Justice secretary Alex Norris has confirmed that the government will not proceed with plans for juryless crown court trials, a move announced little over six months after MPs voted for the measures under his predecessor. The decision reverses proposals that would have seen all but the most serious cases decided by judges alone rather than a jury of 12 peers.
The U-turn has been welcomed by legal professionals, with the ECHO yet to find a single one who supported the idea. In March, one solicitor advocate who regularly attends the Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts described the proposals as a "sledgehammer to crack a nut."
Bar Council welcomes move away from jury trials
While lengthy and complex fraud and financial offences trials remain on the table, the Bar Council has welcomed the decision. Chairman Kirsty Brimelow KC said: "This is a significant and welcome move away from reducing the only part of the criminal justice system that actually works, namely jury trials."
So if not here, where do the causes of the much-maligned backlog lie? Liverpool Crown Court has been widely heralded as a standard bearer for best practice, with among the shortest waiting lists in the country, but even here things are far from perfect.
Delays in Liverpool Crown Court
On a recent Tuesday morning, courtrooms saw barristers and staff waiting, passing time chatting about holidays and cases past and present. The clock ticked well past 11.30am before proceedings began, with the delay apparently due to a busload of dock officers arriving from prisons an hour-and-a-half behind schedule.
Such inefficiencies stack up. In one courtroom, the late start meant only one case on a light list of two sentencings and two trials was completed by the 1pm lunch break. One barrister told the ECHO that a lack of a security officer left a complainant in a sex offences trial facing a prolonged wait in the witness suite before giving evidence, losing the entire afternoon session as further witnesses lined up for the morning were unavailable later.
In another court, a man charged with attempted murder, due in the dock from 10.30am, was produced from jail far later than scheduled. Two interpreters hired from an agency were left sitting on the landing for hours before the hearing was called on at around 12.45pm.
Chronic underfunding as root cause
Such delays might seem trivial, but this basic error led to hours of court time and thousands of pounds idled away. Days like these are not uncommon. Even defendants in high-profile murder trials before High Court judges are occasionally brought from prisons hours late, and have even been taken to the wrong court entirely.
On another Tuesday, a different spanner in the works will be to blame, but follow the trail of breadcrumbs and you will always be led back to a common root cause: chronic underfunding. The government may have stopped picking on jurors as a convenient target, but if justice is to be done in a timely manner, the courts are in critical need of investment. More courtrooms open five days a week, fixing creaking infrastructure, upgrading IT systems, boosting staff numbers, and increasing the efficiency of transporting defendants and officers to court are all needed.
