Avoiding jury duty can be tricky for most people, but for one senior judge it took several attempts for his excuse from civic duty to be accepted – he was the judge in the case.
Keith Cutler surprised a courtroom by revealing he had received an official summons to sit as a juror in a case over which he was expected to preside.
Cutler, the resident judge of Winchester and Salisbury since 2009, told a jury he had to make several attempts before he managed to excuse himself from his public duty.
The senior circuit judge, speaking at Salisbury crown court, disclosed the extraordinary coincidence of being summoned to sit as a juror in a hearing he would be conducting.
“I was selected for jury service here at Salisbury crown court for a trial starting 23 April,” he said.
“I told the jury central summoning bureau that I thought I would be inappropriate, seeing I happened to be the judge and knew all the papers.
“They wrote back to me. They picked up on the fact I was the judge but said ‘Your appeal for refusal has been rejected but you could apply to the resident judge’, but I told them, ‘I am the resident judge’. I had to phone them up and they [eventually] realised it was a mistake.”
Cutler served as coroner for the inquest into the death of Mark Duggan, who was shot by police in August 2011, leading to riots across London. He has also been president of the council of circuit judges.
He said he would have been happy to have served as a juror if it had been appropriate. “I would have liked to have done the jury service to see what it was like and whether I would have liked the judge,” Cutler said.
To accuse someone of being “judge and jury in his own court” is normally an insult. Cutler appears to have deftly sidestepped that duplication. Only diplomats are exempt from jury duty in England and Wales. Since 2004, judges, lawyers, politicians, vicars, bishops, doctors and peers have been eligible to sit on a jury.
A guide to jury summons issued by the Ministry of Justice states: “The normal expectation is that everyone summoned for jury service will serve at the time for which they are summoned. However, it is recognised that there will be occasions when it is not reasonable for a person to serve at the time for which they are summoned.”