It’s a premise so simple and so brilliant that you wonder how on earth it hasn’t been done before. Rerun a trial – verbatim, from the records, using actors – in front of another jury, film their usually secret deliberations and see if they come up with the same verdict as the real jury did. That is the premise of Channel 4’s The Jury: Murder Trial, with the added twist that they have not one but two juries attending the same trial, unbeknownst to each other.
It is absolutely terrifying. You know how they say you should never see how a sausage is made? Well, my friends, better a thousand sausages than any of the workings of this foundational piece of the criminal justice system – the best method of dispensing fairness we have been able to invent, and upon which the fates of uncountable millions of accused, their accusers and silent victims have depended.
