Why not legislate a category of offences to be tried by a single judge sitting without a jury? It works efficiently and is respected in family law cases. I recognise that any change will constitute a departure from trial by peers and be controversial. But this would offer more significant protection to process than simply moving more serious cases before lay magistrates.
The idea of an appeal to the Crown Court against an adverse decision by the Magistrates in respect of an application for Jury trial poses a problem in practice. It is necessarily based on the proposition that the applicant entertains a doubt about getting justice from the Magistrates. That is an application which had better succeed because, if it fails, no one wants to find themselves with the file marked that an appeal was made and rejected. And the outcome of an appeal is likely in practice to depend as much on the state of the list in the Crown Court as anything else. It is MUCH better to have an automatic system.
The backlog in the Crown Court must be addressed by adequate funding of the system - starting by lifting the artificial cap on funding the available sitting days for the Judges currently appointed. Funding the criminal justice system is surely second in importance only to the proper funding of defence and successive governments have neglected both quite scandalously.
I wait with bated breath, since the former Judge to be appointed- with immense respect to her/him in advance of the announcement- will come with the unavoidable baggage of reputation and (reported, though perhaps unfairly ) propensities, over the principle of jury trial and the extent of its categories of its use. Sorry: clumsily put but as I hope with my meaning clear. To be frank- and perish the thought- I had ever been the most inept judge EVER at whatever level- then I fear I might have felt insecure or frustrated or both with jurors as the arbiters of fact. In fact my -in all immodesty - extensive former experience of jurors and their approach to evidence appraisal firstly as instructing solicitor and then as jury advocate leads me to rate them and the jury system- subject to the elephant in the room, proper funding across the board for Courts and all agencies. I continue to maintain, firstly, that all governments I have ever observed once in office come to dislike juries - or worse, wish them gone. And I am afraid that the same applies to SOME Judges (the ones I admired, quite to the contrary)but those of the judiciary uncomfortable with trial by our peers, inevitably as I suppose, consider that they could do a much better and brisker job. Yes, usually to the first but NO to that second proposition. All administrations develop itchy fingers and get round earlier rather than later to chipping away at it at different levels and for (professed) different reasons. I fear that Andrew Edwards may well be right with the so common dusting off of shelves from previous governments of whichever party political hue. There:I have said it again; can it be said TOO often in the current torrid climate?
Why not legislate a category of offences to be tried by a single judge sitting without a jury? It works efficiently and is respected in family law cases. I recognise that any change will constitute a departure from trial by peers and be controversial. But this would offer more significant protection to process than simply moving more serious cases before lay magistrates.
The idea of an appeal to the Crown Court against an adverse decision by the Magistrates in respect of an application for Jury trial poses a problem in practice. It is necessarily based on the proposition that the applicant entertains a doubt about getting justice from the Magistrates. That is an application which had better succeed because, if it fails, no one wants to find themselves with the file marked that an appeal was made and rejected. And the outcome of an appeal is likely in practice to depend as much on the state of the list in the Crown Court as anything else. It is MUCH better to have an automatic system.
The backlog in the Crown Court must be addressed by adequate funding of the system - starting by lifting the artificial cap on funding the available sitting days for the Judges currently appointed. Funding the criminal justice system is surely second in importance only to the proper funding of defence and successive governments have neglected both quite scandalously.
I wait with bated breath, since the former Judge to be appointed- with immense respect to her/him in advance of the announcement- will come with the unavoidable baggage of reputation and (reported, though perhaps unfairly ) propensities, over the principle of jury trial and the extent of its categories of its use. Sorry: clumsily put but as I hope with my meaning clear. To be frank- and perish the thought- I had ever been the most inept judge EVER at whatever level- then I fear I might have felt insecure or frustrated or both with jurors as the arbiters of fact. In fact my -in all immodesty - extensive former experience of jurors and their approach to evidence appraisal firstly as instructing solicitor and then as jury advocate leads me to rate them and the jury system- subject to the elephant in the room, proper funding across the board for Courts and all agencies. I continue to maintain, firstly, that all governments I have ever observed once in office come to dislike juries - or worse, wish them gone. And I am afraid that the same applies to SOME Judges (the ones I admired, quite to the contrary)but those of the judiciary uncomfortable with trial by our peers, inevitably as I suppose, consider that they could do a much better and brisker job. Yes, usually to the first but NO to that second proposition. All administrations develop itchy fingers and get round earlier rather than later to chipping away at it at different levels and for (professed) different reasons. I fear that Andrew Edwards may well be right with the so common dusting off of shelves from previous governments of whichever party political hue. There:I have said it again; can it be said TOO often in the current torrid climate?
More of the Labour Party picking up failed Conservative Party ideas and running with them. Save this erosion of liberty is from a Labour Government.