Auld prompts fresh row over jury trials

The battle over the right to jury trial has been reignited by the publication this week of the Auld review of criminal justice, with criticism also being levelled at the proposal for a new tier in the court structure.The Law Society and the Bar Council have slammed calls in Sir Robin Auld's 700-page report (for full details, see page 10) for a District Division, constituting a judge and two magistrates to exercise jurisdiction over 'either way' offences meriting up to two years' custody.Trial by jury would still be available for serious offences in the Crown Division, but magistrates would decide which tribunal should hear cases, leaving the defendant with no right of election.Law Society chief executive Janet Paraskeva said: 'While applauding unification, we are concerned that an intermediate court would add an unnecessary level of bureaucracy.'Graham White, chairman of the Society's criminal law committee, said the right to a jury trial had to be maintained because 'the performance of a jury is the performance of a democratic function'.However, Ms Paraskeva said the Society supported the abolition of exemptions to jury service, the inclusion of ethnic minority representation in cases involving race, and 'the idea of extending the current law on disclosure of a defendant's previous convictions', as proposed in a Law Commission report this week.Bar Council chairman Roy Amlot QC criticised proposals that a judge and assessors try serious fraud cases and that the prosecution could appeal against a perverse acquittal by a jury, saying that 'they place little trust in ordinary citizens'.Franklin Sinclair, chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association, supported the report on the whole, saying it was a vision of a 'legal Utopia'.

'If the government is willing to put in the resources to implement the changes, then they will save a lot of money in the long run,' he said.

'With the exception of the abolition of the right of election, I think the reform proposals are excellent'.He said he particularly supported the call for 'efficient and properly paid defence lawyers with ready access to their clients in custody'.John Wadham, solicitor and director of human rights organisationLiberty, strongly opposed the idea that previous convictions should be disclosed at trial, which he said 'may lead juries to convict where there is insufficient evidence and therefore to miscarriages of justice'.