| > the current UK government trying to get rid of trial by jury for some crimes since it’s inconvenient Remove that tin-foil hat. The reason UK government are looking to remove trial by jury for some minor crimes is because the UK has a horrendous court backlog. It is not uncommon to have to wait a year or more for your day in court. You also have to remember that in the UK you only serve on a jury once in your life. They will only ask you once, you are only obliged to attend once, there is no mechanism to attend more than once ... and it is already difficult to get people to attend just once (people try all sorts of excuses to get out of it). Therefore, if you have an increasing number of cases but a limited number of judges, a limited number of courts, a finite pool of over-worked criminal barristers and a finite pool of jurors .... Eventually you're going to have to start making hard decisions. Of course its not ideal. Of course in an ideal world everyone would have trial by jury. But it is what it is. |
Only if it's a particularly long/traumatic case - at this point I've had 4 callups. Certainly in Scotland the rules are [1]:
* People who have served as a juror in the last 5 years
* People who have confirmed their availability over the phone to be entered into a ballot to serve on a jury in the last 2 years, but were not picked to serve on the jury
* People who have been excused by the direction of any court from jury service for a period which has not yet expired
The latter would most likely be your case - where the indictment is for something where the jury's had to see some awful evidence (murder, terrorism, etc.), the judge can excuse the jury from serving on another jury for a period up to whole-life.
1: https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/coming-to-court/jurors/excusal...