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Comment by sb057 | Hacker News Reader

Also in the pipeline: elimination of jury trials

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2x01yne13o

The first sentence of the cited article makes clear the matter at hand is not "elimination of jury trials" but "a plan to abolish some jury trials". The proposal is an attempt to reduce the time which those who are accused must wait for trial.

FWIW the majority of all criminal cases in the UK are dealt with by either a single judge, or three judges[1]. This is hardly surprising as assembling a jury is vastly time consuming and for minor criminal matters is hard to justify.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_offence#United_Kingdom

Any charge that can be punished with imprisonment should require a jury trial.

Jury trials are a colossal and disproportionate waste of time. Jury trials have it place, but most of the time is spent on jury selection, theatrics, and deliberation--all this cost dearly, both in terms of time and money.

Thanks to its high cost and unpredictability, laughable inventions like "plea bargains" exist, only to selectively prey on the vulnerable.

It's not perfect (nor are jury trials), but when it comes to truth discovery and arriving at a proportionate sentence, as long as all parties are fairly represented, one without jury trials should be just as effective.

UK trials don't spend lots of time on jury selection. And there's rarely days of deliberation.

Not everything is done in US style.

> The proposals, which return to Parliament on Tuesday, would replace juries in England and Wales with a single judge in cases where a convicted defendant would be jailed for up to three years.

Wow, this is literally the plot of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video games. I'm sure it will go great with no downsides.

I'm a little torn on this one. On the one hand, people are bad epistemologists and lots of countries manage with similarly limited jury trials. On the other, we're doing it for cost reasons, which I think is the worst basis imaginable for such a move

What a horrible idea - your fate should never be decided by a single individual.

In the US it's just called a "bench trial." You can ask for one. It's often advantageous to do so.

RIP, Magna Carta.

It's simply a fact that common law jury trials are time-consuming and expensive and cause long delays and bottlenecks in the justice system.

Different common-law countries have addressed this issue in various ways. Restricting jury trials for more serious offenses (in this case for more serious charges - ones that could potentially result in a sentence of more than 3 years) is one way than many common law jurisdictions have taken.

It's not ideal but it's infinitely better in my mind than the practice used in the US to reduce jury trials. To avoid the cost/expense of a jury trial, public prosecutors threatens to press for a large number of charges or some very serious charges - carrying the potential of very long sentences - a sort of Gish-gallop approach.

Even if the chances of successful prosecution is relatively small for any one of the charges, the defendant is forced to take a plea-deal to avoid the risk of spending years or decades behind bars. Thus the defendant ends up with a guilty record and often a custodial sentence without any access to a trial or the chance to present their case at all.

American Bar Associaton agrees. ABA Plea Bargain Task Force Report is sad read. US criminal justice system is horrific and plea bargaining is big reason for it.

So you are telling me that the people who make money from criminal trials don't like the part of the system that would make a trial not necessary. Weird huh...its almost like they have a significant monetary reason to get rid of plea bargins.

Prosecutors are also members of the Bar and they don't make extra.

Is it so hard to understand that people don't like to work for a system where people are treated inhumanely and can't get justice?

The thing is, the reason for the delays and inefficiencies is not really juries. It's mostly much more mundane things like the prison service not sending defendants to court at the right time, translators not turning up when they are supposed to, buildings which are falling apart, technology not working properly, and court time being double-booked. It's an administrative failure, not a problem with the system.

Alongside removing the right to trial by jury, perhaps more alarmingly the government are also planning to remove appeal rights from "minor" cases (from magistrates to the Crown Court). The current statistics are that more than 40% of those appeals are upheld.

The planned changes won't fix any of these things, but it will cause fundamental damage to trust in the system and result in many miscarriages of justice.

The plan is not to "remove trial by jury" but to "remove trial by jury for some types of offense".

Yeah, ones that can yield imprisonment. Not OK!

You probably know this - but in most jurisdictions in the US, including federal, charges have to be approved by a grand jury of your peers.

There’s an old adage “a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich”* implying that the grand jury is easily mislead - but in my anecdotal experience of serving on a grand jury - this isn’t really true. We definitely said no to overreaches.

And you can also see this happening in high profile cases with the Trump administration:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/us/politics/trump-sandwic...

Ignoring that, it’s not clear to me why removing jury trials would reduce the likelihood of a prosecutor throwing a larger number of charges at a defendant. Prosecutors want to demonstrate a record of convictions. That career pressure is still going to exist without jury trials - they’re going to throw anything they can and see what sticks.

*Fun Fact - Sol Wachtler, the judge who coined this, was later convicted of multiple felonies, including blackmailing an ex-lover and threatening to kidnap her daughter. A bit more substantial than a ham sandwich.

I'm getting a lot of downvotes for the comment you're responding to so will likely withdraw from this discussion. But to be clear, I deliberately talked of prosecutors threatening charges, not actual indictments.

Conviction through plea-bargaining is almost exclusively a phenomenon in the US. It just doesn't feature in the normal process of public prosecution in countries like Ireland, the UK or Australia. Also as an aside, the grand jury system is exclusively an American feature.

And every common law country (including the US) has a bar in terms of seriousness of the crime, below which you are tried without a jury. Yes the bar is lower in the US (potential sentence of more than 6 months?) but this bar exists nonetheless without sensationalist claims that jury trials have been eliminated - which is what was stated in the comment I originally responded to.

that's not true - it's also common in Canada and Japan

Also, I feel like there is something important you don't understand about the US system. A grand jury isn't a jury trial. A grand jury just allows a jury trial to happen (for a defendant to be charged at all). The defense isn't part of a grand jury. That's why the quote is what it is. It isn't talking about jury trials, just that a prosecutor can charge someone with a crime (the outcome them winning at a grand jury) pretty easily. Hope this helps.

I feel it is important to point out that the UK doesn't have freedom of speech, has never had freedom of speech and at this point doesn't look like it ever will. The idea of freedom of speech actually comes from the Netherlands and was first codified in the US. The UK never adopted it.

The person floating this idea (of removing jury trials) would gain the power to imprison people simply for criticizing the government (and anything he didn't like really). But sure, plea bargaining isn't a perfect idea so whatever the British government does is fine.

PS A few more sacred cows while I'm at it (just for fun): - The stereotypical British accent was formed after the US Revolution, before that Brits sounded like Americans (and visa versa) - Richard the Lionheart didn't speak English but instead spoke French - Churchill was lousy at military strategy and opposed the Normandy landings

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