Now showing 1 - 10 of 14
  • Publication
    Controlling Jury Composition in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
    (Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2009-12-02)
    Difficulties in securing convictions in nineteenth-century Ireland led the authorities to resort to various methods of ensuring that petty juries delivered guilty verdicts in cases where this was clearly warranted by the evidence. This article examines some of the ‘stratagems’ put forward by David Johnson and suggests a number of other practices which were used, arguing that many of these mechanisms centred around controlling the composition of trial juries. Examples included altering the property qualifications for jurors, the system of asking jurors to ‘stand aside’ and the use of fines to compel attendance. While some of these were the legitimate exercise of established procedures, it will be seen that the crown on occasion abused or overused its powers.
      808Scopus© Citations 8
  • Publication
    Irish Jurors: Passive Observers or Active Participants? Jurors in Civil and Criminal Trials
    (Taylor and Francis, 2014)
     What was the role played by jurors in civil and criminal trials from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century? This article establishes that during this period, juries in Ireland played a relatively active role. It examines individual reports of civil and criminal trials and considers the nature of juror participation during this period, establishing that jurors frequently questioned witnesses, berated counsel, interrupted judges, demanded better treatment and added their own observations to the proceedings. This article compares the nature and level of interaction from different categories of jury – civil and criminal, common and special. It asks why Irish jurors continued to be active participants until late in the nineteenth century, and how the bench and bar received their input. It also suggests that English jurors may have played a more active role during this period than previously thought. Finally, the article considers some possible reasons for the silencing of Irish jurors by the late nineteenth century.                         
    Scopus© Citations 1  375
  • Publication
    The Jury Speaks: Jury Riders in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
    (Oxford University Press, 2018-11-06) ;
    Jury riders are statements that accompany verdicts. This article examines the use and contents of jury riders in Ireland and England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It reveals the wide variety of contexts in which jurors appended statements to their verdicts and suggests a typology of jury riders in order to better understand the motivations behind such statements. It asks why jury riders survived into the twentieth century and considers the factors that led to riders’ ultimate decline.
      295Scopus© Citations 2
  • Publication
    Was Roger Casement's Trial a Legal Travesty?
    (Irish Independent, 2016-02-18)
    After Roger Casement's capture on Banna Strand he was brought to London. During his interrogation on Easter Monday, news of the Rising filtered through, and by the end of the week, English public opinion of Casement had plummeted. He was presumed to have been the instigator of the Rising, although in reality he had come to Ireland to try to prevent it. While their first instinct had been to try him before a court-martial, the British government ultimately opted for the public spectacle of a full civil trial. Casement, however, would have preferred a court-martial like the other rebels.
      87
  • Publication
    Maamtrasna: The Trial of Myles Joyce in 1882
    (UCD, 2017-11-14)
    At Maamtrasna, County Galway, five members of the Joyce family were brutally killed in August 1882. The initial victims were John Joyce his mother, Margaret Joyce, his wife, Bridget Joyce, his daughter, Margaret Joyce (also known as Peggy). John’s son, Michael Joyce, died of his injuries the following day. The sole survivor of the attack was Patsy Joyce, John’s youngest son, aged around nine or ten years. Myles Joyce was convicted in November 1882 of murdering his cousin, Margaret Joyce. He was one of ten men arrested. Two of these men, Anthony Philbin and Thomas Casey, later testified against the others. Five pleaded guilty and received prison sentences; these were Michael Casey, Martin Joyce (Myles’s brother), Patrick Joyce (another brother of Myles), Tom Joyce (Patrick’s son) and John Casey. Three men, Myles Joyce, Patrick Joyce and Patrick Casey were tried, convicted and hanged. Given the number of victims, accused persons and accusers, and the remote, tight-knit nature of the area, it is unsurprising that there were various relationships between the main protagonists. They were neighbours, cousins, brothers, fathers and sons, many of whom shared the same names and surnames. Myles Joyce’s death sentence was executed at Galway Gaol in December 1882. Right up until the point of death Myles protested his innocence, and is now widely accepted as having been innocent of the offence. Two other men who were hanged alongside Myles, (Patrick Joyce and Patrick Casey), claimed responsibility for the murders before they were executed. Both emphasised Myles Joyce’s innocence. The question for this paper is whether the circumstances Myles’s conviction were inconsistent with the legal standards of the period.
      397
  • Publication
    The Trials of Peter Barrett: A Microhistory of Dysfunction in the Irish Criminal Justice System
    (UCD, 2018-03-09)
    In 1869 an assassination attempt was made on Captain Thomas Eyre Lambert, a prominent Galway landowner. Lambert was returning home from visiting his brother, Giles, who resided at neighbouring Moor Park. He spotted a man lurking beneath some lime trees near the entrance to his house, Castle Lambert. He was fired at a number of times, and was eventually felled by a shot to the forehead. He staggered to the door of his house, later stating: ‘[w]hen I reached the hall door I knocked violently, my butler opened the door and I fell into his arms.’ He soon sent for his brother. Given a description of the assailant, Giles hastened to the Athenry constabulary station, a mile or two away, and relayed the information to acting constable John Griffith. Sub-constable Edward Hayden was quickly dispatched, in plain-clothes, to take the midnight train to Oranmore, ten miles away, to try to apprehend the suspect. He returned around 5 a.m. the following morning with Peter Barrett in custody. He had spotted Barrett sleeping in his train compartment, and he matched the description provided by Giles Lambert. On being asked a few questions by sub-constable Hayden, his answers were ‘both evasive and contradictory’, and he was arrested. Barrett appeared to match the description given by Lambert: ‘I described the assassin as a man of slight figure dressed in dark clothes sharp features with not much hair on his face darkish complexion’. Furthermore, Lambert said he told his brother that ‘if Peter Barrett was in the country he was the man.’ Lambert, as will be seen, had reason to suspect that Barrett might have had a motive for the assault. Barrett was committed for trial at the next assize in August. On the face of it, it had the appearance of a relatively straightforward case destined for a quick resolution. However, this was not to be. What ensued was three trials, a change of venue to Dublin, allegations of jury intimidation, extensive press coverage around the United Kingdom, enormous expense and, ultimately, an acquittal.
      491
  • Publication
    'A Typical Collection of Lower Middle-Class Londoners'
    (Wordwell, 2017-09)
    Roger Casement’s arrest, detention, trial and execution have been continually re-examined over the past century. There has been endless speculation over the use made of the so-called Black Diaries to discredit him and scupper his chances of having his sentence commuted. Another issue which has captured the imagination of scholars is whether or not he was convicted under a correct interpretation of the Treason Act 1351, or whether he was, as he claimed, ‘hanged by a comma.’ The adequacy of his legal representation and case management have also been questioned. This article, however, examines a previously ignored aspect of the Casement trial: the composition of the jury which tried and convicted him.
      213
  • Publication
    The Politics of Jury Trials in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
    (Taylor and Francis, 2015)
    This article considers aspects of lay participation in the Irish justice system, focusing on some political dimensions of the trial jury in the nineteenth century. It then identifies some broad themes common to systems of lay participation generally, and particularly nineteenth-century European systems. These include perceptions of legitimacy, State involvement and interference with jury trials, and issues around representativeness. The traditional lack of scholarship in the area of comparative criminal justice history has meant that many of the commonalities between different jury systems have been hitherto unexplored. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to a wider discussion of the various commonalities and differences in the development of lay participation in justice systems.
      754
  • Publication
    The Terror of Their Lives: Irish Jurors Experiences
    (Cambridge University Press, 2011-08)
    A commentator noted in 1881 that Irishmen regarded jury service as “the greatest burden that can be inflicted upon them … they would be delighted if trial by jury was suspended tomorrow.” He later added, “[o]f course an enormous outcry would be raised about it in the national press, and in public meetings; but jurors … would give anything in the world not to serve … because it is the terror of their lives.” Much has been written about the poor state of the nineteenth-century Irish jury system, and it is certainly true that for various social, economic and political reasons, in comparison with that in England, the Irish system appears to have operated in a way that fell somewhat short of ideal. This article seeks to provide an understanding of the realities facing the jurors themselves, and will examine their experiences of the justice system before, during, and after the trial.
      1513Scopus© Citations 5
  • Publication
    Land Valuations, Market Practices, Pregnancy, Insanity: There's a Jury for That
    (UCD, 2017-11-27)
    Contemporary legal practitioners and academics are familiar with the use of juries in criminal trials. To a lesser extent, the use of juries in civil actions, although a rarity in 21st century Ireland, is recognised as having been the norm in the past, and continues to be an essential part of the administration of justice in other common law systems, notably the United States. Juries also continue to be used at coroners’ inquests, delivering verdicts on the causes of death. What might be less widely appreciated, however, was that in the past, juries were used in a much wider range of situations, ranging from the determination of pregnancy or insanity, to the regulation of market practices and the conducting of land valuations. The term ‘jury’ in these scenarios is to be given a wide interpretation, generally meaning a panel of laypersons with no judicial or other specialised training. In this paper, I propose to explore some of these ways in which panels of laypersons were used in 18th and 19th century Ireland as an essential aspect of law, order and the regulation of society. Why were juries used in such diverse contexts? What were the advantages or disadvantages of doing so? Were there alternatives?
      437