Jury still out on the rights and wrongs of tradition

It may be a new year, but it has been the same old legal issues provoking righteous indignation and fury in the media over the past week.The Times' letters page seems to have replaced the House of Commons as the arena for debate du jour, as no fewer than four letters appeared in Monday's edition discussing the rights and wrongs of trial by jury (January 7).

The ball began to roll with Ludovic Kennedy's missive of 2 January, where he claimed that 'at least half of proven miscarriages of justice since the war have been the consequences of judges, not juries, misinterpreting the facts'.

This was rebutted by District Judge Geddes of Worcester Crown Court, who claimed that 'judges do not decide the facts in jury trials, let alone interpret them', and moreover that 'miscarriages of justice have occurred, and will continue to occur, because witnesses tell lies under oath and jurors sometimes believe them'.The Guardian soon sprung to the defence of the jury trial, with a passionate - if somewhat tabloid-esque - demand for ministers to 'stop nobbling juries' (3 January).

Traditional juries are 'a direct link to the people', according to the paper's editorial, which criticised Lord Justice Auld's plans to cut the right to jury trial.

'The new system may be cheaper,' it argued, 'but its disadvantages far outweigh this advantage.' More criminal justice issues were under discussion this week, as the government signalled that 'defendants who hold up the criminal justice system by changing their plea to guilty on the day of their trial are to be targeted' and could end up with longer sentences (The Independent, 3 January).

Longer sentences were also being discussed for men who 'trafficked women and children to and through the UK, normally for an indefinite term of penal servitude working as prostitutes' (The Daily Telegraph, 3 January).

The current maximum penalty for a person who encouraged a child into prostitution is just two years, and according to Mr Justice Singer in a letter to The Times, 'that is very rarely imposed'.Criminal justice aside, another media bugbear reared its head this week as The Observer published the results of its investigation casting further doubt on the murder convictions of Sally Clark, the solicitor jailed for life for killing her two baby sons (6 January).

Clark's conviction was based in large part on the statistic quoted to the jury that there was a '73 million to one' chance of both babies dying of cot deaths - a statistic which was dismissed in The Observer by Peter Fleming, professor of child health at Bristol University, as 'of no relevance, potentially misleading and dangerous'.The paper's investigation, in tandem with BBC Radio 4, further found that both babies died at the height of lung infection epidemics, 'crucial information that no one knew at the time of her trial'.

In true Holmes style, it also claimed that the prosecution's star witness, Professor Sir Roy Meadow, 'prior to the trial, shredded a database on which key elements of his evidence were based'.

In 1999 Sir Roy wrote to the Crown Prosecution Service: 'I retired from my academic and clinical post in Leeds last September, at which time all confidential research material which might allow identification of individuals was shredded.'Another woman in the news, for somewhat less contentious reasons, was Sarah Harman, elder sister of Harriet and the subject of a somewhat fawning profile in The Times (5 January).

Ms Harman, who last week represented the women accusing Canterbury GP Clifford Ayling of indecent assault, 'is a redhead, and like her sister a beauty'.More was to follow - the 'striking' and 'elegant' Ms Harman has 'green, wide-apart eyes (a legacy from their Irish mother)', apparently, a 'crystalline voice, a bandbox chic appearance' and 'a natural fluency in oratory (like their ancestor Joe Chamberlain)'.

Oh, and she is also a solicitor specialising in 'child care, domestic violence and women whose drink and drug abuse prevents them from looking after their children', the writer added, almost as an afterthought.Victoria MacCallum