A BAN on disclosing the “secrets” of the jury room may soon be lifted as a result of two imminent moves that challenge the existing law.

A test case comes before the House of Lords next week in which a man is appealing against a conviction because, he claims, there was racial bias among the jurors.

At the same time, the Lord Chancellor is to publish proposals which could see a lifting of the ban on any research into what goes on among jurors when they retire to consider their verdicts.

The proposals will outline options for reform, asking whether the ban should be eased, subject to safeguards.

The move comes in response to a request by the Home Affairs Select Committee as well as comments by the Court of Appeal judge Sir Robin Auld in his landmark criminal justice report in 2001. Sir Robin condemned the ban as “indefensible and capable of causing serious injustice”.

There is also growing concern that the law, in Section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, may in some cases conflict with a defendant’s right to a fair trial under the Human Rights Act 1998.

In the House of Lords case, a chef, Shabbir ali Mirza, from the East End of London, is challenging a conviction for indecent assault, for which he was sentenced to four years. After his trial a juror wrote to his barrister, alleging bias on the part of members of the jury because he had used an interpreter. In the retiring room they were said to have accused him of “playing the race card”, saying that he did not need an interpreter, even though the judge expressly told them not to draw any adverse inference.

The juror, a nurse, tried to convince the others that from her experience in the East End there was nothing suspicious about using an interpreter but, she says, she was “shouted down”. She wrote: “The bigots had decided that the case brought by the prosecution was not good enough for them, so they contested it. Thus they effectively brought their own case, and found the defendant guilty of pretending to need an interpreter.”

The defendant was found guilty in February 2001 of indecent assault by a majority verdict after an earlier retrial in which the jury could not agree. He is now out of jail.

The juror wrote six days later to counsel but the Court of Appeal refused to admit the letter as evidence — although it agreed that the ban on such disclosures or inquiries into the discussions of the jury room might clash with a defendant’s right to a fair trial under the Human Rights Act.

Angena Bhagwandeen, of AB Law, solicitor for ali Mirza, said that although the consequences of changing the law would be “far-reaching”, the change was “necessary to preserve an individual’s right to a fair trial by an impartial jury”.

She said: “By not allowing evidence of biased jury deliberations, serious doubt is cast on the fairness of the the trial, the impartiality of the jury and the safeness of the conviction.”

Other lawyers back a change in the law. Edward Fitzgerald, QC, a human rights and criminal law barrister, has said: “An absolute ban on jury room disclosure cannot be right, and is hard to justify in the light of article 6 (the right to a fair trial).” John Spencer, a Professor of Law at Cambridge University, says that the ban is “almost certainly incompatible” with the Human Rights Act. The refusal of the legal system to investigate a serious allegation of bias or misconduct is objectionable, he says.

To date, courts have ruled against revealing jury room secrets, arguing that this would discourage jurors from being candid. Ms Bhagwandeen said that only in one case — where four jurors used a ouija board to determine guilt — did the courts allow an investigation. But that was because the incident took place in a hotel, not in the jury room.

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