The Role of Case Management in Navigating Jury Service

Recently, when I was called to attend jury service, I felt privileged but also terrified. The responsibility to ensure that, for my part in this process, the criminal system could be reassured that the eventual sentence had been informed objectively from information delivered within the courtroom and established, as far as possible, from evidence observed, discussed, and reviewed by a randomly selected group of 12 strangers. This felt onerous but also one of the most important roles I have been requested to undertake.

How would I prepare for such a monumental task? Naturally, I drew from the experience and insights of my daily role as an Occupational Therapist and Case Manager.

• Therapeutic relationship: Understanding the dynamics of the relationship and how to maintain therapeutic boundaries.
• Applying objective, professional judgment: The importance of keeping external aspects that adversely affect this relationship to a minimum.
• Using professional experience, skills, and competencies: Tuning into timelines and detailed information while listening over prolonged periods to subject matter that is emotive, processing information from various sources, and cross-referencing factual details, organising complex information, timelines, and facts, without allowing emotional biases to impede.

• Power: The relationship is often one of unequal power and access to privileged information. Awareness of the appropriate use of power within the therapeutic relationship to protect the service user’s vulnerability.
• Trust: This is critical to establish with the service user but also with those you are working alongside. Communicating clearly and openly to avoid misunderstanding.
• Respect: Respect for the dignity and humanity of the service user.
• Empathy: This is a potent process, not based on mechanistic skills, but deeply human processes.

Reflecting on parts of the case management definition, our role expects that we assess, plan, and evaluate in a collaborative way, which fit well with the framework and “rules” stipulated for the role the jury were to play.

Case management helped prepare me for the expectation of the role, the formality of the surroundings, and to explore an approach that would facilitate the group considering the specifics and factual evidence against which each indictment needed to be considered, informed in this instance by the defendant, prosecution, and witness evidence.

The juror group dynamic was complex and mobile despite the time we spent together. However, by the time of deliberation, there was a gradual unity that evolved. Forming a relationship with 11 other people from unknown backgrounds, respecting that each of us within the jury was thrown together with our own footprint of beliefs, informed by professional and personal experiences, evolved complex and intense dynamics. My reflection was that it was respectful and supportive.

Over the next five days and into the final deliberation, this rich tapestry of personalities, skills, and experience gradually formed a close group, cognizant of the significance of the role our group was to play in the lives of the individuals within our trial. The group naturally evolved roles to review each indictment in turn, organise and review factual material against each indictment, and consider timelines, facts, and gaps through repetitive viewing of evidence. There was a system of voting and ensuring that each member of the group was adequately heard. The process of decision-making was repetitive, stressful, occasionally exposing, cognitively tiring, and sometimes lonely. We took our time as a group to reach unanimous decisions with care not to bring pressure on those members of the group who were unsure.

As a case manager, I have experienced all of these emotions at times during the pathway of advocating the optimum rehabilitation environment for clients. I reflect gratefully on my professional background, which provided me with a platform of skills and standards that I could weave into this experience.