End of jury trials ‘to be blocked’
The House of Lords is likely to reject proposals by the Government to remove the right to jury trials in certain cases.
Government plans to remove jury trials from a small number of serious criminal cases are intended to affect those cases involving complex fraud or organised crime, but the House of Lords is likely to object to the possibility that people would no longer be tried by their peers.
The argument for removing juries from trials involving fraud is based on the concern that justice may not be served if the case is complex because the jury will not understand the legality or technicalities being discussed. This view is likely to come under heaviest criticism from the Lords, who may argue that juries are more able than the Government gives them credit for.
Plans to remove juries from trials involving criminal gangs are derived from different concerns. There is an increasing fear that gangs are attempting to exert pressure on juries through intimidation, and the Metropolitan Police spends millions of pounds each year protecting jurors.
Police chiefs have backed plans to remove juries from cases in which they face intimidation, so as to ensure justice can be done while saving funds for other activities.
The removal of juries would probably affect around 100 cases a year, and the Government has defended the moves as an attempt to ensure justice is better served.
However, the Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin, warned that the Government’s proposals to remove the automatic right to trial by jury in certain cases would risk leading to the attrition of a fundamental principle of liberty in Britain.
‘The basic problem is that these clauses lead to a slippery slop, which could lead to the end of trial by jury, and trial by jury is one of the fundamental bulwarks of our liberties, and I don’t want to see it go’, Mr Letwin said.
Meanwhile, the Labour peer Baroness Kennedy – herself a lawyer – expressed concern at government plans to remove the rule on double jeopardy, whereby a person cannot be tried twice for the same offence.
‘The idea that you are acquitted but the state can put the hand on your shoulder any time afterwards means that you don’t have an acquittal but a conditional acquittal, and I think that is quite a punitive thing’, she said.
The baroness claimed that the Criminal Justice Bill – in which the proposal is contained – had proven ‘alarming’ to most lawyers.
