Lord Donaldson calls for jury research

Research into how juries reach their verdicts was last night demanded by Lord Donaldson, the former Master of the Rolls, following the failure of Ian Botham and Allan Lamb's libel action against Imran Khan and the acquittal at a trial in Liverpool of four women accused of criminal damage after an attack on a British Aerospace Hawk jet.

He told BBC1's Nine O'Clock News: "If judges knew what trouble juries had ... in coming to a verdict they could perhaps alter the form of their summing up to make it easier for juries to understand the issues but as long as we have no idea on what basis juries reach their conclusions it's difficult to answer any of those questions." Patricia Wynn Davies