Jury trials have been in the spotlight in the last few weeks, with two significant speeches by senior judges focusing on juries. The lord chief justice called for tough sanctions against jurors who surf the web to find information about defendants and witnesses in the case they are sitting on (more of that later), while Court of Appeal judge Lord Justice Moses made strong criticisms of the current process for summing up by trial judges – and suggested, controversially, that the judge should set jurors a list of questions to assist them in reaching their verdict.

Moses is clearly concerned by the huge amount of time judges currently spend summing up – a judge’s summing up often lasts an entire day, with each day of a Crown court trial costing £4,300. He does not blame the trial judges for this, but acknowledges that at present they are forced to conduct ‘defensive summing up’, because summings up are so frequently used as a grounds for appeal.

Moses suggests that, rather than going over the facts again at length, it would be preferable for the judge to distil the issues into a series of questions to be answered by the jury; a proposal originally put forward by Lord Justice Auld back in 2001. The questions would be drawn up by the judge with the aid of counsel from both sides, but controversially, in Auld’s recommendation, which Moses appears to support, the jury would be required to publicly answer each question.

Moses maintains that the public answers would not stop the jury from giving any decision it wanted. As an example, he said a jury would be free to answer a question such as ‘are you sure that there was no lawful excuse for damaging the GM crops’, with a ‘resounding no’.

But I’m not convinced.

Jurors may be happy to return a defiant, straightforward ‘not guilty’ plea in relation to someone who may be clearly guilty, but whom the jury does not wish to see punished – perhaps because the defendant was acting out of principle, or some other reason. But once the jurors are forced to answer a series of questions composed by the judge, all of which would point to a conviction if answered truthfully, and none of which asks whether the defendant actually deserves to be punished, will they still be as brave? I suspect not.

Another problem is the formulation of the questions. If trial judges already have difficulty in phrasing their summing up in a way that clearly does not prejudice a case (which, presumably, is the reason why there are so many appeals based on the summing up), will they be any better at forming questions that do not lean towards a particular verdict? Surely making the questions completely balanced will be a very difficult task. Moses points out some successful examples from the coroners’ courts, but rolling it out to every trial judge in the country is another matter.

Moses suggests that counsel on both sides could have input into the questions. But what if they fail to agree? How much time will be spent seeking a consensus, or will their views be ignored by the judge, presumably opening up the risk of an appeal based on the questions themselves?

Placing more power in the hands of judges in this way would, in my view, undermine the legitimacy of trial by jury, and could damage public confidence in the justice system. After all, whether rightly or wrongly, trial judges are perceived to be too prosecution-minded, except in cases such as rape, where they are considered by some to be too cynical about victims. Placing more power in their hands, rather than the 12 men and women of the jury, would be a risky move.

Not that jurors are faultless. As the head of the judiciary Lord Judge indicated in a speech last week, jurors are defying the rules by searching the web for information on defendants and witnesses in court cases, meaning that their deliberations are sometimes influenced by facts and assumptions that stem from outside the courtroom.

This is alarming, though not surprising. Jurors have no right to ask questions in court, but there will always be aspects of the case that they want to know more about. Doing a Google search is an obvious temptation.

But it is dangerous. How many rape prosecutions have failed because jurors found raunchy party pictures of the alleged victim on Facebook, and decided it was probably consensual sex with a girl like that? Maybe none – but no one can be sure.

Local newspapers will often report a nasty conviction, but they won’t necessarily give the same publicity when it is successfully overturned. How many jurors have been influenced by past convictions they saw online that were actually quashed on appeal?

The judiciary is now alive to the danger, and Judge suggests tough sanctions against jurors who break the rules. That must be right.

But I have an added suggestion. Perhaps there should also be an obligation on fellow jurors that they should notify the judge straight away if one of their number mentions something they have found out on the internet, with that juror immediately disqualified. That way, if some jurors simply cannot resist the temptation to conduct their own research, at least it will be harder for them to use it to influence the others.