How far we have fallen? It was with horror that I read in your newsletter (19th March 2021) of the proposed pilot for juryless rape cases.

Here’s an eternal truth – 15 members of the public, possessed of varied experience, education, and common sense, are BY FAR SUPERIOR TO ANY JUDGE or judges, in determining the guilt or otherwise, of their fellow citizen.

They do not feel beholden to any political or collegiate cultural viewpoint. They neither ‘serve’ nor seek to appease anyone.

The ‘pilot’ can have only one aim – to produce guilty verdicts in cases where juries would not.

Presumably there would be no further change to the already debilitating law applicable to allegations of rape, therefore, the expectation must be that judges would simply interpret the evidence more favourably to the politically expedient view.

That is how the ‘pilot’ would be determined as ‘successful’. The very contemplation of this ‘pilot’ in a democracy is stomach-churning. Does no one now read Solzhenitsyn!? Have all hard learned lessons been lost?

The judicial culture in Scotland which now regularly produces – unattended by even the decency of an embarrassing blush – such ‘pilot’ schemes, or attempts to dismiss the need for corroboration etc., should be anathema to every lawyer, indeed citizen, in the country.

There should be more involvement of juries in the ordering of our society, not less! Tyranny can, and surely does, creep upon any sleeping society.

For my part, I would not support any ‘juryless rape trial’ by accepting instruction as solicitor or counsel. I would withdraw rather than provide it with the veneer of respectability, and I call upon all fellow lawyers to send the same unambiguous signal.

Yours,

G Sweeney
Solicitor-Advocate
Glasgow