Practitioners are set to march to parliament prior to the Courts and Tribunals Bill’s second reading
Criminal law solicitors in the UK are staging a protest over the Courts and Tribunals Bill’s proposed cutdowns to jury trials, reported the Law Society Gazette.
The London Criminal Courts' Solicitors Association is leading a march to parliament to lobby members prior to the bill’s second reading in the House of Commons. They will then proceed to a permitted location for the protest.
The Law Society of England and Wales had pushed back against the curbs, which were pitched by justice secretary and lord chancellor David Lammy last month. The parliamentary briefing paper published by Chancery Lane criticized the proposed model for not adequately proving that judge-only trials would reduce backlog considerably.
Lammy was urged to trial the recommendation of having cases heard by a judge and two magistrates – a proposal made by former UK criminal justice head Brian Leveson. The retrospective application of jury trials could also birth legal issues; moreover, the number of unrepresented defendants in magistrates’ courts with strict legal aid thresholds could tick up, according to the paper.
According to the Gazette, members of parliament had expressed concern over the curbs before Lammy introduced the Courts and Tribunals Bill. The jury trial restriction was also slammed by criminal barrister and television host Rob Rinder of the series” Judge Rinder.”
Rinder wrote in a letter addressed to members of parliament that the curbs marked “constitutional surrender”; moreover, the restriction suggested that “when the state seeks to take a person’s liberty, the voice of the public is optional,” per a snippet published by the Gazette.
“Offences carrying three-year sentences are not minor. They are life altering. They include serious assault, theft that can end a career, offences that can destroy reputation, housing and family life,” Rinder wrote in a snippet published by the Gazette. “Picture an ordinary person in your constituency, caught in an allegation that turns on a moment, a misunderstanding, a single contested account. One charge, one conviction, and liberty is lost, a livelihood ended, a family placed under strain, a future permanently altered.”
He added that a jury “does not guarantee perfection, but it does ensure that no single perspective, prejudice or institutional instinct decides a person’s fate.”
