This morning the jury in the case of Her Majesties Advocate vs Thomas Sheridan retired to further consider their verdict. The jury have still not reached a conclusion and have now (at 1pm) been sent for lunch.
In the meantime, posts for all yesterday's proceedings are now available below.
We have been asked a number of questions about what jury has to decide and possible verdicts. To convict Mr Sheridan of perjury a majority vote of guilty is required (not a unanimous vote as in may other legal jurisdictions. The jury originally contained fifteen people, the norm for Scottish Criminal cases. One juror has now been discharged but this does not change the requirement for a conviction from eight, a vote of seven vs seven is an acquittal. The further complication, unique to Scottish law, is that the jury have three, not two verdicts to choose from, "Guilty," "Not Guilty" and "Not Proven". This is not the place for a full discussion of the Not Proven verdict, suffice to say it leads to acquittal. Therefore a jury vote of, for example of seven guilty, three not guilty and four not proven would lead to Mr Sheridan being cleared of the charges.
We are at court and will be posting any verdict reached or other developments as soon as we can.
As mentioned below comments will remain disabled until the conclusion of the case.
8 comments:
guilty with deletions - what a surprise!
Thanks James for all you hard work. Superb coverage and a gargantuan effort. Much appreciated.
Echoing what has been said, a truly remarkable record of a complex set of proceedings.
Well done James
Signing off
(The original) NUJ Watcher..
so sorry to hear verdict
hoped it would be either not guilty or not proven
is there any way back from this?
can it be appealed?
my best wishes to tommy and gail
wilma jess
Thank you James and Whatsy for delivering very professional, first class reporting on this historical trial.
It can only be appealed if there were issues with the legal proceedings, you can't appeal a case just because you disagree with the verdict. Not to say you can't try, but it won't come to anything.
Anon 2:23 You can appeal against a verdict by a sheriff by stated case i.e. on the "findings in fact" etc. but you are correct about a jury; a jury do not have to justify their reasoning and decision making.
Anonymous said...December 24, 2010 12:58 PM
Anon 2:23 You can appeal against a verdict by a sheriff by stated case i.e. on the "findings in fact" etc. but you are correct about a jury; a jury do not have to justify their reasoning and decision making.
December 24, 2010 12:58 PM
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Anon 12.58 That was a rather obtuse way to deal with the question Anon 2.23 posed. (Choose a name why don't ya - try Tiny Tim and Bo Cratchit so we can discern who we are talking to)
Surely the simple answer is that yes an appeal can be raised on a number of grounds.
Whether it will be or not is another matter.
A jury being asked to justify their deliberations would not happen as you say - that does not mean there are not various grounds of appeal. verdicts get overturned often.
Let's see.
Cheers,
Peter
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