The Importance of Justice

Please sign this, which had it been in place, would have made it impossible to have charged me most recently; as it was, once charged, then it was impossible for me to have been acquitted despite the total lack of evidence. Once we had saved trial by jury, then we shall have many decades of lost liberties to reclaim. Consider under what circumstances it could have become impossible overnight to convince an employee of the British State, sitting alone in open court, that the role of Gerry Adams in the IRA had been merely more likely than not.

I renew my longstanding invitation to each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, to each and every member of Durham County Council, to each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, and each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

Now, as Isabella Machin writes:

If there is someone who understands the importance of justice, it would be Christopher Kinch KC - the former most senior judge at Woolwich Crown Court. Bound to the feared Belmarsh prison by a tunnel, Kinch sat through cases spanning from murders to acts of terrorism for 11 years, which included the renowned Hatton Garden burglary. Yet despite his decade-long seat on the judge's bench, he is losing faith in the system itself, having faced years of tribulations from backlogged trials, as he criticises Justice Secretary David Lammy's plans to axe jury trials.

The 72-year-old says the highly scrutinised plans will unnecessarily put the judges 'in the firing line' for potential abuse, while the plans won't actually save any money. The retired judge's voice has been echoed by members of the UK legal community as the Government, notably led by the former Director of Public Prosecutions, moves ahead with the plans under Lammy's steering. More than 3,200 lawyers, including barristers and retired judges, have called for the proposals to be dropped - which would replace juries with one single judge in cases where a sentencing may be up to three years. This comes as Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr publicly criticised the plans, calling for yet another U-turn by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

For Kinch, he fears judges will be put in danger if handed the onus of determining the guilty verdict, while he believes the chances of wrongful conviction grows as the choice drops from resting on the shoulders of 12 strangers to one judge. 'I just don't see that there are going to be huge savings that would justify the upheaval the proposals will cause,' Kinch tells the Daily Mail. 'And the potential loss of confidence when you have one judge making a decision instead of 12 members of the community - who are completely independent, chosen at random and come in what for me has always been the essence of democratic involvement in the criminal courts.'

Kinch believes the current system upholds democracy, as 'there is no other organ or institution in the country who trusts lay people in the same way'. He adds: 'We wouldn't have kept jury trials for as long as we have if it didn't work or people didn't trust it. I think many people will trust 12 strangers over one judge.' It is a decision, Kinch believes, is in complete contradiction to Lammy's 2017 report - named 'The Lammy Review' - that concluded racial prejudice was prevalent in the UK's criminal justice system.

In contradiction to recent events, the report heralded the importance of juries, calling them 'the guardians' of the 'principle that the law must be applied impartially' - and christened them the 'success story of our justice system'. This acclaim was justified in the report by 'successive studies' that highlight 'on average, jury verdicts are not affected by ethnicity', while it called for a 'change in the diversity of the magistracy and especially the judiciary'.

'One of the things that makes these plans, which will diminish the whole standing of the Crown Court, so surprising is that it is coming from Lammy. The judiciary is still predominantly people like me who are getting a bit pale,' Kinch says. 'It was only a few years ago that Lammy was saying the presence of people from ethnic minorities being in the jury was the only effective safeguard for fairness in the criminal justice system. This is because you couldn't necessarily trust the individual prejudices of a single judge.'

The proposals stem from a report by the retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Brian Leveson, commissioned in a bid to cut costs and halt current caseload projects reaching 100,000 by 2028. The measures, announced in December as part of the Courts and Tribunals Bill, would scrap jury trials and pass extra power to the magistrates as their maximum sentencing range gets a raise to 18 months, up from 12 months currently. The Bill was passed by 304 votes to 203 this month and has been criticised by Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who argued juries 'put ordinary men and women of every walk of life at the heart of justice'. 

Meanwhile the retired judge raises concerns about the safety of his former colleagues - whose decision may receive significant backlash from family members or the convicts themselves. 'I can't speak for the judges who are still in harness but I think many of them probably won't particularly welcome this. They certainly won't welcome the scrutiny that will come afterwards,' Kinch says. 'Imagine if a judge is actually acquitting someone in a notorious case because the evidence isn't there as far as they are concerned. Someone is going to be saying this is where the judge lives or this is where the kids go to school.'

This comes as judges' fear for their own personal safety, both inside and outside the courts, significantly rises, according to a survey by UCL Judicial Institute. Judges' concerns around their personal safety while in court grew from 27 per cent in 2022 to 39 per cent in 2024, while it increased from 19 per cent to 26 per cent out of court for the more than 6,000 judges surveyed. This comes amid Greg Hazeltine, 43, being jailed for three years after throwing a radiator at Judge Patrick Perusko at Milton Keynes Family Court in 2023. He then proceeded to repeatedly punch Judge Perusko in the courtroom.

The threat of this violence, Kinch says, will potentially both deter people from entering the profession and also threaten 'jury management skills' as new recruits 'won't be learning on the job'. He continues: 'I've had conversations with people starting out their career who questioned whether they'd have applied if they'd known that they'd be sitting with a jury doing cases on their own. There is therefore also a danger those jury management skills wither as they won't be learning on the job.' This one-man-judge-show may also 'lose the security and strength' of a jury verdict, the retired judge says, which has 'served us well for so long' - and therefore raising the chances of a wrong guilty ruling.  

Kinch adds the opinions on a case, and therefore verdict, would 'quite likely' be different between different judges, adding: 'When I gave different judges the set of facts of a case at Woolwich, it was quite likely you'll get one judge on the left choosing one verdict and the one on the right taking a contrary view. It obviously increases the chance of an individual variation of a verdict if you just have the one judge.'

There are 1.3 million prosecutions in the UK every year, in which 10 per cent funnel through a Crown Court. Through the reforms, the current three out of 10 cases sat with a jury will drop to two out of 10. Crown Court backlogs are driven by years of budget reductions, court closures, maintenance backlogs and limits to the number of days courts are permitted to sit. However Kinch says existentially cutting juries out is a redundant solution, which is fuelled by the dropping of public funding by 22.4 per cent from 2009/2010 to 2022/2023 - despite the economy growing by 11.5 per cent over the same period. He questions the Government's justification for the slashing of juries, which includes time being wasted on the swearing in of jury members.

Kinch adds that cases may mount higher as judges will have to dedicate time to determining verdicts, rather than getting on to the next case as the jury deliberates. 'It doesn't take very long to swear in people for two weeks of jury service for trials lasting between two to four days. The jury manager's questioning on potential timetable clashes all happens in about 10 minutes,' Kinch explains. 'When the jury goes out to deliberate, the judge thanks the advocates and gets on to the next case on the production line. 'But if the judge has to go off to consider their decision, they are going to leave that courtroom empty. They will have to articulate their reasons clearly to the members of the public and press, which might take the rest of the day or overnight.'

The giving of a verdict is a responsibility, he says, he would never have wanted as an active judge. Notably, Woolwich Crown Court would not have been impacted by the jury cuts due to the severity of the cases covered. 'As a judge your job isn't to get a conviction or an acquittal but it is our job to get verdicts,' Kinch says. 'Quite early on as a judge I stopped trying to second guess juries. I struggle to think of a case where the jury reached a decision that I couldn't understand. I've always been relieved not to give the last verdict.' 

Despite the adrenaline of the courtroom, Kinch says he is quite happy to be retired to 'dog-walker-in-chief' after hanging up his wig in 2024. Instead he is content on working on his 'cooking repertoire', as he swaps his previous responsibility of determining the future of convicts to now determining the future of his culinary endeavours. 

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: 'With victims facing unacceptably long waits for justice after years of delays in our courts, we make no apology for pressing ahead with our plans to reform the system based on Sir Brian Leveson's independent review. These vital reforms have never been a cost-saving exercise, they are about creating a sustainable system that will speed up justice for victims and bring the creaking court system into the 21st century – backed by record investment.'