Lay People: English Legal System Quiz

Answer: 18 to 70

Jurors must be between the ages of 18 and 70 upon appointment.

Answer: No legal qualifications

The term 'lay' means 'not legally qualified' and a magistrate is a lay person.

Every magistrate has to sit for at least 12 half days a year. As well as this, the magistrates must be available for all of the training that they will receive before going into court.

In all the larger English cities there are also paid magistrates, called 'stipendiary magistrates'. These are all qualified lawyers (solicitors). If there is a large number of cases or if a backlog has developed, junior county court judges (deputy recorders) may also act as magistrates.

Answer: 18 to 70

Magistrates must be between the ages of 18 and 65 upon initial appointment, but do not have to retire until 70.

Answer: They are randomly selected from the electoral register

So that the courts can't be accused of bias when choosing jurors, a panel of jurors is randomly selected from the electoral register, and the jury is chosen at random from the panel. At this point, both the defence and the prosecution may object to individual jurors. If necessary, a juror may be replaced by another member of the panel, again chosen at random.

Answer: 12

Twelve jurors are used in the Crown Court and five jurors are used in the Coroner's Court.

Often as many as thirty jurors that are summoned to court for the commencement of most trials. They form the 'panel', from which the actual jury is selected. The prosecution and defence can eliminate jury members until they get the number of jurors that they need.

Answer: 3

Lay magistrates sit as a panel of three, of whom one acts as the Chairman of the Bench. They can call on the Clerk to the Court, who is a qualified lawyer, for advice. Stipendiary (that is, paid and legally qualified) magistates sit alone.

Answer: 6 months

A magistrate can send a defendant to jail for a maximum of six months for a single offence, and twelve months for two or more offences. If a Magistrates' Court decides that a higher sentence is appropriate it can send an offender to the Crown Court for sentencing.

Answer: 2 hours

A jury can only come to a majority decision if they have been deliberating for more than 2 hours. The majority decisions are 11:1 or 10:2. The majority vote can't go below 10:2. Moreover, juries must try to reach a unanimous verdict before having recourse to a majority verdict.

Answer: Criminal Justice Act 2003

Following the Criminal Justices Act 2003, there are no longer people who are excused and disqualified from jury duty. This means that even police officers, medical practitioners and students can now be jurors. The only people who can't be jurors are mentally ill people (current or previous sufferers) and people on bail.

Answer: Judge

The Clerk to the Court is legally qualified for many things, but all requests are handed through them to the presiding judge.