Lawyers unite to fight jury-axing proposal
Criminal-law practitioner groups in Britain have united to fight plans to curb jury trials by Justice Secretary David Lammy.
Representatives for the London Criminal Courts Solicitors’ Association, Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association, and Criminal Bar Association confirmed their opposition to Lammy's controversial plan to cut the Crown court backlog at a meeting in London (19 February).
LCCSA president Jason Lartey told the meeting that Lammy would reportedly be addressing parliament next Tuesday, the England-and-Wales Gazette reports.
Lartey told the gathering that a meeting took place at the England-and-Wales Law Society with Labour MP Karl Turner.
'Ludicrous and unworkable'
He is a former shadow justice minister who has criticised the “utterly ludicrous, unworkable policy” in the British parliament.
Turner may, “as a last resort” suggest piloting a Crown court bench division, the practitioner meeting heard.
University of Exeter’s Rebecca Helm, author of How Juries Work, told the meeting that any benefits from the pilot would be difficult to measure and pilots were expensive to set up.
Helm said juries played an important role democratically by interpreting legal terms in line with societal standards.
Plausibility
They also brought their collective expertise to make assessments of plausibility, she said.
Judge-only trials risked holding standards that were not those of society but of a particular person whose experience was detached from society more broadly, the academic said.