You will probably have noticed that television is increasingly full of reality game shows desperately attempting to emulate The Traitors. Destination X, Genius Game and The Fortune Hotel are joined next week by Channel 4’s The Inheritance (with Liz Hurley in the Claudia Winkleman role!). The series that unwittingly captures the essence of The Traitors is not a brazen copycat, however, but a serious-minded experiment designed to test the efficacy of trial by jury.
The idea behind The Jury: Murder Trial is that 12 “ordinary people” (or at least the sort of ordinary people who want to appear on TV) watch a re-staged version of a genuine murder trial. Actors use actual trial transcripts that have been edited down, but will these mock jurors reach the same verdict as the real jury did? Or, as narrator Greg Wise somewhat sweepingly asks: “Can we trust our justice system?”
If the result of the Bafta-winning first series is anything to go by, then the answer is “no, not wholly”. That first series featured two separate juries watching the identical re-staged trial while being unaware of each other’s presence. Worryingly, the two groups reached opposing verdicts. In fact, some criminologists have estimated that at least a quarter of all jury trials deliver the wrong result.
Prosecuting barrister Ms Bakersfield (Photo: Channel 4/Screendog)This time the programme-makers have decided to scrap the idea of two juries, with the new series recreating the real-life murder trial of a young mother who stabbed her boyfriend in the chest with a kitchen knife. The 23-year-old Sophie (a pseudonym) claims she was acting in self-defence as the victim, Ryan (also not his real name), was strangling her. Sophie’s trial is recreated in a disused Liverpool courtroom, and 12 people from the local area must decide whether she is telling the truth.
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Having just one jury means we can focus more clearly on the individual members. Each brings their lived experience to the case, and it’s fascinating to see how flexible or entrenched they are with their initial prejudices. Aimée, for example, is a support worker for victims of domestic abuse, and she naturally gravitates towards the accused. “It’s important for me to defend Sophie,” she openly states.
Tommy, a lifelong union rep, is broadly in agreement, saying that he has always supported the underdog, whereas retired chef David believes that the justice system has gone soft. “I don’t take any s**t,” as he puts it. And just as in The Traitors, the jurors break into small groups for side discussions. However, real juries are instructed to discuss the case only when they are all together.
There is only one jury this series (Photo: Channel 4/Screendog)But if realism is being sacrificed for entertainment, it’s also being distorted for enlightenment. Juries’ discussions in real trials are top secret and after the trial they are forbidden to talk about what happened in the deliberation room – even with family members. It’s therefore instructive to discover how much they are swayed by their personal experiences, beliefs and prejudices and how much (as they ideally should be) by the evidence presented to them.
With the Government considering curbing jury trials to reduce the backlog of more than 70,000 Crown court cases, the perception provided by this TV experiment is arguably of real-world consequence if it dents confidence in the centuries-old system. But then many of us will have had our faith in the infallibility of juries dented by The Traitors; the contestants’ groupthink repeatedly leads them to a wrong decision over whether a fellow player is a traitor or faithful.
As for the knife-wielding Sophie, the jury is still out. For another three episodes anyway.
‘The Jury: Murder Trial’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on Channel 4
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