The Law Society President and chairman of the Bar Council are out of order in opposing the new proposals to do away with juries in fraud cases.

These days complicated fraud trials can sometimes take nine months or more to be heard, and the strain on juries for continuous service in such matters is enormous.


It is not possible for a lay juror to comprehend, even with the best summing up, all the complicated points involved in a trial. Prosecutions are based on a number of allegations and the jury has to deal with numerous charges involved in a serious fraud situation. The mass of evidence required to prove these separate charges is voluminous and complicated, and difficult for the normal juror to appreciate.


In former days, in such cases the prosecution used to base its charges on one or two main issues. In the periods up to, say, 1970, the jury, which sometimes was a special jury, had to deal with limited issues, yet one or two main issues, on which it could find the defendant guilty or otherwise.


The longest fraud trial that I can remember, being one of the most complicated, was in the early 1960s where the whole trial and judgment took place within six weeks. Today, on the same set of circumstances, it would take nine months or more. The jurors are, therefore, currently placed in an impossible position so that where they do not understand - and in most cases they do not - they are inclined to bring in a verdict of not guilty. This explains why there is such a lack of success of prosecutions in criminal fraud cases.


Harry Kanter, London W1