Lammy knows rolling back jury trials is racist

Yesterday, the Canary published an article on justice secretary David Lammy confirming that defendants in ‘either-way’ trials will no longer have the right to a jury trial if their sentence would be three years or less. Today, as promised, we’ll go through some of the rebuttals to Lammy’s speech given by other MPs.

Jury trials—that’s not the argument you think it is

The deputy PM argued that, in England and Wales, magistrates have long handled most criminal cases. That is, around 90% of trials aren’t handled by a judge already. Overall, only 3% of trial cases go before a jury. Likewise, three-quarters of the trials that go to crown court will go before a jury.

Lammy seemed to think that these would be reassuring points in favour of rolling back the right to jury trial. However, they only served to beg the question: If so few trials go before a judge and jury, how will scrapping a fraction of them actually serve to reduce the backlog?

The bar council, the law society, the criminal bar association have all said that juries aren’t the problem. Even Lammy himself stated that a judge-alone trial would only be about 20% faster.

Whose line is it anyway?

And that’s not the only question raised by the justice secretary’s parliamentary speech. Tory MP Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, pointed out that:

the best opponent of the justice secretary’s plans to curb jury trials is the justice secretary himself.

This is quite a fun reveal: We didn’t know Jenrick was a Canary reader. You see, we actually used the same line ourselves in earlier reporting on Lammy’s plans. If the shadow chancellor is reading today, we’d like to invite him to go fuck himself.

However, his/our point was a good one. Back in 2020, Lammy published a report on racial disparity in the justice system. He pointed out that Black and brown people often opt for a jury trial due to their recognition of racism among the judiciary. Likewise, he stated that juries will always have more diverse experience than a single judge, and that juries help to eliminate prejudice.

In other words, Lammy knows that his current line of argument is racist.

Jury trials—’Miscarriages of justice’

Labour’s own Diane Abbott — often a bastion of reason within the PLP — made a similar point. She pointed out that Lammy waxed lyrical about wanting to help victims. In particular, he spoke about wanting swift justice for victims of violence against women and girls. However, Abbott stated:

The entire house is concerned about victims, including attacks on women and girls, but the entire house is also concerned about the men and women who will undoubtedly suffer miscarriages of justice if the right to trial by jury is curtailed.

She went on to ask how Lammy could stand up and talk about rolling back the right to a jury trial:

when he knows very well the category of defendant who will suffer the ill-effects of that?

Lammy, in response, bizarrely pointed out that many of the crimes committed by women command a sentence of no more than 12 months, and are usually handled by magistrates. He then tried to turn the conversation back to victims, stating:

It cannot be right that we’re asking women to wait.

So, when Abbott stated that the justice secretary knew who would lose out from the lack of jury trials: apparently, he did not.

Again: FUND THE COURTS

Robert Jenrick also pointed out that, on the morning of the debate, 50 crown courtrooms sat empty in England alone. Likewise, 21,000 court days went unused this year. If they were funded, estimates hold that the trial backlog would actually have shrunk by 10,000, rather than growing.

Lammy pointed out that many Crown and Magistrates’ Courts closed under Tory austerity. In his original speech, he argued that funding alone would not fix the problem. This places his assessment of the issue at odds with over 100 lawyers who stated outright that any funding should go to additional court sitting days within the existing system.

Those same lawyers also pointed out that Lammy’s new judge-alone court system would still place strain on existing court infrastructure. They’d still need holding cells, courtrooms, waiting rooms and the rest. Yesterday, the Lib Dem’s Jess Brown-Fuller echoed this sentiment. She highlighted the £1.3bn court maintenance backlog for our crumbling judicial infrastructure, which Lammy’s plans would only serve to entrench.

Time and again in yesterday’s parliamentary debate, Lammy chose to evade the questions that were put to him.

He had no response to his own former arguments that his current course of action will disproportionately disadvantage Black and brown people, and that eroding the right to jury trials will entrench racial disparity in the justice system.

He had no decent answer to why he was choosing to plough money into a new branch of the judiciary, rather than better funding and fixing the current infrastructure.

All he could do was appeal to the idea that swift justice is true justice. However, he missed a simple fact: the system he is setting up may indeed be marginally faster, but it certainly cannot be more just.

Featured image via the Canary