Jury trial reforms set to be announced

In an attempt to turn around unprecedented backlogs and delays in justice, the government is expected to announce plans to limit the right to a jury trial in England and Wales. In Parliament later Tuesday, David Lammy, deputy prime minister and justice minister, will lay out the plans. However, he has maintained that juries would remain a "fundamental component of the criminal justice system. It's unclear if the scheme, which would bring jury trials other than for the majority of serious cases, including murder, has been accepted by Cabinet or withdrawn from.

According to the BBC and The Times last week, his final decision, which was contained in a paper circulated around government, was leaked to the ABC and The Telegraph. The plans to reduce jury trials are based on recommendations from a senior retired judge who told ministers that the reform would help eliminate delays. In Crown Courts, there are currently 78,000 cases that are pending to be heard. In practice, this means that some defendants charged with serious crimes today may not have a hearing until late 2029 or early 2030. If further action is taken, officials predict the caseload will rise to more than 100,000 before then. Last week's leak of an internal government briefing revealed that the final Ministry of Justice intends to establish new types of jury-less trials, where the facts will be determined by a judge alone. The jury trial would therefore conclude for the majority of cases before Crown Courts, including robbery, most opioids, violent, and fraud. If the defendant was likely to be convicted of murder, manslaughter, or rape, the lawsuit would only go before a jury. Volunteer magistrates, who handle the overwhelming majority of criminal cases in the lowest courthouses, will have their sentencing powers doubled to two years.

The leaked plan does not refer to Scotland or Northern Ireland, and it was sent to other departments before final Cabinet approval. Sir Brian Leveson, a retired Court of Appeal judge, goes further than recommendations earlier this year. Lammy has not disclosed the deal, but said there will be an additional £550 million over three years for specialist victim assistance programs, as well as a £34 million aimed at attracting more barristers into criminal careers. He said on BBC Breakfast ahead of the announcement on Tuesday that juries were and will remain a fundamental part of our justice system and thanked the 350,000 people who work in them every year. However, he suggested that magistrates be used in their place for less serious offences in order to compel the Crown Court to readjust. If you rob a phone, a trial could take two days, he said,

which could lead to delays for more serious offenses such as rape or murder. Lammy has previously stated that removing juries would be a mistake, but told the BBC that the

truth had changed

and that the government must introduce reforms to eliminate the backlog.

We've got to invest more, we'vegotta modernize, and we'll have to reform. I'm determined to do it for victims all around the world.

But Chris Kinch KC, a former resident judge at Woolwich Crown Court, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the latest reforms will do nothing to expedite trials. According to him, juries played a vital part in allowing ordinary people to participate in the courts.

Juries are a] right that has preserved a link between the crown courts and the communities in which they serve.

You'd need a very good reason to replace them," he said.

The reforms, according to Abigail Ashford, a solicitor advocate for clients in the Crown Court, jeopardizes confidence in justice.

Judge-only trials could contribute to increasing inequalities and eroding community pride among communities that have already feel marginalized,

she said.

In difficult or delicate situations, excluding the community from judging credibility and fairness undermines trust in a way that cannot be compensated for by concentrating decisions in the hands of a single judge.

But it was not juries that caused the extraordinary delays, not underfunding, according to Riel Karmy-Jones KC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association.

Imposing an untested, untested layer of complexity and cost in the form of any new division of the Crown Court on our desperately underfunded system with its aging infrastructure is counterintuitive,

she said. Many criminal barristers blame the previous Conservative government for the backlogs, claiming that the courts have been starving of funds for more than a decade. David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, told Robert Jenrick that he had long supported juries and accused him of abandoning his principles.