“. No doubt he will get generous compensation”

Minus the cost of food and board the prison service will take out of his compensation statement thanks to Blunkett.

” Every time there is a gross miscarriage of justice, the criminal justice system claims it will never happen”

One thing that may help here is if police officers and prosecuters who have deliberately contributed towards miscarriages of justice started getting punished for doing so. There has been a shocking lack of accountability in this field. In cardiff we have an example where the police officers who initimidated witnesses to give false evidence in the cardiff 3 case ended up cleared because they had shredded the evidence against them, whilst the witnesses they had beaten up served time for purjury. Nothing illustrates the corruption of the system more than this.

Miscarriages of justice of this nature will continue for as long as we have an adversarial system of justice where skilled rhetoricians are employed to convince / confuse juries composed of members of the public.

Until we have an inquisitorial system where the object of the court is to find out the truth, and judges are free to call anyone as a witness we will see this year after year.

The British public also believe that juries are somehow better – they ain’t. In many countries – with far fewer miscarriages of justice that we have – jury trial is seen as crazy. Why would any accused person put their trust in 12 members of the public with no legal training, no raining in logic or reason, whose only understanding of crime comes from watching The Bill or some similar cop show on TV?

Adversarial trials combined with members of the public on juries = no justice.

On the same day that Mr Hallam was released, Carlos DeLuna, a resident of Texas who was convicted of murder in 1983, was found to have had good reason to maintain his innocence. DeLuna wasn’t fortunate enough to be released, though, because he’d been executed 22 years ago. Something to remember next time people start beating the drums for a return to capital punishment.

Was there any reason for the delay, or is it business as usual? If there’s a possibility that an innocent person is in jail then investigating should be a priority.

@ 1

I’d forgotten about that charming little rule. It needs to be scrapped. It’s charging someone for a deal they never agreed to, when they’re already the victim.

Any justice system in the real world will make mistakes. But we hate to admit that. Once a jury has pronounced, guilty or not guilty becomes an indisputable fact.
But the worse the crime, the more pressure to produce a conviction, so isn’t it likely that the worst crimes are more likrly to have miscarriages of justice then lesser ones? Thank God at least we don’t have the death penalty.
We should grow up and admit that some people are in jail who shouldn’t be there, and that it is inevitable that that will happen. That being so, the review system is an essential part of the justice system.
Whatever system we have, some (hopefully only a few) innocent people will be in prison. The only way not to believe that is to bury one’s head in the sand. Maybe that should be taken into account when we decide how to treat prisoners.

@4

It actually seems to be worse than that – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18119227

“In his ruling last year, Supreme Court president Lord Phillips argued that the “mere quashing” of a conviction could not be a “trigger for compensation”.”

Frankly I’m suprised that compensation isn’t automatic.

Why oh why do the wheels of justice grind so slow. Just recently i watched a programme about Jeremy Bamber. It cast doubt on his guilt. If there is the slightest doubt about any conviction it surely must be referred to the court of appeal. I recall the Birmingham six, the Maguire seven, the Guilford four and Jeramy Bamber,s trial. The media never leaves any room for doubt. Miscarriages of justice always seem to happen where the evidence is circumstantial or the prosecution don’t hand over evidence to the defence.

@1, Planeshift, & 3, BenSix

Fully agree!

@ 7.

…or the prosecution don’t hand over evidence to the defence.

Which is why we need to get rid of the adversarial system, and replace it with an inquisitorial system designed to find the truth rather than simply establish the guilt or innocence of a particular person.

@ 5.

Exactly.

I wonder how many more innocents are in jail.

A good reason to lift the blanket ban on prisoners voting.

Also, let’s not forget that this man’s father killed himself due to the strain of it all.

I’d echo the sentiments of others that this is another example of why the death penalty should never be reintroduced.

Part of the problem with injustice lies with the media. High profile cases, especially murder cases and those involving children, can be decided before the trial has even begun. A prime example is that of Christopher Jefferies who was being painted as a monster before he was subsequently found to not be involved. The sensationalism could have prejudiced a jury in the event of a trial.

Another example can be seen now in the US with the Zimmerman trial over the death of Trayvon Martin. The case has been so widely reported that every member of the jury will begin the trial with an opinion as to his guilt or innocence.He won’t get a 100% fair trial as numerous people have not.

The only way to avoid this is to keep details to a minimum.A X year-old an has been charged with the murder of a Y year-old man. If a juror doesn’t know any details in advance then they won’t have any preconceptions.

Sometimes I want my politicians to be outraged, and Diane is usually ok at this, but this time she was way too careful in her omittance of a full-on accusation containing the words “typical”, “flagrant”, “lazy”, “incompetence” and “Metropolitan Police”.

333 people have died in police custody since 1998, there has been no conviction of any police officer.

Perhaps Ms Abbott could tell us how hard she and her government worked to bring justice to to the families of these victims?

Or perhaps it’s more important to keep the state’s bully boys on-side, you never know when you might want our boys and girls in blue to ‘show’ people that demonstrating is considerably safer if it takes the form of writing to your MP.

Devil’s Advocate@2:

We know that the adversarial system has its disadvantages – I can’t remember who it was who said that it was devised in order to prove which side had the smarter lawyers – but an inquisitorial system is not likely to be any better, because a defendant is then even more at the mercy of the integrity of a judge and, as we have seen all too often, that integrity cannot be taken for granted, especially in a society where the judiciary is drawn from so narrow a socio-economic base.

(In his book Presumed Guilty, Michael Mansfield has some pertinent objections to the French-style system which I take it is nearer to what you wish to see.)

Someone else said that “a jury is composed of twelve people of average ignorance”. Nonethless, I would rather take my chances, were I on trial for my liberty, before a jury than before a judge either solo or en banc (particularly my own special bugbears, the ‘District Judges’, whose conduct I have remarked upon here before), as the chances are that a jury will comprise people who have not had their sense of fairness and reality dessicated out of them by twenty-odd years of associating mainly with barristers.

TW@5:

It isn’t just the innocent who are in prison when they shouldn’t be: our society has an unhealthy obsession with imprisonment as being the only ‘real’ punishment, the only one which counts.

No-one should be put in prison unless they are clearly an ongoing risk. Egregious drunken tweets, for example, do not fit into this category, and yet you can be jailed for them because, a) the judge hearing the case has the power to do so, and b) the public is deemed to expect such a sentence.

Other more effective and more appropriate punishments are already available and more should be made so. And then actually used.

Diane Abbott:

I fear that any claim to compensation will be dragged out by the Crown until such time as it represents a Pyrrhic victory for Sam Hallam, as much of it is likely to be swallowed up by legal fees. Not to mention (as Planeshift has) the nasty little measure which claws back ‘bed and board’ from the period of imprisonment which the victim of the miscarriage of justice should not have been serving in the first place. Perhaps you should have a word with your old chum Mr Blunkett and ask him what the fsck he was thinking of when he put that in place? Apart from a future job as a Sun columnist, of course.

Another troubling aspect of this is that – had this appeal failed as his previous one did – Mr Hallam would probably never have been released and would have spent the next forty-plus years in prison because he would have been deemed by the Parole Board and its psychiatric and sociological appendages ‘not to have come to terms with his offending behaviour’. Something is pretty rotten with a system where condign murderers could be released after, say, fifteen years but a genuinely innocent person could rot in there for the rest of his days.

Judge @ 14 and DA @ 2 and 9:

The Dreyfus Case (1896) and the Outreau affair (2005?) – to mention just two instances – hardly inspire confidence in French justice…

@ 14 the Judge

“Nonethless, I would rather take my chances, were I on trial for my liberty, before a jury than before a judge either solo or en banc (particularly my own special bugbears, the ‘District Judges’, whose conduct I have remarked upon here before)”

Are you innocent or guilty in this scenario? In any case, I thought juries returned more guilty verdicts (which is worrying as it suggests people are being locked up on evidence that a professional would deem insufficient). I’d take a judge, but if those district judges are what I think of when people say “magistrate”, I wouldn’t want them within 10 miles of anything that could affect my life.

“It isn’t just the innocent who are in prison when they shouldn’t be: our society has an unhealthy obsession with imprisonment as being the only ‘real’ punishment, the only one which counts.”

Even more broadly, our society is fond of taking mildly fucked-up people who haven’t integrated well with general society, fucking them up worse, and making it harder for them to integrate afterwards. Then shaking its collective head over reoffending and saying it would work if those liberal pansies just let us fuck them up MORE. (SMFS may be along shortly to support this view.)

I have real problems with the way criminal records work, i.e. that we have criminal records for people who aren’t known to be dangerous. Obviously we need to make sure that rapists don’t get jobs working with vulnerable people and so on, but making someone declare they’re a thief when they apply for a job is not a great way to ensure they get back on the straight and narrow.

Possibly a better system would be only to have criminal records for certain violent offenders, and to have them only accessible by employers in appropriate industries: schools, care homes, the police etc.

No one is saying that inquisitorial systems don’t produce miscarriages of justice – all systems do that. I do believe though that they produce fewer of them. As Chaise has pointed out, there is evidence that members of the public – a British style jury – are more likely to convict on less evidence than pofessional judges. I agree that British style amateur magistrates are terrible, though they are of course a part of the same amateur system of justice that we Brits hold up as being somehow exemplary. For some reason, most people seem to think that amateurs do a better job at deciding guilt or innocence in this country. They don’t seem to want an amateur when it comes to medicine, dentistry or plumbing though.

The French system isn’t perfect, but that’s the whole point. We can look at their system, as well as that of other Europeans – most of them use some kind of inquisitorial system – and adapt it to our own needs.

@ 15.

Rather ammused that you bring up the Dreyfus case, if asked for British miscarriages of justice, no one would think of going that far back – they’d have too many to deal with from the last 30 odd years.

Chaise @16:

“if those district judges are what I think of when people say “magistrate”, I wouldn’t want them within 10 miles of anything that could affect my life.”

DJs are what used to be called ‘Stipendiary Magistrates’ until management-bollocksese-obsessed New Labour decided this wasn’t a sufficiently ‘aspirational’ title for them. Since then, as we have seen, DJs seem to be desperate to show that they’re like real judges by trying to be as footling, censorious and extreme as they imagine real judges are: a mixture of Denning, Argyle and Eady, if you will.

As for your last three paragraphs, I agree wholeheartedly. Not merely landing people with a criminal/prison record, but using that self-same record to make it impossible for them ever successfully to (re-)integrate with ‘decent society’, and then indulging in mass tutting over the reoffending rate is what we serious students of society would call “fscking bat-shit insane”.

Though not relevant to this case, statistical evidence is often used to “prove” to juries that the accused is guilty. However it transpires that only half the story is often being presented, and though there are apparently statistical techniques which can be used to correct this problem, judges have ruled that allowing defence barristers, assuming they even understand how this works, to use these techniques would “confuse” the jurors. This is explains some of the miscarriages relating to, for instance, cot deaths. Judges are have no greater knowledge of statistics, nor indeed a capability to understand their use, than many jury members yet have decided that they, the judges, know best. Their expertise lies in knowing the law; they are no more capable of making a rational judgement based on the evidence than members of many other professions, or of none, so on that basis I’m inclined to stick with the jury system, even with its imperfections.

@18. The Judge: “DJs are what used to be called ‘Stipendiary Magistrates’ until management-bollocksese-obsessed New Labour decided this wasn’t a sufficiently ‘aspirational’ title for them.”

I more or less agree with the rest of The Judge’s rant. But I have to ask why we need so many Stipendiary Magistrates or DJs? I thought that they were on stand-by, to clear the system of simple cases and discharges, so that other defendants could have their station in front of an old fashioned magistrate.

If the number of cases overcomes old fashioned magistrates, the response should be to recruit more old fashioned magistrates.

In passing can I say how much I appreciated Ms Abbott’s usual abundance of the personal pronoun? I mean, if it was not for this article how would we know about her pivotal role in this legal case?

9. Devil’s Advocate

Which is why we need to get rid of the adversarial system, and replace it with an inquisitorial system designed to find the truth rather than simply establish the guilt or innocence of a particular person.

Can I just say, that as arguments go, claiming the prosecution does a piss poor job and so we have to give the prosecution even more power and reduce the defence to by-standers does not strike me as the most convincing?

16. Chaise Guevara

Even more broadly, our society is fond of taking mildly fucked-up people who haven’t integrated well with general society, fucking them up worse, and making it harder for them to integrate afterwards. Then shaking its collective head over reoffending and saying it would work if those liberal pansies just let us fuck them up MORE. (SMFS may be along shortly to support this view.)

Well no. I agree with the first bit more or less. Except there is nothing we can do to stop them reoffending. Someone who is f*cked up enough by the time they are 13 to be in prison or Care is going to be f**ked up for life. Given there is nothing we can do, there is nothing much to be done. Except keep them locked up for as long as possible or execute them.

@21. So Much For Subtlety: “In passing can I say how much I appreciated Ms Abbott’s usual abundance of the personal pronoun?”

Of course.

Should we consider other self obsessions?

Devil’s Advocate: just a possibility, but don’t you think the reason people on this site are aware of British wrongful convictions and not (many) French ones might be because the people on this site are, erm, British and not French?

Anyway, assuming you’re serious rather than trolling, the papers in this book are well worth a read. The Dutch chapter highlights the ways in which the inquisitorial system also falls down.

The general consensus among academics is that neither method is superior, and that the resources committed to investigating wrongful conviction, combined with the system’s willingness to accept that it makes mistakes, are far more important… even if it were feasible to switch systems, which it isn’t.

@ 23 john b.

Anyway, assuming you’re serious rather than trolling, the papers in this book are well worth a read. The Dutch chapter highlights the ways in which the inquisitorial system also falls down.

Firstly, it says a great deal that you should think that a belief in a system of justice that seeks to find out the truth about an event could be construed as trolling in any way.

I have not said that any system would ever be perfect – perfection doesn’t exist, especially in matters of law, though I believe an inquisitorial system would be a considerable improvement.

The research in the book sounds very interesting, I shall read it at some point in the near future. It is however a pity that objective research about what happens in the British jury room cannot be objectively writen about – it is illegal to conduct such research.

Which leads me on to my real point. I have served on a jury. It was this experience that brought me to the belief that the jury system is fundamentally wrong.

DA @ 17:

“… if asked for British miscarriages of justice, no one would think of going that far back – they’d have too many to deal with from the last 30 odd years.”

Looks like you are falling victim to selection bias, too. If (?) the UK system has more miscarriages of justice than the French system, then that could well be because it is easier to uncover and rectify them in the UK – not because the UK system is less just. The French system, with its poodle press and its assumption that the investigator discovered the ‘truth’, may make it harder to rectify miscarriages of justice.

So I agree with johnb – except for his irritating suggestion that anyone who writes against the grain here is a troll! (If that’s your definition of a troll, not only DA but also posters from Chaise G to SMFS are trolls, which is quite absurd because they both provide well-argued comment.)

Details of the Outreau case are here (it was 2004, not 2005 as I claimed):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outreau_trial

By the way…some people on the left (Ms Abbott MP may well be among them) seek to use miscarriages of justice to suggest that all UK institutions are rotten – a Gramscian undermining of social structures – when the revealing of miscarriages of justice is an integral part of an open society and as such a positive thing. Similarly, any evidence of ‘corruption’ in politics is seized on to suggest that the political establishment is rotten – when we should be celebrating the fact that our politicians are held to account, unlike in France, for example.

@ 25.

Looks like you are falling victim to selection bias, too

You could be right. I have never had any special training in weighing up evidence or examining and analyzing data – just like most jurors – there is a strong chance that I am unduly swayed by my prejudices. This is something that we humans are prone to Which is why I think jury trials are a bad idea..

You could also be right about the French having a more supine press – though it’s fair to say that France is far from being the only country that uses an inquisitorial system. Such systems are the norm once we go outside the anglosphere. There is ample evidence from around the world that shows quite clearly how juries can convict based on prejudice rather than evidence. Just take a few minutes to Google the subject and you’ll have enough meat for a very big sandwich.

The prejudice of juries could be mitigated somewhat if juries had to explain how and why they had reached a decision – something that benches have to do – though frankly, I suspect that if such a system where brought in, jury trials would go pretty soon after. After all, there could only be so much “We decided he was guilty because we want to watch the match and this is really boring anyway”.

13. of the 33 deaths in custody since 1998 only 8 have been illegal they’re the ones we should be compaining about, I ont 2 unlawful deaths in the NHS have been on the news in the alst week, the doctor who on call who couldn’t speak english and the baby born on a trolley in the wating area who was strngled on His ambilical cord, I hope these two unlawful deaths are just as importantly judged as deaths in custody ,

regarding the Sam Hallam case it does bring into doubt if 8 witnesses say someone didi it and there’s no proff that the person accused was in the area, that they did it, It’s like the stehen lawrence murder in the days after 15 people allegedly said the supects werer in the area, So either Sam Hallam was innocent of the Stehpen lawrence suspects weren’t, the reference to the unfair press that people get like Jeremy bamber seems to have been forgotten regareding the Lawrence killers too.

no.1 isn’t there still possible future prosecutions for perverting the course of justice for the cardiff3,

@ 27 John P Reid

“of the 33 deaths in custody since 1998 only 8 have been illegal they’re the ones we should be compaining about”

How do we know that the remaining deaths weren’t illegal? This is an honest question, as I don’t know the methodology behind your data, but it occurs that some of the remainder might have, y’know, “tripped and fell down the stairs”.

i’m sure there’s been cctv since 1998, it was the IPCC and the judiciary that decide whether a death in custody is unlawful or open verdict

Fine words from a MP who has gone on record as a supporter of Joint Enterprise – the legal principle that allowed Sam Hallam to have his Human Rights violated in this terrible miscarriage of justice. How many others indeed are suffering in prisons, Diane, no thanks to your party’s hypocritical attitude towards the injustice caused by Joint Enterprise and by your party’s introduction of IPP sentences. Why are nearly 20% of all prisoners in the UK now Lifers? Why is the Lifer population in the UK almost 1.5 times the rest of the Council of Europe’s? Your opportunistic hand-wringing and moral anguish ring very hollow while your party competes with the opposition for the dubious title of the “party of law and order”.

Come clean with us, Diane – admit you were mistaken about Joint Enterprise and support JENGbA’s campaign. Then you might restore your credibility and regain some respect – at the moment your words sound as shallow as commander Simon Foy’s expression of “deep regret” regarding Sam’s conviction.

Prove us wrong about you!

Who are JOINT ENTERPRISE: NOT GUILTY by ASSOCIATION?
JENGbA is a grass roots campaign set up to support prisoners and their families who have been convicted under joint enterprise but who are not guilty of the index offence. We are all volunteers who have lost a loved one to the prison system for something they did not do. We are campaigning to highlight the abuse of the joint enterprise doctrine to convict the innocent for disproportionately long sentences. Men, women and sadly children who are serving mandatory LIFE sentences for something they did not do, did not encourage, did not foresee was going to happen, and did not INTEND to happen.

What is JOINT ENTERPRISE?

Joint Enterprise is an archaic doctrine – common law – passed down by judges – that was introduced hundreds of years ago to outlaw duelling. It means that anyone who has any association with someone who commits a crime can also be convicted of that crime. It means that a person who has phoned someone earlier in the day and that person goes on to be involved in an incident that they may or may not have committed may also be convicted because of that phone call.

Who is JOINT ENTERPRISE targeting?

The legal establishment and government would like you to believe this is a law to stop gangs. But who is defining those ‘gangs’? A group of black boys in the dock is immediately labelled a ‘gang’ by the prosecution even if their association is they went to the same primary school. A woman whose violent partner kills someone while she sleeps – is she a gang member? No, but she is serving life under joint enterprise. Our data shows that the Muslim community are being particularly targeted. Language like ‘feral youths’ and ‘broken Britain’ bandied about by press and politicians to show they can be TOUGH ON CRIME – regardless of who they prosecute. This is targeting the working class particularly Black and Ethinic Minority Groups and youths as young as 13. Britain’s lifer population = 17%; the rest of entire Europe = 3% Why? Because of joint enterprise!

Why JOINT ENTERPRISE is being abused.

JENGbA have cases of physically and mentally disabled children being prosecuted. We have cases where the CPS and Police clearly knew who the guilty person was but chose to maliciously prosecute large numbers of individuals who were innocent. This doctrine confuses juries into making assumptions, rather than base a verdict on evidence. Joint Enterprise has put the evidential bar against a defendant so low that the police and prosecutors do not need to provide concrete evidence to prove guilt.

JOINT ENTERPRISE is making a mockery of our British Justice System; it is a lazy law allowing lazy policing, lazy prosecutions. Every individual who believes in the right to a fair trial and justice for all: please support JENGbA and the prisoners we are fighting for.

No amount of compensation will ever be enough for Sam, that’s if he ever recieved any. Joint Enterprise did this to Sam, a lazy law that is causing the same injustice to hundreds of people. A select committee inquiry made recommendations in January this year in regards to this law, and to date NONE of those recommendations have been met. WHY NOT?? Because MP’s like Crispin Blunt don’t want to put the manpower or the cash into preventing the injustice that Sam suffered. However, MP’s like Blunt dont mind that families suffer the greatest expense of all which is the pain and suffering and loss of freedom of a loved one. And to top it of MP’s like Blunt also think the British taxpayer doesn’t mind paying tens of thousands of pounds a year keeping those people in misery.Dianne Abbott is well aware there are other just like Sam. Step up to the mark Ms Abbott, it may be the end of Sam’s incarceration but until the abuse of the law of Joint Enterprise is ended, today will be the beginning of the incarceration for someone just like Sam.

Why JOINT ENTERPRISE is being abused.

JENGbA have cases of physically and mentally disabled children being prosecuted. We have cases where the CPS and Police clearly knew who the guilty person was but chose to maliciously prosecute large numbers of individuals who were innocent. This doctrine confuses juries into making assumptions, rather than base a verdict on evidence. Joint Enterprise has put the evidential bar against a defendant so low that the police and prosecutors do not need to provide concrete evidence to prove guilt.

JOINT ENTERPRISE is making a mockery of our British Justice System; it is a lazy law allowing lazy policing, lazy prosecutions. Every individual who believes in the right to a fair trial and justice for all: please support JENGbA and the prisoners we are fighting for.

British Society of Criminology Yvette Tinsley, concurs that empirical evidence based on 48 juries in New Zealand (similar common law structure to Britain) the judge was asked before the jury went out what verdict he would reach, and then compared that to the actual jury verdict .The study conclusively found that the judge would have convicted a higher proportion of the defendants. Prosecution bias is cited for at least part of that reasoning. There are similar studies that have been made that broadly support these contentions. If you contest this finding, supply your source of evidence?
I do not subscribe to the notion that a study in Britain would have produced contrary conclusions.
I am not aware of any similar British study of juries because of traditional notions of secrecy (enshrined in England in the Contempt of Court Act),
The jury do get it wrong, but often legal impropriety in all its forms can be the cause of that wrong, not the jury itself, and that distinction is often missed.

BYRON WHITE (1975): The purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power–to make available the common sense judgement of the community as a hedge against the overzealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps over
Conditioned or biased response of a judge

Jose Baez: Jurors the lifeblood of justice, don’t vilify them for doing duty
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.”

-Winston Churchill, “Closing the Ring”

Almost four months ago, the jury in the trial of Casey Anthony found her not guilty of murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter of a child — and the jurors have paid for it ever since.
They have paid for it at the hands of pundits and so-called veteran court watchers, who have relentlessly denounced the verdict and the jurors. It is no surprise that only three of the 17 jurors and alternate jurors had chosen to identify themselves before all the names were released on Tuesday. The media-fueled backlash had left them with little choice but to remain anonymous.

What we have witnessed in these four months is an assault on a jury of our peers who answered the call and endured severe hardships in doing so.

As we prepared for this trial, the prosecution and defense screened 200 potential jurors who were randomly selected from the jury pool. They did not seek this role. They received a summons and reported for jury duty as required by law.

Of the 200 prospective jurors whom we interviewed over two weeks, 70 percent were excused for hardships that would be imposed by serving on the jury, such as potential loss of employment and the need to care for elderly relatives.

Of those who remained, we eventually arrived at a jury of seven women and five men who were willing and able to carry this burden. They were administered the following oath: “Do you solemnly swear (or affirm) that you will well and truly try the issues between the state of Florida and the defendant and render a true verdict according to the law and the evidence, so help you God?”

And with that, our jurors were sequestered for the next six weeks — away from their family and friends, without access to news or current events and unable to communicate with anyone about what they were experiencing during that time. Phone calls were monitored and visits were regulated. Even among themselves, they could not discuss the one thing they had in common — the trial. And yet, they accepted this duty because it is what our country asked of them.

As the weeks blurred into months, they remained attentive and professional, listening carefully as the prosecution and defense presented arguments and evidence. They accepted their solemn duty to decide the fate of a defendant facing the death penalty. (It should be noted that during the six-week trial, not one juror was excused for misconduct, a rarity for a sequestered jury.)

They listened closely to all of the facts. They followed the instructions, which were given to them with respect to the law, and in the end, they applied the facts to the law in a struggle to determine whether the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. We all know the conclusion this jury reached, and I applaud the jurors for it. Not simply because I believe justice was done in the case of Casey Anthony, but because I believe they upheld the highest precepts of our judicial system.