An Essential Corrective

Richard is on manoeuvres, of course. But still, it is welcome that Gordon Rayner writes:

A former Conservative Party chairman who was tried and acquitted by a jury has said Labour must not leave the fate of innocent people solely in the hands of judges.

Richard Holden MP told The Telegraph that his own experience cemented his faith in the jury system as an essential corrective to the insular world of lawyers and judges.

After a week-long trial in 2018, a jury took 15 minutes to acquit him of a false allegation of sexually assaulting a woman at a party.

David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, wants to abolish jury trials in England and Wales for most offences but Mr Holden believes Mr Lammy does not understand that even allegations that would not warrant a long sentence can be life-changing for those in the dock.

He said: “It’s all very well for a politician sitting in Westminster to think that charges that carry maybe a two-year sentence are not that important and don’t need a jury.

“As far as I was concerned this might as well have been a trial for my life because for anyone of good standing, a criminal trial means everything. You’re not a repeat offender on their 50th charge of shoplifting, your entire life is on trial because it affects your job, your family, your friendships, everything.”

Under Mr Lammy’s proposed reforms, Mr Holden would have been denied access to a jury trial because he was charged with an “either way” offence, which can be tried by magistrates or a jury, depending on the defendant’s choice.

Mr Lammy wants to scrap the option of a jury trial for current either way offences that carry a maximum sentence of less than three years, though a leaked memo suggested he might be considering setting the threshold even higher, with only crimes that carry a maximum sentence of more than five years being heard by juries.

Mr Holden, who was 31 years old at the time, was working as a special adviser at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) when a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her at a party in December 2016. He lost his job at the MoD because of the allegation and struggled to find work while he was awaiting trial.

He said: “I was apprehensive ahead of the trial because I was worried that the jury might take against me for reasons that were nothing to do with the case. I was a Tory being tried at Southwark Crown Court in London, which is a Labour heartland.

“But they clearly took their duties very seriously, and they perhaps could imagine what it would be like to be in my shoes. What struck me most was the questions they asked [via notes passed to the judge].

“They asked the questions I would have asked, like what might have motivated the accuser to make the accusation if the assault never happened, which they had not been told because it was not part of the legal argument for either side.

“It showed they were able to cut through the legalistic approach of the barristers and get straight to the heart of it.”

The senior trial judge told Mr Holden that he could leave court “without a stain on his character” and she hopes he could “resume his career from where he had left off”.

His solicitor told him that he had never seen a case of sexual assault go to court on such thin evidence, which made Mr Holden wonder whether there was pressure within the Crown Prosecution Service to charge him to avoid accusations of bias towards a government adviser.

He was also told that the Crown’s decision to hire a Queen’s Counsel to prosecute him was also unheard of for an offence of that nature, which added to his belief that the system was rigged against him.

He said: “You end up asking yourself whether the system is fair, and the closest you get to a guarantor is the wisdom of a group of 12 ordinary people.

“In my case, those people sat in judgment over me and I could trust them to see the evidence, ask the right questions and get beneath the surface of the legal arguments. There is nothing more important than those people who look you in the face day after a day in court.”

Mr Holden, who is currently the shadow transport secretary, said Mr Lammy would also devalue Britain in the eyes of businesses and foreign investors if he went through with his reforms.

He said: “I have visited a lot of countries in the course of my work and wherever you go they talk about the British legal system as one of the main reasons they feel safe doing business here.

“Contracts are written under English law for companies operating all over the world because it is seen as being better than any other country’s legal system. If you start to abolish jury trials, you are sending out a signal that is going to erode that trust.”

Mr Holden sympathises with Mr Lammy’s goal to cut court backlogs and reduce the length of time awaiting trial, both for defendants and for victims whose lives end up on hold, sometimes for years at a time.

However, Mr Holden said the result of having more trials in magistrates’ courts would result in more convictions being appealed, which will only shift the backlog to the appeal courts rather than Crown courts.

He said: “If you look at the statistics, 90 per cent of cases are dealt with at magistrates’ courts, and of the 10 per cent that go to Crown courts, three quarters plead guilty. So you are talking about one in 40 cases being heard by juries, and the cost is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of public spending.

“Anyone who is making the case for scrapping jury trials doesn’t understand how important guilt and innocence are to people’s lives.”