Original link: Justice secretary wants jury trials scrapped except in most serious cases / BBC.
I don't like the idea.
Juries is an essential part of the criminal justice system. Only using juries in cases for more than 5 years prison time is fundamentally changing the criminal justice system. Changing it in the wrong direction with less protection for the accused.
And the huge backlog is a poor excuse. Trials need to be done right. And the court system must be dimensioned to do that without a huge backlog. And I don't think UK have run out of jurors. They may have run out of court houses, judges, lawyers etc. but not jurors. So dropping jurors is not the right solution.