\n<\/p>\n
Jury trials for all except the most serious crimes such as rape, murder and manslaughter are set to be scrapped under radical proposals drawn up by David Lammy.<\/p>\n
In proposals that drew a swift backlash from senior lawyers, who said that they would not reduce court backlogs and could \u201cdestroy justice as we know it\u201d, the justice secretary has proposed that juries will only pass judgment on public interest offences with possible prison sentences of more than five years.<\/p>\n
Lone judges would preside over trials of other serious offences meriting sentences of up to five years, he suggested, removing the ancient right of thousands of defendants to be heard before a jury.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Justice said no final decision had been taken by the government, but sources confirmed the proposals had been circulated throughout Whitehall in preparation for an announcement in the new year.<\/p>\n
Lammy\u2019s proposals, which would create a new tier of court in which most criminal offences would be tried by judges alone, go well beyond the recommendations of Sir Brian Leveson, who was commissioned to review the criminal courts and reported in July. And they exceed the courts minister Sarah Sackman\u2019s interview with the Guardian last week, where she set out a plan to stop criminals \u201cgaming the system\u201d.<\/p>\n
The MoJ document, circulated in Whitehall earlier this month, reports that crown courts are facing record backlogs, with more than 78,000 cases waiting to be completed.<\/p>\n
Leveson recommended the government should end jury trial for many serious offences that could be dealt with by a judge alone or sitting with two magistrates. The former judge suggested they would preside over a new intermediate tier of criminal court, which has been called the crown court bench division (CCBD).<\/p>\n
The deputy prime minister\u2019s decision, according to the leaked MoJ document, is to \u201cgo further than Sir Brian\u2019s to achieve maximum impact\u201d.<\/p>\n
The document, first disclosed by the BBC, said Lammy wanted to \u201cintroduce trial by judge alone for cases involving fraud and financial offences \u2013 if the judge considers the case to be suitably technical and lengthy. Exclusions for rape, murder, manslaughter and public interest\u201d.<\/p>\n
The CCBD would be introduced \u201cas a lower tier of the crown court which hears cases likely to receive a sentence of up to five years by a judge alone\u201d, the document said.<\/p>\n
This means that, while jury trials would be guaranteed for murder, manslaughter and rape, almost all other defendants facing serious offences would be tried by a judge alone.<\/p>\n
The document was distributed among ministers as part of the write round, when ministers obtain final signoff from other government departments before going public with a policy.<\/p>\n
The Law Society of England and Wales\u2019s president, Mark Evans, who represents thousands of solicitors, said the proposals were an \u201cextreme measure\u201d that go \u201cfar beyond\u201d Leveson\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a fundamental change to how our criminal justice system operates and it goes too far. Our society\u2019s concept of justice rests heavily on lay participation in determining a person\u2019s guilt or innocence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not seen any real evidence that expanding the types of cases heard by a single judge will work to reduce the backlogs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Riel Karmy-Jones KC, the chair of the Criminal Bar Association, which represents criminal barristers, said: \u201cWhat they propose simply won\u2019t work \u2013 it is not the magic pill that they promise.<\/p>\n \u201cThe consequences of their actions will be to destroy a criminal justice system that has been the pride of this country for centuries, and to destroy justice as we know it.<\/p>\n \u201cJuries are not the cause of the backlog. The cause is the systematic underfunding and neglect that has been perpetrated by this government and its predecessors.\u201d<\/p>\n The proposals represent a U turn on Lammy\u2019s past views. In a social media comment posted five years ago, he said: \u201cTrials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea.\u201d<\/p>\n An MoJ spokesperson said: \u201cNo final decision has been taken by government. We have been clear there is a crisis in the courts, causing pain and anguish to victims \u2013 with 78,000 cases in the backlog and rising \u2013 which will require bold action to put right.\u201d<\/p>\n The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, also criticised the plans. She said: \u201cIt is a short-term decision that risks fairness, undermines public trust, and erodes the very foundation of our justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n The Liberal Democrats\u2019 justice spokesperson, Jess Brown-Fuller, described the reports as \u201ccompletely disgraceful\u201d and accused ministers of dismantling the justice system and failing victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jury trials for all except the most serious crimes such as rape, murder and manslaughter are set to be scrapped under radical proposals drawn up by David Lammy. In proposals that drew a swift backlash from senior lawyers, who said that they would not reduce court backlogs and could \u201cdestroy justice as we know it\u201d,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3767,1802,4516,999,1846,2282,8550,9860,4022],"class_list":{"0":"post-35212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-cases","9":"tag-considers","10":"tag-criminal","11":"tag-david","12":"tag-jury","13":"tag-justice","14":"tag-lammy","15":"tag-scrapping","16":"tag-trials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}