Channel 4’s new reality TV show, The Jury: Murder Trial, is getting a lot of attention. I hope I am not alone in being really uneasy about its premise that juries are dodgy.

This is a show: the ‘jurors’ have been carefully chosen by the programme-makers to provide entertainment.

They do not reflect the cross-section that comes from a genuinely random selection process.

Juries are not dodgy: twelve ordinary people, selected at random, are a far more reliable source of justice than a judge, probably privately educated, white and middle-aged or elderly.

A judge is qualified to advise on the law but our legal system correctly leaves weighing the evidence and deciding on a verdict to the jury.

It is no surprise that this show with its rigged jury, has emerged now, given that for the last two years politicians have been fuming about juries ‘letting off’ protesters.

They may be all for lock-em-up, but the rest of us ‘ordinary people’ are not.

Yours sincerely

David Lambert

Stroud