Scot: Lawyer boycott of juryless rape trials 'to be unanimous'

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65531380

IwantToRetire
As women's groups have been campaigning for this for years it is a bit ironic to say the system isn't listening to women.

But is the proposed system what women's groups have been campaigning for? They haven't asked to just get rid of juries. They've asked to replace jury trials with a specific system which includes specially trained judges. Part of the problem with the current system is not just bias in juries, its also biased judges.

This is tricky though. Prosecuting more doesn't mean more will be successful, so then all of a sudden the conviction stats go down.

I don't know what the right answers are here. But this might not just be a smokescreen for low prosecution rates. One reason crimes of this sort don't get prosecuted is because the chance of conviction is often thought to be too low. If this shifts the chance of conviction higher, then more prosecutions may result.

I wouldn't necessarily trust majority-female juries over majority-male ones to be more likely to convict. A lot of women are very inclined to give men the benefit of the doubt, whereas a lot of men know just how bad other men really can be.

I started following this thread because I was quite shocked at the idea of abolishing the right to trial by jury in any circumstances. But I don't pretend to be knowledgeable about it and I thought there might read some arguments I'd missed.

Well so far I haven't seen any. I still think it's a) flat out wrong and b) sets a very dangerous precedent - the idea that it wouldn't be applied to other situations once the pilot was completed is delusional in my opinion.

And c) I've yet to be persuaded that it would even improve the prosecution rate.

Yup.

It always sounds like, "we aren't getting the results we want by following the most well established principles of the justice system, so we will ignore them when we want to."

If gender ideology has done nothing else, it should have shown us that this kind of approach will totally destroy important protections and institutions.

The theory is that the general public is so bought into rape myths that they can't fairly judge the evidence so rapists are getting off.

I have a lot of sympathy with that view having followed various trials (e.g. the Ulster rugby trial, Ched Evans).

In other countries cases are heard by a trained judge. A good example was the Oscar Pistorius trial in S Africa

I actually think this is a good pilot - I want to see more rapists convicted.

As I understand it , there is no trial by jury in South Africa in any circumstances - trained judge in all cases.
Is this correct?
Is this a more just system? If it is let's hear the reasons.