VERDICT WATCH UK - Constance Marten & Mark Gordon charged, Newborn (found deceased), Bolton Greater Manchester, 5 Jan 2023 #8

[bobbymkii]

I'm not sure that's right. There are no cases listed for Court 5 today at the Old Bailey. It probably means that the case is adjourned until 9am on the 30th.

It doesn't appear on TLP until proceedings are underway.

It is listed to be heard today on courtserve though:

Court 5 - sitting at 10:00 am

THE RECORDER OF LONDON​

For Application

U20230259

CJPA 01/2023

SITTING AT 10:00 am

Trial (Part Heard)

T20237104	GORDON Mark A	01MP1072723	SUSWM	CPS
	MARTEN Constance	01MP1072723

DTA, Order made under Contempt of Court Act 1981

 

[Maryanna]

Well, at least we now know that they've reached at least one verdict.

I wouldn't bank on it. TheLawPages said "verdict to be taken". Whatever that meant, it meant the verdict hadn't been taken yet. But we can assume somebody said it would be taken. That somebody may have been the Question Asker after deciding to self-issue a majority direction. ("Tell the judge to come back to court, would you, bailiff. We've decided 9-2 is the best we can achieve. My phone says 9-2 is allowed.")

 

[Maryanna]

It doesn't appear on TLP until proceedings are underway.

It is listed to be heard today on courtserve though:

Court 5 - sitting at 10:00 am

THE RECORDER OF LONDON​

For Application

U20230259

CJPA 01/2023

SITTING AT 10:00 am

Trial (Part Heard)

T20237104	GORDON Mark A	01MP1072723	SUSWM	CPS
	MARTEN Constance	01MP1072723

DTA, Order made under Contempt of Court Act 1981

This is getting ridiculous. I am trying to acclimatise to the idea that we don't have a clue what's going on, but there will come a time when on each of the 10 charges the MSM will either report that there has been a verdict (and tell us what it is) or say that the judge has declared a mistrial.

I can't stay on the edge of my seat any more. It's uncomfortable.

I send positive vibes to all 11 jury members: pay attention to what the judge told you about the law, and also to what your fellow jurors say about possible views of the facts, and vote in accordance with your conscience, without prejudice, and having properly and fairly considered all the evidence presented in court. No-one asks more of you than that. Hopefully take a rest after the trial - you deserve it.

 

[Maryanna]

Basically, you wouldn't want to be on a jury with me. I would drag the trial out 10x longer than planned because of all my questions. I'm just a regular person, Uni educated and curious.

This trial has gone far beyond sensible people not being afraid to ask questions when they aren't clear about something. Everything that goes on in court when the jurors are present in the room is supposed to be for the jurors' benefit. It's to help them determine whether or not they can be sure that the defendant is guilty as charged. If a witness or barrister starts coming out with stuff that it's not reasonable to expect a person chosen at random from the electoral roll to understand, the judge can and does intervene. This is why no case I've ever heard of has had such a sustained rapid fire of questions totalling nearly 200 from the jury box.

 

[bbsaz]

So what are you saying, the judge hasn't done a good enough job providing clarity or the jury are asking unhelpful questions? I'm lost on your argument tbh

I could see 12 people asking 200 questions over a 3month trial. Yes it's alot, but I don't think it requires as much criticism as you are giving it

 

[QB2022]

I think the problem with this case will stem down to the fact that their actions were neglectful and hideous parenting actions but have they met the threshold for the charges and that must be exceedingly difficult to work out

 

[Parker Knoll]

It seems a lot (200) when written down but it’s over a 3 month trial, let’s do the maths for completion !
All fair let’s say 17 questions each over 3 months, only 5.6 questions per month per juror, a little over 1 per average week. Let’s not get bogged down with the questions.
Just because this particular journalist has reported this figure doesn’t mean it’s not happened before on a long running trial, it’s just not been reported.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

Am I misunderstand but surely if the jury is not in sitting but the court is on the case, there must be court filings and admin paperwork on the case to do? In the past, IMO that has related to changes of representation and similar types of scenario that don't involve the jury.

 

[Maryanna]

Is Holly Evans the only source for the instruction to the jury to resume its deliberations on 30 May, or has this now been corroborated?

 

[Maryanna]

It seems a lot (200) when written down but it’s over a 3 month trial, let’s do the maths for completion !
All fair let’s say 17 questions each over 3 months, only 5.6 questions per month per juror, a little over 1 per average week. Let’s not get bogged down with the questions.
Just because this particular journalist has reported this figure doesn’t mean it’s not happened before on a long running trial, it’s just not been reported.

There is unlikely to be a reporting bias, given that there are reports of tens of thousands of trials on the record, and not a single one AFAIAA has ever mentioned there being more than 10 jury questions.

Let's do the maths indeed. Your denominator is a poor choice. The questions have been put to witnesses. The denominator should be the combined length of time for which witnesses have been in the box. My guess of 20 minutes implies 20 minutes * 200 = 4000 minutes ≃ 67 hours, which sounds reasonable. If it was 100 hours of testimony that would be 50% more, giving one question every 30 minutes rather than 20 minutes.

For a benchmark: 10 weeks each of 4 days, each with 4 hours of witness evidence would be 160 hours of witness evidence (giving 1 question per 48 minutes). The real figure for combined witness time during this trial was surely much lower than 160 hours. Someone can go through the reports, but I doubt it went past 100 hours.

As for questions per juror, yes that's a statistic, but I can't see that it's relevant given that there are always roughly the same number of jurors, and given further that the distribution of questions is extremely unlikely to be anything close to flat.

Very probably more than one juror asked questions, but my working hypothesis is that one of them is the instigator (this is extremely rare behaviour) who may have set one or more others off, probably at a slower rate (that's what sounds social-psychologically likely).

I trust we can all share the hope that question asking has not messed up the working of the wheels of justice in this case, and that no juror is unduly influenced by what they may feel is irritating, time-wasting, or narcissistic behaviour by any other juror who, they may feel, has an unusual set of beliefs or personality.

 

[Parker Knoll]

Mary … i am not getting further involved with your analysis and statistics as the top and bottom of it is that we simply do not know !
It goes without saying that we all put our trust in the jury system and that justice is served in its entirety and a sound verdict is announced whenever that may be.
I have been around enough jury trials over the years in a professional capacity to know one thing and that is that juries are never predictable … ever.
And I edit to add I surmised with a very simplistic tally on the numbers. It was simply to avoid a wall of text.

 

[bbsaz]

So they have lost another juror. Down to 10.

The Daily Mail podcast latest edition announced it.

 

[Kye Zeeb]

So they have lost another juror. Down to 10.

The Daily Mail podcast latest edition announced it.

Oh dear. Not great news. So that's 9-1 for a majority verdict if required.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

So they have lost another juror. Down to 10.

The Daily Mail podcast latest edition announced it.

Did they say on what grounds the juror is 'lost'?

 

[Alyce]

Did they say on what grounds the juror is 'lost'?

No reason given

 

[QB2022]

Timing for half term, so I wonder if they hit their wall for childcare or similar.

The judge must be frustrated by this point!

 

[rightsaidfred]

It could even be someone who is self employed and on the brink of financial ruin - especially if they work in an industry where summer is high season. Tourism, outdoor events, agriculture, etc etc.

They would have been told in January that the trial was going to last until March(?), which might have been manageable. Now the trial has massively overrun, the warmer weather is here, and their livelihood will permanently collapse if they carry on.

 

[Maryanna]

Oh dear. Not great news. So that's 9-1 for a majority verdict if required.

Two dissenters can be allowed only among 12, so the move from 11 to 10 isn't great. (That's unless assumptions are made about existing splits and how the lost juror was voting.) Numbers of dissenters required to force a mistrial once a judge has issued a majority direction are as follows:

12: 3
11 and 10: 2
9: 1.

I am abiding by the site rule of not posting opinions about what results are likely.

Is it known at what time of day the juror was lost, and in particular whether it was before or after someone clicked to put "Verdict to be Taken" at TheLawPages.com?

 

[Lucy6226]

I don't feel it's that important to know why or what time the jury member was lost. The fact is there are now 10 jury members. That's all we need to know.

Fingers crossed they can get to a verdict next week once they are back in

 

[kittythehare]

I cannot believe there is no verdict yet..