Law Weblog

Juries – doubts as to whether some CPS lawyers and police officers should sit

R v Abdroikof [2007] HL

Where either a police officer or a solicitor employed by the Crown Prosecution Service had sat on a jury the question to be asked was whether, on the particular facts of each of the cases, a fair-minded and informed observer would conclude that there was a real possibility that the jury that included a serving police officer or a lawyer who worked for the Crown Prosecution Service was biased, having regard to the fact that Parliament had declared that in England and Wales, by enacting the Criminal Justice Act 2003, that such persons were eligible to sit on juries, envisaging that any objection to their sitting would be the subject of judicial decision. Nevertheless, it had to be doubted whether Parliament had contemplated that employed Crown prosecutors would sit as jurors in prosecutions brought by their own authority.