Up to 22,000 people a year in England and Wales are to lose the right to a jury trial, the British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, announced yesterday. The intention is to end "manipulation" of the legal system and save the taxpayer millions in court costs.
However, the Bar Council has criticised the proposal to limit the right to choose a jury trial in a crown court, rather than opt for a non-jury hearing in the lower magistrates' court.
Mr Courtenay Griffiths QC, of the Society of Black Lawyers, said he was disappointed with the proposal a few months after the publication of the report into the death of Stephen Lawrence. Black defendants, he said, did not have faith in the courts and often felt the magistrates' court was a "police court."
Mr Griffiths said black defendants stood a better chance of getting a fair hearing from a randomly selected jury panel than from a magistrate. In opposition, Mr Straw had described the proposal as "wrong, short-sighted and likely to prove ineffective". Now, however, he endorses it. Addressing the Police Federation in Blackpool, the Home Secretary said it was a source of "irritation" that under the present system defendants charged with medium-ranking crimes - burglary or assault - can opt for a jury trial "for no good reason other than to delay proceedings".
After the conference, Mr Straw said no other country in Europe allowed defendants to choose where to be tried. He said in Scotland it was left to the prosecutor to decide where the trial took place "and there were no complaints about that system".
In the Commons MPs criticised Mr Straw's decision to announce the proposal at a police conference rather than to the House. The shadow home secretary, Sir Norman Fowler, said a statement from Mr Straw was particularly important since he had performed a U-turn on his previous jury policy. It was left to Mr Straw's junior Home Office Minister, Mr Mike O'Brien, to answer the critics. He told MPs Mr Straw was "very scrupulous" about protocol and had arranged for the announcement to be made in a written reply published yesterday.
The right to choose a jury trial in "either-way" cases dates back to an 1855 Act of Parliament, which allowed certain crimes tried normally in higher courts to be tried by a magistrate if the defendant consented. Indictable crimes such as murder and rape can be tried only in crown courts, while a magistrate hears lesser offences. .