Far from being the great bastion of British justice, I found myself ensconsed with a charming elderly lady doing her knitting, who said she hadn't understood a word of the case, but reckoned that anyone with bushy eyebrows is likely to be guilty. Then there was the one who fully supported any crime against HMRC, another who said he knew the defendant was guilty because he's read about it in the Daily Mail long before the case started, and the jury foreman who never stopped complaining that - as a self-employed businessman - he was losing a fortune every day, and would we please agree on something, and he'd go along with whatever it was.
To be frank, it was a shambles - Gilbert and Sullivan would have had a field day. At one point I complained to the court usher, who simply said "don't worry, it's always like this - just try to decide on something, or we'll have to put you up in a hotel for the weekend, and there's not the budget to do it".
British justice? Lottery, more like.
