Nine Weeks with Twelve Strangers

I wasn’t yet fully qualified. As such, I wasn’t really involved in the case. There was no need for me to address either the jury or the judge, and certainly no need for me to ask questions. My role was simply to take a note of everything that happened during this nine-week trial.

And it was the ninth week – the final stretch in what had been a long and harrowing historical sexual abuse case. There were multiple counts involving a psychiatrist accused of abusing the trust placed in him by vulnerable patients decades earlier. Much of my week therefore had been spent waiting while the jury were deliberating. The deliberations stretched on for days. I took the opportunity to read a Ken Follet novel. 

When we were finally called into court, the atmosphere was tense. The verdicts themselves were mixed: some guilty, some not guilty, and some counts where there was no clear majority (what is known as a ‘hung jury’). None of the verdicts were unanimous. All were majority verdicts, meaning at least two jurors had disagreed on each occasion. This, in of itself, was evidence of a jury who had found it difficult to agree on anything. 

I looked across at the twelve men and women who had spent nine weeks listening to profoundly upsetting evidence while largely cut off from the outside world, unable to tell their friends or family about the case because this would put them in breach of their oath. Most people offload at the end of a stressful day – about the colleague who steals their milk, or about the incompetent boss with unreasonable expectations – the same irritations and gripes can easily arise between members of a jury, who are nothing more than a random assortment of strangers thrown together and asked to decide the fate of another human being. 

Yet that pressure cooker has very few release valves. Jurors cannot go home at the end of the day and decompress over dinner in the way most of us do. They cannot complain about the personalities they are trapped with. This is for good reason; to ensure there is no outside influence from people who have not heard all of the evidence. 

There was one woman sat at the end of the front row. As the foreman was giving the verdicts, I saw that she was crying silently. I wondered whether this was because she felt that they had convicted an elderly gentleman on unreliable evidence, or whether she thought that, in returning some ‘not guilty’ verdicts, they were failing the victims who had so bravely given evidence about some of the most traumatic experiences of their lives.

She wasn’t the only indicator of there being ill feeling between the jurors. Some of them were casting accusatory glances at one another. No one seemed to want to be in another’s space. They were pulling in their arms, avoiding any physical contact, however incidental. I couldn’t help but wonder what had gone on in that deliberation room. Whatever had happened in there might have been every bit as dramatic as the trial itself.

That experience stayed with me for years and eventually became the foundation for One of Your Number, my second novel.

The book follows Leonie, a juror trapped inside a court building with the rest of the jury when the city becomes the target of a chemical attack. Even before the attack, the deliberations are tense. Leonie is convinced the defendant, a nurse accused of murdering his patients, is guilty, but she finds herself battling what she sees as prejudice, wilful blindness, and the strange dynamics that emerge in group situations.

Once the jurors are told that they are unable to leave the building for their own safety, those tensions intensify. The accused has escaped his cell and is on the loose. He's playing twisted games with the group. And Leonie is his next target.

Courtroom dramas often focus on what happens in the courtroom: the cross-examinations, the speeches, the performances of the lawyers. My novel looks at what happens once twelve strangers disappear behind a closed door and are left alone with each other, their consciences, and the responsibility of deciding another person’s fate.

One of Your Number by L.J. Shepherd (Pushkin Press) Out Now

Justice is blind. But someone's watching. Leonie is one of twelve jurors chosen to decide the fate of a nurse accused of murder. But just as deliberations begin, an usher bursts in with news that changes everything. Britain is under chemical attack, and the courthouse is locked down. Ordered to stay put for their own safety, the jurors soon realise that the real danger lies inside the building. The accused has escaped his cell and is on the loose. He's playing twisted games with the group. And Leonie is his next target. Because he knows something about her. She isn't on the jury by chance- and her reasons for being there are far more personal than anyone suspects. As trust fractures, how far will Leonie go to tip the scales of justice in her favour?

More information about LJ Shepherd and her novels can be found on her website.

You can also find her on Instagram @ljshepherdauthor and on FaceBook.

One of Your Number is available to buy here.