The Jury's Out?

22 BACK PAGE LAW STORIES 12 June 2020 | www.newlawjournal.co.uk ‘a huge success’ although (it needs to be added) they were despised by many in the community. As a prison reformer and a campaigner against the death penalty, the lawyer was both avowedly progressive in his outlook and anti-jury on the basis that they lacked accountability. There was ‘nothing illiberal about questioning the value of the jury system of criminal justice’, he once wrote. Solutions The human rights group JUSTICE has been exploring technological solutions including hosting two virtual jury trials. There is nothing new with court videolinks but the The jury’s out? novelty of the group’s project idea was to dispense with the need for courtrooms Jon Robins examines the potentially damaging altogether. That the technology was clunky will impact of the COVID-19 crisis on jury trials come as little surprise to any readers forced to endure much of their lockdown © iStockphoto/ jimkruger on office meetings conducted through s nothing safe beyond the insidious reach Disaster the medium of apps like Skype or Zoom. of the COVID-19 pandemic? Last month For many defence lawyers, the cessation For the JUSTICE project it was, in the we learned our right to trial by jury (‘The of trials is a career-threatening disaster. words of court artist and observer Isobel Ilamp that shows that freedom lives’, to A Bar Council survey of more than 3,500 Williams, the ‘foetid bone-strewn cave that use the well-worn Lord Devlin quote) could barristers found that more than half of is YouTube. I can see that people are trying be trimmed for the first time since the advocates (56%) claimed not to be able very hard in ghastly circumstances and I am Old Bailey was being pummelled during survive another six months in practice. sure that things will improve,’ she wrote. the Blitz. For those remanded in prison or bail, it JUSTICE’s own evaluation of the exercise Has the coronavirus changed the justice is a nightmare as lives are put on hold recognised bandwidth issues but noted that system forever? asked a recent headline indefinitely with potentially devastating the technology held out and there were in The Observer. The presumption of consequences; and for the victims of crime, upsides. ‘The defendant was treated with innocence was ‘an indispensable feature it means prolonging the agony before much more dignity in this experiment than of our society’ and the jury its ‘lifeblood’, justice is finally done. when they are placed in an enclosed dock wrote Jeremy Dein QC in the letters pages Not all lawyers uncritically subscribe to at the side or back of a courtroom as is the of the same paper. ‘It must not become the hallowed status of juries. For example, norm,’ the authors side. A separate ‘virtual another victim of this crisis.’ Geoffrey Robertson QC, the human room’ was provided for the defendant to That twelve good men (and women) rights lawyer and founder of Doughty consult with their counsel in private as and true be hemmed in, side-by-side, on Street Chambers, dared challenge legal opposed to being in the dock; as well as a their narrow benches for weeks on end orthodoxy. ‘We believe sentimentally that separate space for the jury, clerk and judge before being confined to a wood-panelled trial by jury is a defendant’s fundamental to access the bundle. The judge kept what jury room for deliberations is neither a right but why not give them the additional he called a ‘benevolent and kindly eye’ on practical nor tempting prospect in the right to choose instead a reasoned verdict jurors to make sure they didn’t nod off or age of coronavirus. So Lord Burnett, head from a judge, as they have, for example, in seek alternative online entertainment and of judiciary in England and Wales, is most Australian states?’ he argued. That would ‘nudge them back into the room’. considering ‘radical measures’ including would get courts back up and running The criminal barrister Joanna Hardy cutting the number of jurors from a dozen ‘even if barristers and judges have to argue recently blogged about her own experience to as few as seven. He has also flagged through their face masks’, the Australian- of remote justice: she in her kitchen, having a judge sit with two lay magistrates born QC said. the judge a couple of miles away in his as an alternative to juries. In some cases, Robertson argued courtroom, and the prisoner behind bars All jury trials were suspended as of 23 defendants could be better off. ‘When I ‘just a few streets away’. Even in this simple March and it is reckoned that every month defended Irish terrorist suspects and black set up, technology proved a challenge and another 1,000 cases are added to the pre- activists in earlier days, juror prejudice the prisoner sounded as though he was COVID backlog of some 37,000 cases. Trials was inevitable due to oppressive police ‘a million miles away’. ‘Is this a sticking tentatively resumed on 18 May with new security arrangements in court precincts plaster or the new normal?’, the lawyer juries sworn in at the Old Bailey and Cardiff and sensational media coverage, and it mused. She concluded that the answer Crown Court ‘under special arrangements resulted in some notoriously wrongful depended less on the technology but to maintain the safety of all participants convictions,’ he said. ‘where we choose to draw the line’. NLJ and the jury’. Proceedings are split between Juries were also dispensed with in two courts so parties to the trial, journalists Northern Ireland for terrorism cases in Dr Jon Robins is an NLJ columnist, editor and the public can socially distance. Jurors the single-judge Diplock courts which ran of The Justice Gap & visiting lecturer at will be able to use the second courtroom for over three decades. The late Sir Louis Middlesex University and Winchester for their deliberations. Blom-Cooper argued that the courts were University..

Load more