Juries

The Court of Appeal has overturned a man’s conviction for sexual assault on his young cousin due to a defect in the trial judge’s charge to the jury. Delivering judgment for the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice Peter Charleton considered that: “Proof in a criminal trial is beyond reason

The UK's justice secretary, David Lammy, has been accused by senior barristers of misusing statistics about rape cases collapsing in what they describe as a “cynical” attempt to justify plans to abolish jury trials for roughly half of Crown Court cases. Mr Lammy has repeatedly claimed th

Juries are to be scrapped in trials where defendants face up to three years' imprisonment in England and Wales. The UK government has confirmed its plans to introduce what it calls "Canadian-style juryless trials", claiming they will help to cut delays in criminal justice system — which lawyer

Magna Carta provides justification for restricting jury trials to only the most serious offences, a UK cabinet minister has claimed, prompting accusations that Labour is “selectively quoting” the charter to defend sweeping proposed reforms. Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime

Major curbs on the ancient right to be tried by a jury in England and Wales are reportedly under consideration. The UK's justice secretary, David Lammy, is weighing up proposals to guarantee the right to a jury trial only for defendants facing charges such as rape, murder, manslaughter or other offe

Thousands of defendants in England and Wales could lose the automatic right to have their cases heard by a jury under sweeping reforms proposed by a senior judge aiming to ease a record court backlog. Sir Brian Leveson, the former Court of Appeal judge who led the government-commissioned review, has

Northern Ireland's justice minister has expressed confidence in the level of support provided to jurors after a man was diagnosed with PTSD following a murder trial. There have been calls for change following a BBC interview with Lee Thompson, who said he was deeply affected by the graphic footage s

The Bar of Ireland has backed proposals to include non-citizens on juries for the first time. The Department of Justice recently consulted on recommendations made by the Law Reform Commission in a paper on jury reform published more than a decade ago.

There are “systemic weaknesses” in the way English juries make decisions and these are likely to be contributing to the conviction of innocent people, failures to convict the guilty, and inequalities, new research warns. The current legal rules involving procedure and evidence are not co

At least 56 miscarriages of justice have occurred in England and Wales in which the jury was split, according to a charity that wants jury unanimity reintroduced. A report by Appeal found that majority verdicts “arguably dilute the principle of reasonable doubt” and have enabled miscarri

Majority verdicts were introduced in part to dilute the influence of ethnic minority and working class jurors, according to new research. Undertaken by miscarriage of justice charity Appeal, the study found that the rationale for the introduction of majority verdicts in 1967, as opposed to unanimous

The High Court has determined that a decision by the Special Criminal Court to certify a miscarriage of justice was within the range of reasonable decisions and was not irrational. Delivering judgment for the High Court, Ms Justice Garrett Simons found that the decision of the Special Criminal Court

Researchers have found that defendants who don’t “swear by Almighty God” when in court run a higher risk of being found guilty by jurors who themselves swear by God. In countries such as Britain and Ireland court witnesses must declare they will provide truthful evidence, but those

Scottish academics have called for judges to stop directing juries to take body language into account when assessing the credibility of witnesses. Sixty-four mock juries were set up for research, featuring a total of 863 participants. Half of them were shown a recorded rape trial while the remainder

There have been just under 50 convictions for juror intimidation in Ireland in the past five years, according to new figures. Information provided to Catherine Murphy TD by the Department of Justice shows that there have been 210 prosecutions under section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1999 since 2