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What problem are judge-only trials addressing?

Is it eg a lack of jurors? Judge trials are quicker because you don't need to get lay people up to speed? Judge trials are less likely to collapse and so need to be run again? Or something else?

Read the report - link posted above.

There's actually an awful lot more in it than this proposal (which is actually outside the official scope of his brief).
A lot of nuts and bolts procedural stuff which would speed up the existing somewhat haphazard system.

This just happens to be the most newsworthy.

Heh. The UK's 7 second attention span media strikes again.

It really does. For example, most of the London press have confined their foreign coverage to snide and rude comments about Macron this week, with no coverage at all of potentially critical changes in China.

I think they are too dumb to even dumb down.

We could call them... Magistrates Courts!

And you know what, let's offer defendents a choice: they can *choose* the Jury trial over the Magistrates Court, but the potential punishments would be more severe if they chose the Jury trial and are convicted.

What do you guys think?

Seems sane, but does that eventually lead to US style plea bargaining where you can risk 200 years in prison and/or a crippling legal bill, or admit to things you didn't do?

It's just below the Event Horizon in this country.

"I wasn't going to tell you this. I've been listening to the distress signal, and I, um, think I made a mistake in the translation....

I thought it said "liberate me" - "save me." But it's not "me." It's "liberate tutemet" - "save yourself." And it gets worse...

There - I think that says "ex inferis." "Save yourself... from Hell." Look, if what Doctor Weir tells us is true, this ship has been beyond the boundaries of our universe, of known scientific reality. Who knows where it's been, what it's seen... or what it's brought back with it?"

Juries are probably the worst way of determining guilt, apart from all the others of course. I generally find Juries take their role very seriously. Even if I disagree with their decisions I can usually see and understand how they got there. There is the odd exception, of course, but the same could be said about Sheriffs or Justices of the Peace. If I was ever facing a serious charge I would want a jury.

I am tentative about this, but I suspect I think that if I faced a serious charge and was guilty and wanted maximum chance of getting off I would want a jury. If I was innocent I would prefer a judge.

Hmm... I have thought about this but I think that the honest answer would be which judge and, I suppose, what Jury. Some modern judges are more than a bit tick box. They are very reluctant to consider that a complainer might just be lying but on the other hand they are very open to the idea that there might not be a sufficiency of evidence to convict. Others are, shall we say, a bit more open minded.

Juries in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, in my experience, are quite prone to convicting. Juries in Glasgow, Livingston and Dundee less so.

The charge I am most likely to face would be death by dangerous driving. I do a lot of driving, often under pressure to get to my destination and when my brain is full of other things (as well as feathers, of course). Juries in those type of cases tend to be just a bit more sympathetic (having been there or nearly there in many cases) than Judges applying the legal tests. So I would still prefer a jury for that, whether I was guilty or innocent.