Leeds lawyer raises doubts over 'jury-free trials' plan to clear crippling court-case backlog
A Leeds barrister has questioned radical proposals to scrap jury trials for thousands of cases, claiming it would fail to save time and could lead to miscarriages of justice.
Chris Moran, who works for Park Square Barristers, says the plans proposed by the former senior judge, Sir Brian Leveson, could erode public confidence in the justice system.
A backlog of more than 77,000 cases are waiting to be heard across the UK.
In a bid to clear the cases quickly, Sir Brian has suggested trials known as “either-way” - that cover mid-level crimes such as theft, certain drug offences, ABH, theft, low-level fraud and sexual assaults - could be tried with a judge sitting alongside two magistrates, rather than the traditional panel of 12 jurors.
But Chris Moran is not convinced by the plan. He suggests some judges can be “tainted” by previous experiences, unlike jurors, which could lead to an unfair trial.
He added: “This backlog was not caused by juries, it was caused by a combination of factors, some of which were intentionally inflicted over many years [through cuts to funding and the number of sitting days permitted by the government].
“The current system, involving many of the citizens of the country, helps ensure public confidence.
“Lawyers and judges could be case-hardened by their experience in many previous cases and might be quite cynical. There is a danger that they will judge evidence in a new case by their experiences in old ones.
“Juries are drawn randomly in regards to economic background, age, gender and ethnicity. They are truly diverse.
“However, any new case involves an entirely different defendant, complainant, witnesses and facts. Juries do not have that baggage.
“The only things that take up more court time in jury trials is swearing them in and the time it takes for them to go in and out of the room, which is not much time per case at all.
“When they retire to consider their verdicts the courtroom is used on other cases.
“Therefore the time saved is very limited. Trials will still involve presenting the same evidence and cross-examining the same witnesses.”
Mr Moran said other issues preventing a swifter clearing of cases include a lack of utilisation of some courtrooms, and suggested the re-opening of the Nightingale courts could be step in the right direction.
He says other external issues with security firms failing to deliver remand prisoners to court for their trials, could be reviewed.
He also fears judge-only trials in either-way cases could creep into more serious trials, such as murder cases.
Mr Moran said: “It is still proposed for serious indictable-only offending - rape, murder, causing grievous bodily harm - that we keep juries. But how long for?
“The future argument will be if they are not needed to ensure fairness for many other offences that could see a person go to prison for years why are they needed for murder?
“We either believe that juries are the fairest way of trying people, and therefore not seek to reduce it, or we don’t.”
Whatever the solution, Mr Moran said it will take “political will and investment”.