UK Law Articles
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The Times
October 11 1999
Bar fights Straw over jury trial curb
FRANCES GIBB, LEGAL EDITOR, REPORTS FROM THE BAR CONFERENCE IN LONDON
JACK STRAW is on a collision course with the legal profession after Bar leaders declared uncompromising opposition to scrapping a defendant's right to choose jury trial.
Dan Brennan, QC, the chairman of the Bar, told a record 800 barristers at their annual conference at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London at the weekend that it would oppose the proposal - expected in the Queen's Speech - because it amounted to an attack on human rights.
Barristers believe that the plan would increase delays and costs and deny justice to thousands, especially black people. "We will try to persuade Jack Straw that his first reaction to these proposals [when Shadow Home Secretary] was that they were ill-advised, short-sighted and unlikely to work," Mr Brennan told the conference.
The proposal would affect 18,000 defendants a year charged with a range of middle-ranking offences, including theft, common assault and some drugs offences. Cases can be tried either by magistrates or in the Crown Court by judge and jury, but under the plan magistrates would choose the venue, not defendants. There would be a right of appeal to a judge against the magistrates' decision.
Barristers say that the appeals are likely to be time-consuming, costly and often end with jury trial being granted. They would disproportionately affect black defendants, who often believe they cannot obtain justice before magistrates.
Mr Straw told The Times on Friday that in other jurisdictions defendants did not have the right to choose jury trial and in Scotland it was decided by the prosecutor - and that had never been criticised. He hinted that the Bar was protecting its own interests: "It is very hard sometimes to distinguish when the Bar is fighting from a trades union stance and when it is concerned about the administration of justice."
The plan has united much of the legal profession. The Law Society, representing nearly 80,000 solicitors in England and Wales, is opposed to it, while David Calvert-Smith, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, is believed privately to have strong reservations. But Lord Bingham of Cornhill, the Lord Chief Justice, who persuaded Mr Straw to include a right of appeal, backs the plan.
Judge Gerald Butler, QC, also suggested that barristers appeared to be looking after their own interests. "It is a reform that, in my judgment, is plainly right and is long overdue. The Home Secretary was right that the choosing of jury trial was 'too often a defendant working the system'. I regard almost everything I have heard put forward in opposition to this change as not only wrong, but plainly wrong.
"Trial at Crown Court is an expensive occasion and I do not regard it as right that a man with five pages of conviction for shoplifting should be able to choose this option, at taxpayers' expense, particularly where the evidence against him is overwhelming."
