I would imagine that most readers are familiar with the system of magistrates courts and have strong opinions on whether the three lay magistrates sitting in judgement provide as good a system of justice as those who preach to us from on high keep telling us. Impending procedural changes are now in sight after a gestation period of twenty years. The anomaly of defendants` right to choose jury trial in “either way” matters is likely to be removed in what will be the most contentious of these changes to be replaced by a bench chaired by a District Judge [MC] sitting with two lay magistrates. Whether justice will be better served will be a moot point for at least a decade until there is a sufficiency of statistics for those in Petty France to produce conclusions. Until then all we have is a study of appeals on verdict and/or sentence from the lower court to the crown court.
A Commons committee in 2021 reported magistrates have a very low appeal rate of ~0.7% with half of those appeals dismissed or abandoned. Historically there are about 14,000 appeals per year with approximately 2,000 successful convict appeals and 3,000 sentence variations meaning a success rate of ~39% overall. There’s no comprehensive public data directly comparing overturn rates per bench of magistrates vs. DJ since appeals challenge the final decision not who made it.
DJs are full-time, legally trained professionals. They sit alone, move swiftly and apply the law with consistency. Their courtroom manner can vary but few would doubt their command of legal process. The lay magistracy brings something different: lived experience, community connection and the expected collective wisdom of three heads thinking better than one. But JPs are not lawyers. They rely on legal advisers to steer them through tricky case law and/or procedure.
It’s widely accepted if not openly said that lay benches are slightly more prone to decisions that don’t survive appeal. It’s not dramatic. It doesn’t suggest incompetence. But the variation that comes with a bench of three non-legally trained volunteers is inevitably greater than with a single judge who’s spent decades in courtrooms.
As written above the total appeal rate from magistrates’ courts is tiny and of those only around 39% result in an overturned conviction or a sentence adjustment. That means the vast majority of decisions stand. The question is will those figures reflecting as they seem to do a standard of justice well done and seen to be well done be repeated with more serious matters likely to be coming in front of a lay bench? Confidence in justice depends on the public believing they’ll be treated fairly no matter who’s on the bench. The legal profession has never been over confident in the lay magistracy. Whether that`s a result of their pecuniary interest insofar as appearing at the crown court commands higher pay rates or that many lawyers think rightly or wrongly that their clients are more likely to be acquitted at crown court is a moot point amongst many such points when discussing our legal system.
During my tenure there was an "appeals folder" in the retiring room where every appeal and its conclusion was listed with the original JPs or DJ named. During the latter half of my time on the bench that folder disappeared never to return. As has become so very apparent in this century the more government conceals or tries to conceal controversial information the more likely there is to be a vulcanic type eruption when more openness might have allowed interested parties to let off steam with reduced pressure.
With so many sections of our country`s infra structure frayed at the edges the forthcoming changes in the justice system in general and the magistrates courts in particular will come under increased scrutiny. It is to be hoped that relevant statistical information will be published so that certainty supersedes suspicion when the trend to minimise the lay magistracy`s jurisdiction to non imprisonable offences, notwithstanding the current recent increase to 12 months custody, is once again reversed as has happened in the recent past.
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