Sailesh Mehta interviewed by The World podcast

Sailesh Mehta was interviewed by US based podcast “The World” (with a listener base of 2.5 million) to discuss the proposals to significantly curb jury trials and its wider implications for the criminal justice system.

He spoke of how:

– jury trials had become of constitutional significance over the last 500 years

-there should be compelling reasons to change our system of justice in such a significant way.

-the Government had not piloted their proposals- nor had they been costed

-further it had provided no evidence to support the proposition that curtailing jury trials for all but the most serious cases will reduce the backlog of cases

Sailesh agreed that the backlog of cases (now about 80,000 in the Crown Courts) was inimical to justice. He commented: “Every day of the week our Crown Courts are underutilised.  On average, 15% or more of Crown Courts are empty. We should utilise these empty Courts by appointing more full-time Judges, allowing more part-time Judges to be utilised and to pay advocates enough to return to the Criminal Courts.  This would cost less than the Minister’s proposals and was guaranteed to reduce the backlog. These inefficiencies should be tackled before curtailing our right to trial by jury.”

Listen to the full interview here: