TWO FINGERS TO CANNABIS JURIES

One of the glories of the jury system, and one of its great virtues, is that
every now and again a jury comes up with a "not guilty" verdict when the
evidence and the law point to guilty. It's a "perverse" verdict, to use the
legal jargon, but perverse in the most honourable way possible. The jury is
saying "We do not think this prosecution should have been brought. Never
mind what the law says, we think this case is wrong and oppressive,
and we mark our disapproval by acquitting the defendant".

Juries have done this through the ages, from the acquittal of William Penn
in 1670 (for which the judge sent the jurors to prison) to more recent
examples such as Clive Ponting and the two men, Randle and Pottle, who
helped the spy George Blake escape. Most recently a number of juries have
acquitted people brought to court for possessing and sometimes cultivating
cannabis when the accused, a sufferer from multiple sclerosis, claims that
he only smoked the drug to alleviate his pain and distress.

That is not a defence to the charge (except by unrealistically stretching
the defence of necessity); but it has allowed juries to demonstrate their
displeasure with the prosecution. The government has now made it clear that
it does not intend to relax the law to exempt such sufferers. So we might
have expected that juries would continue to show their feelings by more
acquittals.

But hang on. These cannabis offences are "either-way" crimes, from which
Jack Straw is trying to remove the accused's right to trial by jury. If he
gets his way, not only would defendants be denied their choice; juries would
lose their centuries-old right to put two fingers up to government. A jury,
the great Lord Devlin wrote, is "an insurance that the criminal law will
conform to the ordinary man's idea of what is fair and just. If it does not,
the jury will not be a party to its enforcement." Except when Jack Straw
says otherwise.