Comments on: First Modern Criminal Trial Without Jury Set for January 12th 2010

By: Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:56:44 +0000

It is today being reported that all four have been convicted:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8592505.stm

The BBC news article says:

The court often resembled a legal version of the X Factor, with a high-powered judge - Mr Justice Treacy rather than Simon Cowell in this case - considering impassively the presentations before him.

Evidence often had the air of a quiet conversation between old friends, with none of the normal rhetoric directed at juries.

By: Christy Walsh

Christy Walsh — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:22:42 +0000

The following quote is taken from an ongoing case in NI and highlights the dangers of Judge only Courts;
“… if a defendant has been denied a fair trial it will almost be inevitable that the conviction will be regarded unsafe, the present case in our view constitutes an exception to the general rule”
Lord Carswell, Appeal Judgment, January 2002

The following link is to a document detailing the standards of human rights in NI today (2nd February 2010);
http://www.christywalsh.com/Commissiongate.pdf

By: Frugal Dougal

Frugal Dougal — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:43:40 +0000

Big Kev, if you go to France or Italy, you will see that the various police forces have more “tools” avaliable to them than ours do. How come sometimes the bad guy’s the only one with a gun?

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:44:22 +0000

I attended the opening of the trial and have written an article on it at:

http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/robbery-trial-starts-without-jury.html

By: Big Kev

Big Kev — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 08:59:23 +0000

A very good piece. I hope that you don’t mind but I have circulated your article to fellow members of Sutton for Peace and Justice I guessed that it was only a matter of time before they tried the Diplock style courts over here. The police in the Uk have more tools at their disposal than any police force ina comparable demorcarcy. Our police are also unaccountable raiding a leading opposition politicians office in the house of commons stopping people for photographing a chip shop in Chatham detaining people or “kettling” them for twelve hours at a stretch and killing people live on television. The police could always argue that there was jury tampering who could argue that there was not. In this case no one has been arrested or charged with jury tampering. I have served twice on a jury, once at the Old Bailey back in the 70’s for 6 weeks I was on four trials two collapsed for various reasons on the other two we reached guilty verdicts. I served again three yaers ago for two weeks, we only sat through one complete trial the other four trials that we were involved in all collapsed because of what seemed to us as shoddy work by the CPS.

By: Frugal Dougal

Frugal Dougal — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:44:31 +0000

It’s the first trial of its kind for some time in Great Britain, but not in the UK: Edward Heath’s government was forced to bring in Diplock Courts in Northern Ireland due to terrorism, this might be a “dry-run” for the same thing here.

To your list of ways of preventing this I would add giving the police the tools to do their job, including arming them routinely.