Author Topic: Jury Service !  (Read 5134 times)

Offline castle261

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Jury Service !
« Reply #1 on: October 11, 2019, 10:47:32 AM »
To anyone not called up for jury service, this is what happened to me.
A brown envelope arrived `please report to Maidstone County Hall. I caught the Maidstone bus,
arriving well ahead of the stated time. I entered county hall, directed to this room, where dozen`s,
if not a hundred men, where wondering `what happens now `. An usher arrives to say `when your
name is called, you go to this or that court `. The first lot of men were assigned to the new court
just been built across the river. In due course I was called, `No ? court `stay here in County Hall.
I went with 12 men to that court. The prisoner was bought in `Addressed to the first man ` do you
object to this man, the prisoner answered `no `and so on, of the 12 men, he objected to no one.
We filed in to the jury box, when the judge took his seat, the trial began. Very often we were sent
out of the room, for a point of law, to be discussed. When one jury man would say ` he`s guilty `
Others pointed out `the trial has only just begun `. The trial lasted 3 days. He was `acquitted `.
We were paid expenses, meals & fares, by a note, presented to Rochester Court in the High St.

The young man was accused of breaking in the `Girls School `at Maidstone Road / Longley Road
Rochester, to commit burglary. It appeared the young man had a full leg cast on at the time, so he
could not climb through a window, as alleged by a W.P.C.( a woman police constable )