The jury told not to look

One · What happened

Seven counts at Southwark and a jury sent home for the weekend

On Tuesday 13 October the jury was sworn in at Southwark Crown Court for the trial of Russell Brand, twelve jurors and one reserve, with Judge Joel Bennathan presiding. The Irish Times reported that the judge had warned them on the Monday to ignore past reporting about Brand. On the Tuesday he told them, “Don’t carry out any research.” He added, “Heaven knows what’s out there,” and then, “If you want to, you could go and have a look – but only once you have returned your verdicts.” The trial was expected to last about six weeks, and the paper said it could stretch to nine.

Six women bring the charges, over events between 1999 and 2009. Brand denies all of them. LBC reported on 30 October that the prosecutor, Riel Karmy-Jones KC, told the jury in the closing speech for the Crown that women as a group were “disposable; they didn’t matter to him.” The defence case, as LBC put it, is that every encounter was consensual, and Brand told the court, “Regrettably I’ve had a lot of consensual sex, which I see has caused harm.” Ian Winter KC was due to give the closing speech for the defence on Monday 2 November. Variety reported that midway through the trial the judge replaced one count of indecent assault with a count of attempted indecent assault. LBC reported that the jury must reach a unanimous verdict on each count.

Two · What it is doing

A rule of silence given to twelve people and not to you

A man opens the story on his phone at breakfast and, within two paragraphs, has taken a seat. One reader enjoys a fall he saw coming, and he scrolls to the comments for the laughter under the news. Another remembers the stage shows and the films from 2008, decides the women must be mistaken because the man once made him laugh, and reads the whole trial as a pile-on. Neither has heard the defence closing, the judge’s summing up or a minute of the jury room. Each holds a verdict already, reached faster than the jury could reach one.

Judge Bennathan’s order to the jurors rests on a plain observation about anyone who looks, that a man who reads the commentary before the evidence ends up hearing the evidence through the commentary. The court asks the twelve to wait until both closing speeches are made and then to decide each of seven counts on its own. The reader on his phone has been given no such order. The freedom to look is the whole of his temptation.

Whether the six women or the man in the dock will be believed is for the twelve to settle. A third reader opens the same story and goes quiet, because the words in the headline are not news to him, and for him the laughter of the first reader and the loyalty of the second arrive as a fresh injury. He sits in the same pew as both of them on Sunday. A story that sorts a congregation into the gloating and the wounded before the benediction has done damage to people who were meant to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).

Three · Where the ground is

Two witnesses and the Judge of all the earth

Moses gave Israel a rule for the court at the gate, written before any of them had met a verdict they disliked. “Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established,” he said (Deuteronomy 19:15). Where a witness was suspected of malice, “the judges shall inquire diligently” (Deuteronomy 19:18). The law kept an accuser from being brushed aside and the accused from being buried under a single voice.

Solomon wrote two proverbs for the man who reads the first story and stops. They are short. “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17). “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Proverbs 18:13). The second proverb describes the reader on his phone at breakfast as exactly as it describes a juror who made up his mind in the first week of the trial.

Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, which was already sorting its teachers into favorites, “Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness” (1 Corinthians 4:5). To the Romans he wrote about the reader who enjoys judging, “in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Romans 2:1). No court at Southwark reaches that far. The man who laughs and the man who defends are both addressed in the verse.

Mark records that Jesus stood before a council where “many bore false witness against him, but their testimony did not agree” (Mark 14:56). He was condemned all the same and died on the cross in the place of sinners, among them the man who gloats and the man who defends without listening. He rose bodily on the third day. Everyone who repents and believes is forgiven. Nothing in a verdict from London can add to that forgiveness or take it away.

Abraham asked, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Genesis 18:25). The question has an answer for the women who have waited years to be heard and for a man who sits under seven charges. The same Judge hears “the desire of the afflicted” (Psalm 10:17). A congregation that holds this keeps a place for the one who comes with an accusation and a place for the one accused. Its elders hear each before they say a word to anyone else.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Each of these can be done before the jury returns. None of them depends on what it says.

1. 01

   Write what the evidence would have to show, in both directions.

   Take a sheet of paper and head one column with what would have to be shown before you could say the charges are true, and the other with what would have to be shown before you could say they are not. Whoever fills only one column has learned which side he joined before the evidence did. Put the sheet in a drawer until the verdict is announced, then read it again that evening.

2. 02

   Pray for the twelve jurors and for the six women.

   Ask the LORD tonight to give the jurors a clear memory of what they have heard and the nerve to decide each count on its own. Ask him to keep the six women whatever the verdict is. Pray for Russell Brand by name as well, that he would face the Judge of all the earth honestly, and leave the outcome with the court.

3. 03

   Take the downfall off your phone.

   Delete the bookmark, the account or the group chat you open to watch a man’s name go down, or to defend it. If a friend raises the trial at the table, say once that you would rather wait for the verdict and ask about his week. Ten minutes with the phone in another room will show how often your thumb went to the case.

4. 04

   Ask your pastor how your church hears a complaint.

   Ask an elder what happens in your congregation when a member comes forward with an accusation against another member. Find out who hears the accuser, who hears the accused, and in what order, and whether Deuteronomy 19:15 and 1 Timothy 5:19 are part of the answer. A church that has not settled this beforehand will have to settle it in the middle of the worst week it has had.

5. 05

   Read Romans 2:1-11 on the night of the verdict.

   Open your Bible to the passage when the verdict comes in, whichever way the jury has gone, and go through every verse of it. If you find you wanted one particular answer, tell an elder at church which one and why, because a hope for a certain result is worth looking at in company. Then thank God that he judges rightly, and that Christ bore the judgment owed by every sinner who trusts him.