Duty free

I have trouble with the idea of duty. To me it implies something compulsory, something I'm expected to do whether I like it or not because that's the custom. Whether I want to do it, whether I'll enjoy doing it, is irrelevant.

I'm sorry but I just refuse to do something I haven't freely chosen, simply because other people expect it of me. They can talk about "duty" as much as they like, but I prefer to decide for myself what's the right thing to do.

People talk about the "duty" to look after your elderly parents, fight for your country, report road accidents, pay taxes, give evidence in court, serve on a jury, or vote in elections. But is it always right to do these things? No, of course not. In many instances there are very good reasons for not doing them, and self-respect and the public interest demand that you refuse.

Should I look after my elderly parents if they never loved me, always behaved badly to me and were glad to see me gone? Should I fight for my country if I believe the war is pointless, brutal and unwinnable? Should I give evidence in court at the risk of facing hostile lawyers and reliving an emotional trauma?

The decision should be up to the person concerned. They shouldn't feel pushed into something they have deep reservations about. They shouldn't be doing it just to look good or to avoid public disapproval. They should be doing it because they genuinely believe it's the correct thing to do.

I've done jury service twice, but not because it was seen as my duty. I did it because I believe people should be tried by their peers, by people like them, and not by someone remote from their own lives. I did it because I wanted to see if the jury process was as fair and objective as it's made out to be (and the answer was yes). I felt I had done it for the right reasons and not the wrong ones.

Forget duty. How about passion and commitment?

"What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?" - Friedrich Nietzsche.

Pic: Witness Nicole Alvarez at the trial of Michael Jackson's physician.

Mistrial by jury

Hugely-expensive court cases are collapsing in Britain because jurors are doing their own private research - including trawling the internet for information on the person accused. This is despite the judges warning them not to.

The person on trial, who has gone through months of anxiety and nail-biting waiting for the case to start, has to wait all over again after the judge is forced to end the case and order a retrial at a later date.

The case against an 18 year old man charged with murdering a 71 year old cabbie had to be abandoned at Newcastle. And in London the trial of a celebrity's nanny accused of child cruelty was also abruptly dropped.

In Newcastle the juror had actually gone to the death scene, taken photos and done research into his own theories about what happened on the night in question. And then discussed his ideas with other jurors.

I can understand a juror's temptation to make their own inquiries into things they're not clear about. I did jury service twice in London and there were often things that were puzzling or confusing, or even totally unbelievable.

But the whole point of a court case is that the jury makes a decision based on what they've been told in court - which hopefully is rigorously tested for bias or lies. If jurors start doing their own digging, they'll come across all sorts of dubious rumours and anecdotes which can seriously slant their decision.

If I was accused of something and I thought the jurors were busy sniffing around on their own I'd be horrified.

Unfortunately the internet makes it all too easy to find information about people at the click of a mouse. And nobody even knows you're doing it unless you're careless enough to tell someone.

In the end, you can only trust people to take the job of deciding a person's guilt or innocence seriously and not deliberately put a spanner in the works. Happily from my own experience, most jurors seem extremely conscientious about holding someone else's fate in their hands.