Over 3,000 lawyers have urged the Prime Minister to reconsider planned changes to jury trials in an open letter with signatories including 300 barristers and 22 retired judges.
The authors of the letter write ‘we have long warned that the criminal justice system is in crisis’ but say ‘juries have not caused this crisis’. Quoting the review of the criminal courts by Sir Brian Leveson that prompted the legislation that will see the number of jury trials reduced, the lawyers write ‘the most significant cause is chronic underfunding at every step’. Leveson found that He ‘decades of sustained reductions in funding have left the criminal courts with fewer available courtrooms, a diminished and less experienced workforce and a severely dilapidated court estate.’
The signatories describe the planned changes as an attempt to ‘force through’ an ‘unpopular, untested and poorly evidenced change to our jury system’.
MPs will debate and vote on the principles of the measures in the Courts and Tribunals Bill, including plans to curtail jury trials, during its second reading on Tuesday evening.
Among the signatories alongside Bar Council Chair and Vice Chair, Criminal Bar Association Chair and Vice Chair and all Circuit leaders are legal leaders, including the former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir David Calvert-Smith, JUSTICE Chief Exec Fiona Rutherford, APPEAL Co Director Emma Torr and four former Chairs of the Bar as well as two former Chairs of the Criminal Bar Association.
The signatories also tell the Prime Minister: ‘Criminal law professionals continue to stretch themselves to ensure that the voices of complainants, victims and defendants are heard in court. We ask that the government now listens to our voices, as solicitors, barristers and recently retired judges who have evidenced measures that reduce the backlog of cases without requiring curtailing jury trials.’
Bar Council Chair Kirsty Brimelow KC said: ‘This letter and its more than 3,000 signatories demonstrate the unequivocal principled and practical opposition to the restriction of jury trials from not only the Bar, but the legal profession as a whole. There is no doubt that the criminal justice is in crisis caused by decades of underfunding – not juries. The mantra of modernisation in relation to juries is a Trojan horse to hack at a deep-rooted constitutional principle for negligible gain. There is very little evidence to support even basic rationality of the government’s decision to rush through this legislation which unnecessarily removes jury trials from thousands of people.’
