ARMCHAIR JURIES?

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 169, 12 April 1930, Page 31

ARMCHAIR JURIES?

Armchairs for Jurors are suggested by Sir W. F. K. Taylor, an English judge (says the “Sunday Dispatch”). In a ease before him yesterday he Invited the jury to leave the box before the court had agreed to dispense with their services. “I don’t like .to see the'Jury sitting in that uncomfortable place longer than Is necessary,” he said. “It is a horrible place,” Ju an interview afterwards Sir William advocated the provision of armchairs for Jurors and said: "It is not right that the Jury should be packed together on bard seats in a narrow box . where they cannot sit in comfort. “Since women have become jurors rhe grievance is accentuated. It is bad enough to crowd men together, but when women also are crushed into the restricted space the thing becomes intolerable. "At the best of times the lot of Jurors is not. a happy one. They are taken from their business and with very little pay have to listen to cases in which they have no Interest. Sometimes they have to hang about for hours and are never called upon.”