to but lunch from the canteen.
After lunch we were all called up to the court and this is when we came face to face with the accused that was in the dock and flanked by a rather meaty looking security guard. The trial began by the prosecution reading out the events of what happened on the night in question and we were all told in great detail about the grizzly crime. The court finished that day at about 4 pm and we were told to arrive back tomorrow at 10 am. Find out what happened in the second part of this series by clicking the link below;

Jury Service Part Two                                   Simon
                                                        29 Nov 2010

Source: http://simon-b.org/jury-service-part-one.php

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