CrimLaw

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British Rights in Jeopardy:

You know, having practiced criminal law for a while, I do not have a really strong belief that the federal or State constitutions really provide protections for any but the most greivous violations of my clients' rights. Day after day I see fantasyland decisions from the courts which clearly are not in line with the real world applications (for example - allowing pretext stops or saying that citizens can just walk away from an officer who stops them on the street). Still there are some rights which are so black and white that they cannot be taken away completely. One of these is the right to a jury. You can set up a system like Virginia which makes the cost of a jury trial prohibitive to the point that if you are charged with a serious crime you are insane if you exercise the option but you cannot take the right completely away.

In Britain the government and police are telling horror stories in order to try and scare people into giving up their right to a jury of their peers. All they have to do is pass a law. The problem, as I see it, is that the issues which they have raised are not jury problems. They are security problems. They don't indicate failures in the jury system - they indicate massive failures on the part of whoever is in charge of court security. The question is whether they can keep people from realizing that long enough to give up this essential liberty in order to gain a little temporary safety.

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