The Juries Act 974 is the governing legislation that controls the jury system by clarifying who qualifies for jury service and establishing the right to challenge jurors. The Crown court recruits jurors to hear a case. Their names are selected from the electoral register which is randomly done by the computer. Those who are summoned should attend jury service and they must notify the court instantly if they cant appear. If they dont return the jury summons form or arrive for their service, then this can result in a fine of £,000. Those who have agreed to serve on the jury must attend for ten days and if the case lasts longer than two weeks, jurors would be expected to stay beyond their service. You will be eternally disqualified from jury service if youve been sentenced to life imprisonment and you wont be permitted to serve as a juror for ten years if, in the last ten years, you have served a prison sentence. Youre also disqualified if youre currently
on bail. If you fail to tell the court youre a prohibited person, you could be fined up to £5000. In addition, you can be disqualified if you are mentally disordered. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is also capable of restricting the role of the jury by imposing more limitations on the eligibility criteria.
Jurors should be vetted, meaning they should be checked for sustainability. There are two forms of vetting. A routine police check is where a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is done on each juror to make sure theyve not been disqualified. This can be seen in R v Mason [980]. A more thorough, wider background check is essential to give further protection against the chance of bias. This can be referred to as an Authorised Jury Check. The Attorney General said that vetting of juries should only take place in exceptional cases which involve national security and terrorist cases and it can only be done with the permission of the Attorney General.