Scotland's senior police officers have told ministers the automatic right to trial by jury for the most serious crimes should be abolished. The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (Acpos) said juries should remain the general rule in criminal trials, but in long and complex cases "a jury may be disposed of ... with such trials proceeding in another manner".
Options include a single judge sitting alone or a panel of judges.
Acpos also said ministers should be consulted on which trials are run without a jury - a fundamental break from the current system, where the Crown Office decides how to prosecute cases independently of politicians.
One human rights lawyer last night called the police plan "a recipe for disaster".
Jury trials for the most serious, or "solemn", crimes have been a pillar of the Scottish legal system since the Middle Ages.
The only modern precedent for dispensing with a jury in solemn proceedings was the trial of two men accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which was heard by three judges.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission later concluded that the conviction arising from the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was unsafe, and it is now being appealed.
[From today's edition of the Sunday Herald. The full article can be read here.]
If the case involved state crime or a crime which might be sensitive to the state, then how can the defendant receive a fair trial when the decision maker is an employee of the state.
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