News | The Thomas Report on the Effectiveness of Juries
Jonathan Holsgrove, Litigation Solicitor has a look back at one of the week's legal stories.
The main legal story of last week was the release of a Ministry of Justice report on the use of juries. The two year study by Professor Cheryl Thomas of University College London released earlier this week has supported the use of juries in criminal trials.
The report highlighted that the jury remains a 'fair, effective and efficient' way of determining criminal cases. Juries have been found to reach decisions in the vast majority of cases, convicting in 2/3 of cases. More importantly the research found that the perceived racial prejudice of the jury system was not correct. However, the only criticism of juries was their ignorance of the contempt of court laws. The report found that some jurors had used the internet to discover information about the case they were sitting on. Of greater concern was the finding that nearly half of all jurors surveyed did not know what to do if they came across improper conduct. Rather than blaming the jury the report identified the lack of information given to jurors as the root of this criticism.
The findings of Professor Thomas make interesting reading in a week where the first criminal trial without a jury came into the headlines when one of the accused fled from the court. The trial of the four men accused of the armed robbery of £1.75m from Heathrow airport in 2004 is being heard by a judge sitting alone. The is the first time the powers of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 have been used to prevent a miscarriage of justice if the jury were to be bribed or threatened to reach a certain verdict. The report lends support to both sides of the argument for and against the use of a jury in this case and highlights the difficulty of achieving a fine balance between lay involvement in the law and the administration of justice.
The use of jury trials is likely to continue to be a hotly debated topic in the future. For the time being juries appear to be doing a good job which can only be improved by the legal system providing better information and guidance to those chosen to fulfil this long standing civic duty.
