In certain Crown Court cases, the Justice Secretary has alluded to the elimination of jury trials.
Shabana Mahmood suggested an announcement will be made ‘imminently’ as the government scrambles to hear a tremendous backlog.
Some 70,000 cases are facing waits of up to five years, with senior legal figures advocating an extreme overhaul.
Criminals facing charges that attract punishments of up to two years – such as assault of a police officer or racially aggravated criminal damage – could go to an ‘intermediate’ court.
Hearings could be presided over by a judge accompanied by two magistrates.
Murder, manslaughter, and rape are among the more serious offences that would still go to trial before a jury.
The concept of an ‘intermediate’ court was first presented in a report commissioned under Tony Blair.
Ms Mahmood told LBC this morning: ‘We do have a Crown Court backlog that is very high and likely to rise because the sheer number of cases that are coming into the system is so big, that even if we were sitting at maximum capacity across the whole of the Crown Court, we still wouldn’t be able to touch the sides of that backlog.
‘That does say that we need to think about doing things differently, and the announcements that we will be making will set out the Government’s proposals in this space.’
Ms Mahmood added: ‘I do believe that justice delayed is justice denied. So, we are going to have to think about a different way of managing our Crown Courts so that we can crack down on that backlog properly.’
A trial by a jury is a fundamental right in the UK, but our hopeless government believe they can change a basic right within the Justice system because they have a backlog. After all, there is so much criminality in the UK now, and we all know why but they don’t have the guts to admit it, or they don’t want to upset their prospective voting base.
Everyone is entitled to a jury trial, which is quite alarming and maybe a step towards communism, or maybe it’s more authoritarian than communism, but communist regimes are authoritarian. The thing is there are no prison places for these people at the moment, and if they speed the sentencing up, then where do they put these people?
The only other alternative is to have reduced sentences for them, but then you will have criminals being set free, so this is an extremely flawed concept.
A cornerstone of our legal system that has existed since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 is the right to a trial by peers.
Clause 39 of the Magna Carta stated that no free man could be imprisoned without a lawful judgment by his peers, or by the law of the land. This was the first time that the legal rights of the crown’s subjects were acknowledged.
Habeas Corpus Act 1679 – this act extended the right of an incarcerated person to go before a judge to determine if their confinement was legal.
The English Bill of Rights 1689 – this bill limited the powers of the monarch and set out the rights of Parliament. It included the freedom from cruel and unusual punishments and the freedom from being fined without trial.
Fair Trial – the right to a fair trial, which underpins criminal law in the United Kingdom, the USA, and numerous other countries, which can be traced back to the Magna Carta.
There should be no way after 800 years that one person can now arbitrarily remove that right, just to relieve the backlog from the system.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 