Judges should present a list of questions to jurors in criminal trials to guide them in reaching a verdict, a senior judge suggested yesterday.

Lord Justice Moses said the move, which was recommended in Lord Justice Auld’s 2001 review of the criminal courts, would reduce the number of appeals made based on a trial judge’s summing up, and would help juries break any deadlock between them by identifying the issues and evidence about which they need further assistance.

Auld proposed in 2001 that a trial judge should turn the factual issues debated in court into a list of questions which would be written down before speeches to the jury. He said the jury should have to give a public response to each question.

Moses said this system would not prevent the jury from giving a perverse verdict where they wanted to do so, for example by answering a question, ‘are you sure that there was no lawful excuse for damaging the GM crops’ with a ‘resounding "no"’.

The Court of Appeal judge noted that, nine years after Auld’s proposal, there had been several recent cases in the coroner’s courts which had shown how judges are able to frame questions appropriately. Acting as coroner in the inquiry into the Menezes shooting, he said Lord Justice Hooper had given the jury 13 questions.

Moses said that trial judges are currently ‘fearful’ that their summing up may lead to an appeal, with the expense and distress that that would involve. In trying to avoid this, the summing up becomes longer, as trial judges engage in ‘this endless exercise in composing a defensive summing up’ that is ‘crafted to defend the trial from appeal’, he said.

The judge suggested that resolving the issues into a list of questions, which the trial judge would draft with the aid of counsel on both sides, would ‘reduce radically the possibility of appeals based on criticism of the summing up’.

Moses noted that summings up by judges ‘regularly last a day’ in trials lasting more than two weeks, of which there were 389 trials in the year to April 2010. He said criminal jury trials cost around £4,300 a day, or £7,000-a-day at the Old Bailey, making this ‘an expensive ticket to listen to the replay of the drama delivered in monotone’. He added that conviction appeals, frequently stemming from the summing up, cost £14,000 a day.

The Court of Appeal judge also suggested that the where the law requires evidence to be treated in a certain way, this should be explained to the jury at the time the evidence is given, rather than at the end. He said that in cases that last more than a week, the judge should summarise in writing, with the help of the advocates, what has occurred so far and any direction in relation to evidence or witnesses. He said this would alter the ‘tedious rhythm of passive observation’ for jurors and avoid a ‘lengthy lecture’ at the end.

Moses added that if a dispute between experts is expected, the judge, with the aid of counsel, should explain the terms to be adopted and the areas of agreement and disagreement before the evidence is called.