TRIAL BY JURY 'ECCENTRIC' IN EU EYES

Published in the Daily Telegraph, 21/01/00

Sir,

Jack Straw's Bill to restrict the right to jury trial is puzzling because of its lack of convincing motivation. He talks of costs, but the hoped for saving, £100 million, is really not worth the dilution of the quality of justice.

After all, the right to trial by one's peers is a cornerstone of our liberties as a free people, a reason for fighting off various invasion attempts in history, which cost quite a bit more.

But one remark by Mr Straw (report, Jan. 14) does give us a clue to what may be behind this. He describes our right to jury trial as "frankly eccentric". Not "unreasonable"; "eccentric". Usually, we compare our system of criminal justice with similar ones, notably those of other English-speaking countries. There, we are not at all eccentric in our right to jury trial, for they derived it from us.

Where we British are "eccentric" in this regard, however, is in the EU. No state in continental Europe has what we would consider trial by independent jury. Verdicts are controlled by career judges. And the EU means to unify the systems of justice. Indeed, in his speech to the European Parliament on December 1, Romano Prodi, the Commission president, said clearly that the national veto in matters of justice must be got rid of: it is like a "ball and chain" around Europe's ankle.

We also know the shape of the EU project for a single system. It is along the lines of the inquisitorial continental model.

This is called corpus juris, and was described by the Commission as an "embryo European criminal code" at its launch in 1997, at which I was present.

Article 26. 1 of corpus juris explicitly excludes judgment by "simple jurors" and indeed even "lay magistrates". And two prominent European parliamentarians told the House of Lords inquiry into corpus juris last year that the way to introduce corpus juris was by article 280 of the treaty - by majority voting. This would mean that British opposition to it - even though promised by HMG in December 1998 - would be overruled.

The Commission surely realises that to have our ancient rights wrenched from us by foreign diktat would be traumatic. How much better to accustom us to their gradual restriction first, as a "home-grown" measure. Their subsequent amputation will be less painful...

Torquil Dick-Erikson

Rome