Philip Morgan KC: Barrister on the Government's proposal to increase the threshold for the right to a jury trial

A barrister has doubts about increasing the threshold for the right to a jury trial.  

Currently a defendant can choose between a jury or a judge-alone trial in cases where the maximum penalty is two or more years in jail.  

The Government's seeking feedback on increasing this to three, five, or seven years, in a bid to address court delays.  

Philip Morgan KC told Ryan Bridge he questions the number of jury trials that will drop because of the threshold change. 

He says that's because he thinks the number of jury trials where the maximum penalty of the offence is two or three years in jail, is very small. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The government wants to reduce the number of jury trials
to address backlogs in the court system. So to do this,
to get a jury trial at the moment, you must
be charged with an offense which carries a maximum penalty
of two years or more in prison. They want to
up that too, three or four years. The idea being
that fewer people will have the option of a jury
trial and will speed the whole thing up. Philip Morgan
is Casey is a barrister. He's with us this morning. Philip,

(00:23):
good morning, good morning, Thank you, thank you for being here.
Do you think this is going to work?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I have my doubt. I mean, cly, I applaud anything
to try and produce the backlog and the courts, but
I question the number of jury trials that will drop
merely because the threshold of two years in prison un

(00:49):
or more has changed to three years in prison or more,
or even four years imprisonment or more. That's because I
think that the number of very trials which proceed to
trial for which the most serious offense in the Crown
charge notice is an offense of liable to a term

(01:14):
of imprisonment for two or three years or more. I
think that the number of such cases is very small.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Okay, what is the hit rate? Guilty v. Not guilty
jury verse judge? What do you advise your clients?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
There isn't an answer to the rate. And what I
tend to advise my clients is that there are advantages
and disadvantages in addcting either judge alone or judge and jury,
and they need to make a decision based on a
series of criteria. These days, it's fair to say that

(01:57):
there's no real advantage to a defendant in deciding to
go judge alone compared to a ging jury. So in
it certainly in terms of your initial election, whether you
ultimately stay and have it with the election for trial

(02:21):
by jury or change it back to judge alone, you
know that will vary from case to case as well.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
And you can get some benefits by doing that, can't
you If you pick judge alone, Do you have to
do judge alone?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Ordinarily, yes, it's difficult to persuade a court once you've
elected judge alone or you've not made an election of
til by jury, to be able to change that to
judge alone.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
And that's part of the problem, isn't it, Because that's
why everyone goes, well, I'll do jury and then I
can always flip to judge alone later.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, I agree, which.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Draws the pro whole process out, which defeats the purpose.
And yeah, yeah, all right, hey, thanks very much for
your time. That's Philip Morgan k C with us. We say,
barrister talking there about the government's plans to try and
I am on applaud it for doing something I guess,
try and reduce the backlog in our court system, because,
as they say, justice delayed is justice denied.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
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