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POLICE OFFICERS ON JURIES

ANDY CAPP, the cartoon character in the Daily Mirror, was once shown as the referee in a football match. Not only was his lower lip adorned, as always, by the ever-present half-smoked cigarette: his referee’s shirt was ornamented by a big rosette, as worn by team supporters. To a player, who had noticed it, he was saying “Sumthin’ botherin’ yer?” Translated into legal terms, this was Hanif and Khan v UK [2012] E.C.H.R. 2247. On the second day of the defendants’ trial in 2007 for conspiracy to supply heroin, a juror warned the judge that he was a police officer and knew one of the police witnesses, whose evidence was crucial against Hanif. The judge, astonishingly, ruled this did not matter and in due course his fellow jurors made him foreman. The jury, readers will be unsurprised to learn, convicted – and long prison sentences were imposed. The defendants appealed, arguing that the presence of the police officer meant that the tribunal which had tried them was not independent. In 2008 a strong Court of Appeal, containing both the Lord Chief Justice and the President of the Queen’s Bench Division, upheld their convictions. Three years later the Fourth Division of the Strasbourg Court took a very different view. In its judgment, given on 20 December 2011, it said: