Poor hearing, poor vision or physical disability - anyone want to have a word with m'lord?
Donna Tipping, 10 August 2010News that the upper age limit for jurors may be kept at 70 misses the point about ageing.
“Proceedings might be hampered by poor hearing, poor vision or physical disability,” a report from the Council of Circuit Judges explains. (One can imagine the council’s spokesperson slowing down and RAISING THEIR VOICE while reading out this bit.) The report concludes: “There is no compelling case to alter the status quo''.
Really?
In February, a two year study for the Ministry of Justice revealed that two thirds of jurors do not fully understand judge’s legal directions. The report author’s concluded that “jurors want and need better information to perform this crucial role”.
Jury problems have been behind some of the most high profile court collapses in recent years. Like any randomly selected group of 18-70 year olds, jurors may be deaf, experience stress, be on low incomes or fall pregnant.
However, as with sense loss, poverty or certain health conditions, people shouldn’t be prevented from contributing solely on the basis of their age. There are good grounds for exclusion from jury service and while there may be grounds for extending them on a case by case basis, it is surely throwing the baby out with the bathwater to impose a blanket moratorium on the grounds of an arbitrary chronological age limit and associated stereotypical assumptions.
As the then Chairman of RNID James Strachan said during the debate about deaf jurors: “I find it ridiculous that I can be a chief executive, sit on a government task force and run a multi-million pound business, but am unable to serve on a jury.”
To that, we might add that it is ridiculous that a person aged 71, who has lived through the second world war, worked for 40 years and raised two generations of children, cannot use their experience as a juror.
It’s a real shame that the judiciary has taken the retrograde step of endorsing the 70 year age limit.
In 2009, the default retirement age (DRA) of 65 was effectively ended by Mr Justice Blake’s ruling on a test case brought by the charities formerly known as Age Concern and Help the Aged, together with the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
And judges themselves are hardly fresh-faced graduates. In 2002, the average age of a senior law court judge was 58, and the average age of the 12 members of the Supreme Court is currently 68.75.
Given what we do at Forster AGEncy, we’re bound to see the problem in terms of communications solutions. We’d love to do a bit of stakeholder engagement work with the Council of Circuit Judges’ members, to come up with more imaginative responses to the jury problem than ill-informed stereotyping, and challenge their ideas about people aged over 70. But perhaps in a few years’ time, when our septuagenarian judges find ways to overcome any “poor hearing, poor vision or physical disability” they may be starting to experience, we might see the Council of Circuit Judges revise their learned opinion without our help.