Dear Editor
The Labour Government, in doing away with jury trials for most offences with a likely sentence under three years, including the majority of assaults, burglaries and sexual offences (nothing serious, then), reassures us that rape, murder, manslaughter and ‘other public interest charges’ will still be dealt with by juries, even though the savings will be modest to say the least.
It might be argued that while magistrates and lawyers are qualified in the law, juries are ‘just a bunch of amateurs’; however, as G K Chesterton remarked, this preference for ‘professionals’ can be taken too far, for when society ‘wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round’. And this approach, he reminds us, is not without precedent – for thus Jesus selected the Twelve Disciples.
Critics may object that one of the Twelve turned out to be a rotter, but although Judas misused his own privilege of free will to reach a wrong opinion, he did not manage to sway the opinions of the other 11. A magistrate sitting alone, however, will have no one to sway his opinions and his prejudices.
Ann Farmer
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