NI Judicial Studies Board Lecture, Belfast: Jury trials

My starting point is simple. Everything in my own personal career, both at the Bar and then on the Bench, has served to demonstrate the value of our jury system, and the reason for its pre-eminence in our constitutional arrangements for the administration of criminal justice. The jury system ensures that in our jurisdiction no one can be convicted of a serious crime or subjected to a lengthy term of imprisonment unless he has admitted his guilty in open and public court or a body of his fellow citizens has considered the evidence and satisfied itself on the basis of that evidence that they are sure of guilt.

None of this is to say that the jury system cannot be subverted, and in this jurisdiction above all, you need no reminder from me of how the jury system can be subverted. Subversion can be generic, and it can be individual. But the fact that remedies have to be found for subversion does not alter the essential reality that the jury system has a resonance for us, and indeed for every common law system which has embraced it, which it is difficult to underestimate and unwise to ignore.