A year after Mary Surratt’s trial, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled citizens were entitled to a trial by jury, even in times of war. A jury of Northerners and Southerners could not agree upon a verdict in the case of John Surratt. He was set free. The Conspirator 2010 starring Kevin Kline & James McAvoy & Robin Wright & Justin Long & Evan Rachel Wood & Tom Wilkinson & Johnny Simmons & Toby Kebbell & Norman Reedus & Alexis Bledel et al, director Robert Redford
Gillian Taylforth ... also had a dodgy boyfriend – Geoff Knights, a violent gangster with a string of criminal convictions. And her world fell apart when the biggest tabloid of the country ran a front-page story claiming the police had caught the pair performing an act of gross indecency. She decided to sue for libel. The Trial of Gillian Taylforth, Channel 5 2014
Eventually, they found in favour of the The Sun. ibid.
Three jurors in the 1993 trial of Stephen Young for two counts of murder were unable to make up their minds over the defendant’s guilt or innocence. They sought help by using a Ouija Board to commune with one of Mr Young’s victims. The spirit of Henry Fuller duly appeared. Fuller had been killed with his wife Nicola, and in his ghostly reincarnation Henry confirmed that Young was the pair’s killer. ‘Vote guilty tomorrow’ was his instruction, via the Ouija board. Young was convicted – and re-convicted at the retrial for the inevitable ‘material irregularity’ in the first proceedings. Swordplay online, Top Ten Mad Jury Moments #1
An Australian drugs trial lasting more than three months and costing taxpayers over A$1 million was abandoned after a number of the jurors were found to have spent much of their time engaged in Sudoku puzzles. The judge had a feeling that all was not as it should be when he noticed that some jurors were writing notes vertically rather than horizontally, but one juror insisted that devotion to Sudoku was actually beneficial to justice: ‘Some of the evidence is rather drawn out and I find it difficult to maintain my attention the whole time’, she was reported to have told Australian Associated Press. ibid. #2
A woman witness was giving evidence [in an indecency case] and was asked what the man in the dock had said to her. She was too embarrassed to repeat it in open court, so the judge asked her to write it down. She did, and what she wrote was ‘Would you care for a screw?’ This document was passed around the jury until it reached juror number 12, an elderly gentleman who was fast asleep. Sitting next to him was a fairly personable young lady. She read the note, nudged her neighbour and, when he was awake, handed it to him. He woke with a start, read it and, with apparent satisfaction, folded it and put it away carefully in his wallet. When the judge said, ‘Let that be handed up to me,’ the juryman shook his head and replied, ‘It’s a purely private matter, my Lord.’ ibid. #10, cited Professor Gary Slapper, How the Law Works
The great purges involving thousands of people, with public trials of traitors and thought-criminals who made abject confession of their crimes and were afterwards executed, were special show-pieces not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years. George Orwell, 1984
This film follows a person after they’ve been charged with a very serious crime. Right up to the verdict … When you’re accused everything is at stake. The Accused ***** Channel 5 2017
On November 3rd 2014 a call was made to NHS Direct: an eight-week-old baby girl was fighting for her life. Doctors discovered she had a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain and severe retinal haemorrhaging, injuries which left her brain damaged and blind. The next day her 21 year old mother Kenzey and the baby’s father Kyle were arrested. Kyle was charged with grievous bodily harm; Kenzey with witnessing the assault and failing to protect her child. ibid.
It’s alleged that as the call connects to the operator Kenzey can be heard saying to Kyle, ‘I’m in trouble.’ ibid.
Just how aware Kenzey was of Kyle’s tendency to violence is becoming central to the prosecution case against her. ibid.
Three months after he was arrested Kenzey’s boyfriend Kyle confessed on Facebook to injuring their baby daughter. ibid.
Kyle was found guilty on two counts of causing grievous bodily harm with intent; he was sentenced to 18 years in prison: on her charges of failing to protect her daughter and child cruelty Kenzey was found guilty; Kenzey is now serving a three and a half year sentence. ibid.
The most spectacular trial in Mafia history – the Maxi trial was about the begin. Falcone would lead the prosecution. The star witness was Tommaso Buscetta. The trial began in February 1986. 3,000 armed soldiers guarded the bunker. Plus an army tank. Nearly 500 defendants were scheduled for trial … He was on the witness stand for a week protected by bullet-proof glass repeating what he had already told Judge Falcone … 344 Mafiosi were found guilty. Inside the Mafia: The Great Betrayal, 2005
The only bank prosecuted for mortgage fraud meltdown: a family business caught up in a national crisis. And fighting to survive. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, PBS 2016
‘Today we are announcing the indictment of 19 individuals on charges including mortgage fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy as well as the indictment of Abacus Federal Savings Bank.’ ibid. Cyrus Vange, New York County district attorney
‘Almost laughable.’ ibid. Mr Sung
‘How we deal with a certain kind of offender vs everybody else … about as easy a target as you could possibly pick.’ ibid. critic
Not guilty. ibid.
A state district judge in Comal County said God told him to intervene in jury deliberations to sway jurors to return a not guilty verdict in the trial of a Buda woman accused of trafficking a teen girl for sex.
Judge Jack Robison apologized to jurors for the interruption, but defended his actions by telling them, ‘When God tells me I gotta do something, I gotta do it,’ according to the Herald-Zeitung in New Braunfels.
The jury went against the judge’s wishes, finding Gloria Romero-Perez guilty of continuous trafficking of a person and later sentenced her to 25 years in prison. They found her not guilty of a separate charge of sale or purchase of a child. Statesman online article 19th January 2018, ‘Texas judge interrupts jury, says God told him defendant is not guilty’
Scene. In the fastnesses of Tennessee, the quiet of dawn is split asunder by wailing screams from a steam siren. It is the Dayton sawmill, waking up villagers and farmers for miles around. From 5 until 6:30 the blasts continue. The hamlet and the fantastic cross between a circus and a holy war that is in progress there come slowly to life …
Jury. A jury was sworn — ten farmers, a shipping clerk and a farmer-teacher, none of whom had ever read a book on Evolution or admitted a prejudice for or against it; all of whom, with the exception of one illiterate, had read the Bible.
Trial [Scopes]: Lawyer Bryan, palm leaf fan in hand, collarless, led the prosecution forces into Court shortly before 9 o’clock. A few of the more courageous clung to their coats, but the heat soon overcame their vanity, with the exception of foppish, double-breasted-coated Dudley Field Malone.
… Lawyer Darrow then began his long argument for the defense, basing it on the diversion of the caption of the act from the act itself and on the ambiguity of the indictment. ‘I am going to argue it [the case] as if it was serious ... The Book of Genesis, written when everybody thought the world was flat ... Religious ignorance and bigotry as any that justified the Spanish Inquisition or the hanging of witches in New England ... The State of Tennessee has no more right to teach the Bible as the Divine Book than it has the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Book of Confucius, the Buddha or the Essays of Emerson ... Who is the Chief Mogul that can tell us what the Bible means?’ Time magazine article 20th July 1925, ‘Education: The Great Trial’
‘We are looking for a Tennessee teacher who is willing to accept our services in testing this law in the courts’, Professor Skinner states. ‘Our lawyers think a friendly test can be arranged without costing a teacher his or her job. Distinguished counsel have volunteered their services. All we need now is a willing client’. ACLU advert all Tennessee newspapers
In 1925 the Tennessee legislature passed the Butler Act which made it a misdemeanor to teach the evolution of only one species — mankind — in the public schools. The evolution of 99.9999% of all other plant and animal life (about two million other species), or the evolution of the earth or the solar system, could all be taught as either compelling theory or proven fact without violating the Butler Act …
John Scopes, a high school football coach and mathematics teacher who only substituted for Dayton’s regular biology teacher, never taught evolution to anybody. As he confided to acclaimed newspaper reporter, William K Hutchinson, ‘I didn’t violate the law ... I never taught that evolution lesson. Those kids they put on the stand couldn’t remember what I taught them three months ago. They were coached by the lawyers.’ TheMonkeyTrial online
Dayton, Tennessee, July 10th 1925: It was the day a twenty-four-year-old teacher named John Thomas Scopes went on trial for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in a public school classroom. The Monkey Trial, PBS 2002
A judge who believed he had been chosen by God. ibid.
At the centre of it all two of the most colourful and controversial men in America ... A duel over science and religion. ibid.
The new law made it a crime ... Teachers who violated the law could be fined. ibid.
Most people thought the new law would never be enforced. ibid.
Scopes agreed to be arrested. ibid.
Hollywood sent newsreel crews and photographers. ibid.
Darrow came to Dayton because he believed in free speech and because he wanted to challenge a man who was in many ways his polar opposite, William Jennings Bryan. ibid.
Bryan believed that the Christian gospel had the power to transform society. ibid.
It was obvious, wrote H L Menken, that the jury would be unanimously hot for Genesis. ibid.
Monkey songs, monkey souvenirs, monkey jokes – H L Mencken called it Monkey Town. ibid.
Bryan had compiled a long list of the dangers he saw in Darwin’s theory. ibid.
Darrow’s scientists would not be allowed to testify. ibid.
Against everyone’s advice Bryan took the witness stand. ibid.