In defence of juries

Not convinced? Then consider the US, where trial by jury has already been largely replaced with plea bargaining at the behest of judges.

In one instance two Pennsylvania judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, were charged with accepting over $2 million in kickbacks for steering juveniles to for-profit detention facilities. While the matter is ongoing, the scale of alleged wrong doing could not have arisen unless determination of guilt had been reduced to a prerogative exercised by judges alone.

Shocked? You shouldn't be, US experience shows clearly that an absence of juries in criminal proceedings leads to widespread corruption and injustice. Click here for a general discussion.

Nor is it a case of "only in America". The European experience of trial without jury also shows that an absence of juries leads to corruption. A Danish newspaper has revealed existence of a letter written by a judge in which it's claimed a war crimes tribunal has been compromised by acquittals resulting from political pressure.

That's close to impossible where a jury determines guilt, but much less difficult where power to acquit rests with a judge and the line between investigator and judicial officer is blurred.

Imperfect though they may be, the evidence suggests that juries are the least flawed way of deciding who is and isn't guilty, but why?

The very fact of having to articulate a case so it can be understood by laypeople, who then determine guilt or innocence, is a quality control process that encourages police, prosecutors and judicial officers to examine evidence closely, test arguments and weed out bias.

Ms Thompson seems to have regarded the quality control process she was part of as inefficient, and it certainly is more cost effective to lock people up without the inconvenience of having to prove charges to an impartial group of people. But put yourself in the place of an accused. How long you would be happy to spend in prison for a crime you didn't commit just so the average trial could be run at a lower average cost?

Whenever someone tries to convince you that juries are a problem remember that Ms Thompson's was right. Juries are filled with prejudice, ignorance, boredom, narrow-mindedness and downright stupidity. But so are the alternatives.

Better to live with the flaws of juries than the defects of the alternatives because corrupting a jury is so much harder, and that helps keep everyone honest.