Bangladesh should bring in a jury system.
There I’ve said it. Now form an orderly queue to raise your objections.
“So many people are illiterate, or poorly educated, or prone to bribery or being intimidated. They’ll be prejudiced in some way. They won’t understand legal arguments. They’ll just do what the judge tells them. They’ll let off people from their ‘hood. And they’ll start lopping limbs off the accused.”
Plausible points of view perhaps.
For taking the vote away from most citizens in most countries around the world, that is.
I confess to bias, I freely go up on stage and let random members of the public judge my performance. But I’ve also sat on a jury at the Old Bailey; one of 12 people presented with an actual criminal case and ushered away to reach a decision behind closed doors. Everyone was different, but everyone listened carefully. I’ve seen the system work.
You can make it worse of course. Ask a jury to determine compensation in civil cases. Say hello to a million-dollar award for a cup of coffee being too hot. Let lawyers help select juries and say goodbye to the principle of jurors being anonymous and random. But hey, that’s America for you.
For a jury system to be feasible in practice, it needs to be limited to a relatively small number of serious cases. Indeed, in England, a far larger ‘public oversight’ role than juries, is played by involving volunteer ‘lay’ magistrates in ‘minor’ criminal cases.
The democratic instinct behind these concepts offers a reality check for untrammelled state power.
In England, this was famously seen during the 1960 trial of DH Lawrence’s celebrated literary novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Until Penguin books successfully defended its unexpurgated publication by this case, the book had been banned for obscenity for decades. A formidable prosecution counsel opened the state’s arguments before a jury of nine men and three women, by, (with no humorous intent), asking the question:
“Is It a Book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”
Some of the jurors laughed. Many expert witnesses later, the state duly lost its case. Now there’s a system I can get behind.
Is it perfect? Of course not, ask the Guildford Four. Can it be capacious, certainly! Representative, by no means but in the long run in some places, it has proven to be a practical, as well as symbolic shield for the rights of the individual.
So why doesn’t Bangladesh have a jury system? India and Pakistan banned it and the Raj only meant juries to be for Europeans are not good enough excuses. And the idea ordinary people would prefer lynch mobs to rule of law, is as wrongheaded as it is offensive.
An adda-savvy population with plenty of British trained barristers, there should be nothing alien about a jury system for Bangladeshis.
Is it snobbery then, or fear and distrust of fellow citizens that stops the country having one?
Prove me wrong. Please.
Asif Baul is an occasional compere and stand-up comedian
