If you want to understand the underlying reason that the Govt. (in the person of David Lammy) wants to restrict trial by jury, don't take the claims it will resolve the courts backlog too seriously (even Lammy admits it will have only a small effect over time), look at what juries often do.... which is not just take prosecutors claims at face value!
Yup, they're unreliable in the exercise of political repression & so need to be removed!
@ChrisMayLA6 I do agree that the Government has forgotten that not everybody who is prosecuted is guilty. It is particularly in this kind of case where a jury doesn't even need to be perverse to think that the defendant in celebrating the jailbreak of 7 October was not thereby expressing support for Hamas. You could think that she is an awful human being for her view and still think that she was not promoting Hamas. The Filton case, apart from the criminal damage charges, is similar.
It is not obvious that the judges will be more compliant. The Diplock courts in Northern Ireland didn't significantly increase the conviction rates. It could be that they did significantly increase convictions in the political cases. I don't envy the judges. As the secret barrister pointed out, they are much more susceptible to political pressure than juries
Indeed, there are all sorts of problems in the justice system but the 'unreliability' of juries doesn't seem to be one, even when its argued that they get confused in complex fraud cases - to which the answer is, explain the criminal action better!
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Roberto von Archimboldi