Austerity’s authoritarian trajectory: why jury trials are under attack
FW Pomeroy’s Statue of Justice standing atop the Central Criminal Court building, Old Bailey, LondonPROPOSALS to restrict the right to trial by jury are presented as the only way to salvage a system in crisis.
Former judge Sir Brian Leveson says we must act to avoid “total system collapse.” The backlog in court cases is huge — 77,000 cases await trial in the Crown Court — and Leveson is right that leaving defendants and victims of crime waiting years can have a terrible impact on their lives.
But these are dangerous proposals which must be seen in context: firstly, of the cuts to justice budgets from 2010 onwards, and secondly, of the increasing authoritarianism of the state and the courts which is already undermining jury trials.
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[M]inisters may have other motives. As Tim Crosland of Defend Our Juries has warned, authorities are increasingly wary of the way a “jury of one’s peers” — that is, of randomly selected ordinary people — tends to resist political instruction and acquit defendants for actions they deem morally justifiable.
Judges have resorted to ordering defendants not to explain their actions, even banning references to climate change in court in some cases involving direct action by environmentalists.
Removing the right to a jury trial entirely from a swathe of offences increases the state’s power to shape prosecution outcomes.
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