Reuters
—
Britain will remove the right to trial by jury for criminal cases for some less serious offenses to address a growing crisis in the court system, justice minister David Lammy said on Tuesday.
Britain’s judicial system is creaking, with tens of thousands of criminal cases stuck in a court backlog and jails so full that prisoners are being released early to ease the strain, with instances convicts being freed by mistake.
The new measures to restrict jury trial would apply to cases where a prison sentence was likely to be less than three years, and would not include offenses such as murder, rape, robbery and arson, said Lammy, who is also deputy prime…
