Jury trials for most crimes are set to be scrapped in an effort to clear the massive court backlog under proposals to be unveiled next month by David Lammy. The Telegraph has more.
The Justice Secretary, attempting to tackle chronic court backlogs, is to propose that juries will only decide murder, rape, manslaughter and other serious offences carrying possible prison sentences of more than five years.
Lone judges will preside over trials of other serious offences meriting sentences of up to five years, removing the rights of thousands of defendants to be heard before a jury.
Mr Lammy will also increase magistrates’ powers. He will broaden their remit from offences carrying a maximum sentence of one year to two years, further eroding the right to a jury trial.
The plans go further than the recommendations suggested by Sir Brian Leveson in a report commissioned by Shabana Mahmood, Mr Lammy’s predecessor.
He had proposed that there should be an intermediate court comprising a judge and two magistrates for mid-range offences.
The reforms, expected to be outlined next week, put Mr Lammy on a collision course with the legal profession.
Suella Braverman, a former home secretary and attorney general, said: “This is a serious assault on our liberty. Trial by your peers is a fundamental right in our democracy, and goes to the core of who we are as a nation.”
Riel Karmy-Jones KC, the Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), said removing jury trials would undermine “a fundamental feature of the British constitution, and the British justice system, for over 800 years”.
She added: “The erosion of the right to jury trial will break the increasingly thin connection between the state and ordinary people, and risks undermining social cohesion and trust in the criminal justice system. Once that trust disappears, fears of tyrannical governments increase and the faith in justice evaporates for good.”
Mr Lammy has previously been a strong defender of the jury system, declaring when it was under threat during the Covid pandemic that “jury trials are a fundamental party of our democratic settlement”.
He added: “The Government need to pull their finger out and acquire empty buildings across the country to make sure these [trials] can happen in a way that is safe… you don’t fix the backlog with trials that are widely perceived as unfair.” …
Mr Lammy wrote to ministers to say that there was “no right” to jury trials in the UK, and that drastic action was needed to cut the backlog of cases in crown courts in England and Wales.
It is anticipated that as many as 75% of trials will be heard by a judge sitting alone instead of a jury under his proposals, contained in a briefing document headed “sensitive and official”.
Worth reading in full.
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