Courtrooms are often stuffy places. Add that to the soporific effect of a barrister’s speaking voice and you have a recipe for potential disaster.
At the start of the week, a judge encouraged jurors in his dangerous driving trial to ask for a break if they found that their eyelids were ‘beginning to droop’.
But it was in a different trial where, part-way through the prosecutor’s closing speech, a jury member appeared to fall asleep and began – to use my mother’s euphemistic phrase – breathe loudly.
* This is an extract from Tom Seaward's weekly newsletter Court news: The Inside Scoop which you can sign up to for free here *
Snoring in court is frowned on, it won’t surprise you to learn. The complicating factor is when the somnolescent sounds come from judge’s bench.
I’ve seen it happen once. Someone had come to observe a court hearing.
Sitting beside the judge, he laughed at the start of the defence advocate’s speech then began snoring before its conclusion.
I’m afraid it was followed by a snort, rather than a snore, from the press bench.
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