Lammy to remove Juries for most cases

[Bumblebee72]

It being reported by the Times that Lammy is going to remove the right to choose a jury for all but a few cases. This is a shocking role back of British rights.

And they say we need to worry about Reform........

Honestly, that is a good thing. I haven’t been on jury service myself but everyone I know said at least 50% of people in the jury pretty much do not understand the procedure, or even understand the evidence. If I was a criminal, I would want an intelligent, informed person making the decision. Who understands all of the law all of the relevant caselaw and the appropriate legal test and sentencing.

I do not want to be judged by a jury of my peers when the average reading age in this country is about age 12. I want to be considered by an intelligent person who understands the law and the repercussions.

Surely things like theft, fraud there's enough evidence not to need a jury?
All the bigger cases are still by jury, no? It's for crimes that get up to 5 years, so not huge, important cases. If anything speeds things up then all for it, especially when you hear about poor women waiting 2-odd years to have their rapist in court, must be hell on earth with them still walking around your neighbourhood. Perhaps the knock on means those cases are seen to quicker than at the moment.

Even through that intelligent person is appointed and paid by the Crown. The same Crown that is accusing you of the crime in the first place.

There is no automatic right of appeal. There’s a right to apply for an appeal. Not the same thing. Many requests for an appeal are not granted. If there was u fettered access to appeal we would never get them through the Court of Appeal.

I think there’s some sense in having a panel. Maybe not all judges as this would take them away from other work but legally trained people could be on the panels with sufficient experience.

I agree

Same

Anybody that has watched the C4 programmes showing jury deliberations would be cheering at this news. People entirely incapable of considering evidence dispassionately, bringing their own life experiences in to bear on the decision making, worrying more about being high in the group pecking order than doing their duty in considering the evidence and weighing this up against the requirements of the law.

If Judges did a normal working day then they could double the number of cases dealt with overnight

Removing juries means bad laws will never be repealed. No matter how many people want them gone.

I think the idea of judgement by one’s peers is a good one, but the reality is very different. I was pretty horrified by some of what I heard in the jury room when I did jury service. I now work with a lot of judges and most of them are intelligent and fair-minded. I would rather be judged by them if I were wrongly accused of something.

I think I’d prefer the idea of jurors doing it as their professional job. People who are vetted properly, pass some kind of critical thinking test, interviews to check they’re intelligent enough to absorb the material then we pay them to do this professionally. I don’t love the idea of someone’s fate being decided by a random selection of anybody’s. I worry that I’ll be picked for jury duty and I won’t understand or be able to cope with the subject matter. I don’t feel like I’m the right person to make those decisions. So it sounds like a good thing to overhaul the system.

What do juries have to do with the repeal of laws? That’s a parliamentary process.

I’m a criminal barrister although I very rarely do jury trials nowadays. I did spend many years in court doing trials pretty much back to back. The criminal bar association is opposed to these changes. If you introduce judge only trials the conviction rates will go through the roof. Under resourced and incompetent Police will have a field day and the prison population will increase. It’s outrageous to remove one of the few safeguards from the system for cost reasons. There have been many studies and juries can understand complex information such as fraud trials so long as the advocates break it down. There is a lack of judges and barristers due to all the cuts to the criminal justice system. This is a badly thought through plan which will harm the many innocent people prosecuted- not everyone before the courts is guilty and there are many shocking examples of recent miscarriages of justice which will only increase if you remove the common sense and wisdom of 12 ordinary people. It’s one of the few things I believe in so strongly that I will march against it and boycott the courts if this becomes a serious move by Lammy who at every turn proves himself to be incompetent.

The right to a trial by jury is a bedrock of democracy. Looking at some of the decisions made by judges, i wouldnt trust them to make fair and unbiased decisions

In my considerable experience of representing defendants before Crown Court judges many are not fair minded and there remains high levels of racism. Any study on sentencing shows this to be the case.

I’ve served on a jury several times (high court and sheriff court) including once in a very high profile murder case and I think is an excellent idea, I’ve been saying it for years. The idea that a jury is composed of average people is just not true. In my experience professional and working age people (who would probably be pretty good at defending their own opinions and evaluating evidence) usually find a way to avoid it. This is partly because the compensation is so poor - although most people’s employers might cover a certain amount of time at full pay there is no guarantee and if you are self employed you are stuffed. Partly I think because of the uncertainty about trial lengths and waiting about. It is truly unbelievable how much time is wasted in court. The consequence is that the people who are left are usually the retired and unemployed. - hardly a good representation of the population as a whole. I would have to say that at least half of the jury members I have seen were simply not intelligent enough to understand the evidence being presented to them. On jury I sat on, I was the only person taking notes! On the murder trial I mentioned there were several people who were more concerned about what was for lunch rather than what was going on in the court. It’s terrifying how much people are influenced by American court procedural tv shows.

In my mind there is a clear reason why when we say someone is "acting as judge and jury" it is not considered to be a positive.

Thank you, that is a very persuasive argument.

Do you trust juries to make fair and unbiased decisions?

Agree with this entirely, also oppose it for a couple of other reasons not yet mentioned.

Anyone who thinks judges would invariably be impartial and fair is at it.

In Scotland we have Sheriffs. You can pretty much predict precisely what sort of sentence someone is likely to receive depending upon which particular Sheriff is hearing their case. They all have peccadilloes, grudges, and grievances of their own, they are only human after all. Judges would be no different.

Obviously this is relevant to sentencing, but not necessarily determining Guilt, however, it helpfully demonstrates that concerns about Juries being impartial, unfair, or inconsistent are rather moot, because replacing them with Judges or panels does nothing to resolve that particular concern.

The State acts on behalf of the public. You are tried on behalf of your peers because you have committed some sort of offence against the public. It's entirely appropriate then that you are judged by the very same public. It's a fundamental precept of Justice and in no way do I support anything that proposes to discard it.

Yes. In the course of my working life I’ve had lots of contact with people in various parts of the justice system, and let’s just say, I wouldn’t like to leave it down to just one of them to make the decision if I was ever accused of a crime. They’re only human and they have their own prejudices which they don’t always cast aside a they should.

He’s got every choice. This needs thorough debate in Parliament. Arguably this needs a referendum. Jury trials have their antecedents before the Norman Conquest. They are the bedrock of a free society. Withdrawing civil rights in the recommendation of one ‘expert’ or even a committee is a gross distortion of the concept of representative government.

Lammy himself wrote a report confirming along these lines for the Conversative Government. He seems to have changed his mind which is par for the course in Starmers flip flop government .

Exactly.
Even David Lammy doesn’t believe his own stance on this.
As David Lammy MP, Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Justice himself said in his Review in 2017:

“Juries deliberate as a group through open discussion. This both deters and exposes prejudice and unintended bias: judgements must be justified to others. Successive studies have shown that juries deliver equitable results, regardless of the ethnic make-up of the jury, or the defendant in question.”

Juries are not perfect as highlighted by the experience of many who are on this thread and have served as jurors but it is by far the best and fairest way we have to resolve issues of guilt. If this really does happen it will be devastating for anyone unlucky enough to find themselves before the courts and absolutely anyone can find themselves prosecuted for things they haven’t done - the Post Office scandal provides hundreds of examples of people of all ages, from all religions, many previously thought to be pillars of their communities.