Blinding justice: cut jury sizes to seven and save time, says Labour’s David Lammy. Maybe it would, but it would almost certainly prejudice the result of difficult cases.
There is a reason we have 12 people in court juries and the idea of changing that number just to get through court cases faster is an offence to justice.
Labour’s shadow justice secretary, David Lammy, wants to resurrect so-called “wartime juries” of seven rather than 12 members, to speed up the process.
And the only casualty will be justice.
Why not just announce that anybody accused of a crime will be automatically declared guilty? That would save time. And that’s the intention here, right?
“Victims of rape, murder, domestic abuse, robbery and assault are facing delays of up to four years because of the government’s failure to act,” Mr Lammy said.
Right. And so are people who have been wrongly accused of those crimes.
Waiting for justice can be extremely stressful. Trust me – I know!
But it is better to let the wheels of justice grind slow and smooth than to risk even the possibility of injustice.
This plan would open the door to injustice, just to save a bit of time.
So I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I actually agree with the Tories that there should be no tinkering with the system at this time.
The justice system already gets enough flak for failing the public. There’s no justification for laying it open to even more.
Source: Coronavirus: Cut jury size to clear courts backlog – Labour – BBC News
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