Ministry of Justice set to take away the right to a trial by jury

Those accused of a crime could soon have their right to a fair trial by jury taken away in a new move by the Ministry for Justice (MOJ). The Minister for Courts, Sarah Sackman, told the Guardian that the new move would stop people from “gaming the system.”

Due to 80,000 cases, trials by jury can take years to happen. Sackman claimed that people accused of dealing drugs and burglary were “laughing in the dock” after choosing the right to have a trial by jury.
She said:

They are coming into court and laughing in the face of the justices, knowing they can go back out on the streets and commit further offences.

Ministry aims to get victims justice quicker

Sackman will announce early next month that a huge number of cases will instead be heard by only a magistrate and a judge. The Ministry of Justice will instead create a proposed “judge-only” division at the Crown Court to hear cases that don’t involve violence. This is off the back of a review by Lord Leveson, which was commissioned by Shabana Mahmood when she was still at the MOJ. It will, according to the Guardian, “significantly shrink the court backlog by 2029”.

Speaking about the changes, Sackman referred to how the courts’ backlog meant that many victims of rape and abuse were waiting between two and four years for their abusers to face justice. She said:

I’ve spoken to victims and survivors who tell me they’ve lost their jobs, they suffered mental breakdown all the while that they were waiting. More victims and witnesses are pulling out of the process because they cannot wait that long. That is compelling illustration of justice delayed being justice denied.

Throwing black people under the bus, again

Sackman reiterated that the move would only affect less serious crimes:

Do we think that someone who has stolen a bottle of whisky from a minimart should receive the right to trial by jury?

But what happens when you come from a minority who is more likely to be accused of crimes such as petty theft? Campaigners previously warned against the move, which would especially disadvantage people of colour, who are already treated poorly in the system. They are also barely represented in the court system, with just 12% of judges being from an ethnic minority and only 1% of judges being Black.

Matt Foot, the co-director of the charity Appeal, previously said:

Reducing jury rights will inevitably increase the number of miscarriages of justice. We know that judges tend to be privately educated and white, which is a long way away from the makeup of juries. To reduce jury rights at the time when we know through the [Louise] Casey review that we have serious problems within the police of racism and homophobia and such is completely unjustified.

Lammy to the rescue, apparently

However, Sackman brushed these fears off, instead referring to the fact that the Ministry was now being run by a black man. Mind you, it is David Lammy. She said:

No one cares more deeply in government about the challenge presented by racial disparities and disproportionality in our justice system than the deputy prime minister who undertook the Lammy review when he was in opposition,”

That would be the same David Lammy who has been repeatedly under fire for enabling Israel’s Genocide of Palestine.

The proposed changes are set to be legislated on in the New Year, with little sign that the government will see sense before then. If this legislation goes through, it will signal a shift in how people of colour are prosecuted in an already horrifically racist system. All judge-only trials will do is give free rein to a system who views anyone who isn’t white as guilty.

Featured image via the Canary