December 3, 2025
Red Lion Chambers members have been highly active across broadcast, print and online media this week to defend the right to jury trial and challenge government proposals for judge‑alone hearings.
Interviews include:
BBC News
“Imposing an untried, untested layer of complexity and cost in the form of any new division of the Crown Court on our desperately underfunded system with its crumbling infrastructure is counter intuitive”
Riel Karmy-Jones KC– in her role as Chair of The Criminal Bar Association– spoke to BBC News: https://lnkd.in/eB6px-5f
Financial Times
“Judges might well find that they have to have security measures in place to protect them going to and from court…Judges would have to write their judgments, which would be public, and as individuals they are more exposed to threat as a result”
Riel Karmy-Jones KC (CBA Chair) for the FT: https://lnkd.in/eVZjhJ8y
LBC News, Nick Ferrari Breakfast Show
“The system would become more inefficient than more efficient”
Simon Spence KC FRSA DipABRSM spoke to Nick Ferrari on LBC News: https://lnkd.in/exvcj-w4 listen from 02:07:42
BBC Radio 1
“There is a protection against bias when you have 12 minds mulling over a question versus one”
Zoë Chapman was asked by Radio 1’s Newsbeat programme today (2 Dec) to discuss the significance of Jury Trials to their 15-29 years listenership
Listen from 08:45: https://lnkd.in/ebq5XjmC
Joshua Rozenberg “A Lawyer Writes”
Joshua Rozenberg, in his latest Substack “A Lawyer Writes” cites RLC member Professor Laura Hoyano for her insights into the Canadian court system. She has warned that using Canada as a model for reform could erode the common law protections that have long upheld the jury system in England and Wales. Read here: https://lnkd.in/eVh_Fd94