Lammy to remove Juries for most cases

The press are reporting it will be “a judge” not an expert panel.

Surely if juries are removed it won't be the old bloke in the wig making the decisions, it will be some sort of specialist jury?

I would trust them more than I would trust some old bloke in a wig and yes I have personal experience

I was astounded when I did jury service that we weren’t IQ tested! The logic and intelligence levels of some of the people I served with was questionable (they may well have thought the same about me), and I couldn’t believe we were entrusted with making a decision on the rest of somebody’s life. It seems wiser to have a professionally trained panel make these decisions instead.

There are also plenty of areas of law that don’t - family/housing/immigration

areas of criminal that are magistrate as well

That was me. And the quickest way to repeal a bad law is have juries repeatedly find people not guilty.

It's one of the reasons the death penalty is history.

I think the fact that laypeople don't understand the core principles of the law (and certainly not anything more complex) is one of the reasons people are open to reconsidering juries in the first place.

The sheer logistics of getting a jury, witnesses for defence and prosecution, barristers, solicitors, the defendant/s and all court employees in the same room at the same time is mind boggling

Very often, the judges are there, but trials are being delayed because police officers are unavailable, social, medical and psychatric reports are not available, juries are hard to obtain and the trials are adjourned

A thought that occurs to me with this is prior convictions.

On the one hand, I think it is good that Juries are not told of priors. Because it ensures a fair trial on the specific charges.

On the other hand, it does also mean many repeat offenders "beat the rap", and some may go on to offend again.

If there is no Jury, does that mean that whoever is Judging knows about priors ?

The article in The Times is confusing. In some places it says it would be decided by a judge alone, in at least two other places it says a judge plus two lay magistrates.

The BBC News article says Sir Brian Leveson recommends either a judge alone or a judge plus two magistrates. I think that’s a significant difference.

I think because we sent the common law system to the US/Canada/Aistralia we kind of assume that all countries follow it because it is what we see in the majority of media.

but it isn’t Germany does have then, France only for the most serious and Italy is more hybrid.

like it or not it is a huge drain and there are plenty of models where they aren’t used

Do you not remember Diplock Courts?

I don't remember anything like the sense of outrage back then

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplock_court

Somebody did mention it upthread, but they conflated it with repeal of laws so their point was somewhat lost.

I’m prohibited by bar code of conduct from saying my personal views on cases I’ve acted in. I can say that in my experience juries’ verdicts usually accord with the strength of the evidence and I can usually tell during trial what the verdict will be from how the evidence of witnesses is coming out. My prediction is judges would convict very many more people than juries do. Juries are a safety net.

I think that many victims would agree.

It worries me that only cases ‘likely to result in a conviction’ in many categories ever get to a jury trial in the first place …

I want whatever is best for victims tbh. Not whatever is best for Lammy’s departmental budget.

But justice does need to be speedier and better quality.

So back to the drawing board.

I’m having to pop out but you can Google it - here is a link to one where the judiciary were quizzed https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=64125

when I studied law and throughout my career it was recognised that if you were black or from an ethnic minority you had worse outcomes at every single stage of the criminal justice system - so more likely to be arrested, more likely to be imprisoned than a white man who had committed same crime in similar circumstances and most tellingly more likely to receive a harsher sentence.

For some starmer could do a dump in their rose garden and they would espouse the benefits of the additional fertiliser….

I can’t quite believe what I am reading that people would quite so readily dispense with a bulwark against a police state. But then again people in their cosseted lives don’t think such corruption could happen here- we shall see.

I don’t recommend juries. They are unpredictable, have bias and there is no IQ test to sit on a jury. Most frustrating experience of my life!

I live in Mexico and we don't have jury trials. What we do have are corrupt judges. One man or woman is much easier to corrupt or intimidate than 12

Just noting that 89 posts in, and the sum expertise of this thread has still not seen a mention of jury nullification. Which I consider a core principle of English law.

Good. A relative was on the jury for a horrific sexual abuse trial. It lasted months and she walked out of the door traumatised and with no support. Let professional trained and supported judge-led inquiry take the place of a system we inherited from the Anglo-Saxons.

Think about the average member of the public, would you really want them deciding your fate?

Your fate is not decided by an "average member of the public". A jury is a fairly sizeable number of members of the public, with no particular slant toward how average or otherwise they are.

And yes, I absolutely want them deciding my fate, far more so than any 2 or 3 member "panel" or single individual.

Can just see the next step. Not enough Court rooms, not enough technical staff to record it all or maintain public record, so we'll have "trials" taking place entirely devoid of any sort of public knowledge or scrutiny, with individuals being locked away by State-appointed panels. That's been done before, and it tends not to end well for States who think this is a jolly good way to deal with "miscreants"

I'm fine with no juries.
I am not fine with the sex crimes exception.