Link: Drug smuggling case to be heard without jury – Telegraph.
Readers who feel voluntary arbitration on sharia law principles is "the thin end of the wedge" for the future of the English legal system have missed the thin ends of so many more important wedges. Jury trial, for example, was the last English institution in which we could have any confidence. For so long as randomly selected citizens decided guilt or innocence, we had a protection against wrongful conviction.
Apart from protecting us against the cynicism of case-hardened judges and the bias of those selected over a long period for their attractiveness to a politician (and perhaps even on the basis of their political donations) juries provided something more fundamental. What legal historians call "criminal equity" (refusal to convict the "guilty" where the law is unjust) means that a tyrannical government cannot guarantee to enforce its will as long as juries exist. A government criminalising one formerly legal activity per day must always have been painfully aware that criminal equity would kick in.
"Hard cases make bad law" and, no doubt, many readers will feel that there is "a real and present danger that jury tampering would take place" in this particular case. You are meant to feel that way. The option for a non-jury trial was introduced four years ago. The government has waited patiently for such a good opportunity to swing its axe at one of the key planks of English justice. Rest assured; there is such a "real and present danger" in every jury trial. The relatives of the accused made a point of hanging around in the car park noting the numbers of jurors’ cars during the trial in which my wife was a juror last year. The response of the jurors was that of the English yeoman. They came by bus and on foot and they convicted. Future governments will undoubtedly wish to protect such citizens from their own courage. "For your own good" is the mantra of the totalitarian everywhere, from the overly-protective mother to other ruthless dictators.
Note also the phrase "jury tampering." Would you consider a threat to injure or kill yourself or your family to be mere "tampering" dear reader? What this anodyne phrase means is that law and order has so broken down that the government admits it cannot protect innocent citizens doing their civic duty. All the more reason to protect the last effective institution in the justice system – and the only one not controlled by the government which wrought such chaos – I should have thought.
Since the government measures the efficiency of criminal justice by conviction rates (as if a wrongful conviction were just as good a thing as a rightful one) I predict that this first non-jury trial will be hailed a success. Pretty soon, there will be more and more such "successes." One of them, dear reader, may be the trial that convicts you of a crime you did not commit. All of them will help to make English criminal justice the sort of "success" only its mother could love.
The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
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