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He says he is “very, very anxious” about current proposals with ministers that could dramatically cut the number of cases heard by juries.
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Mansfield warns that the move will not resolve trial backlogs - and could lead to trial system biased in favour of convictions, risking miscarriages of justice.
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Jury trial has proved a safeguard, he argues. “If it had been left to judges, we’d have very different decisions,” he says, referring to what he describes as a “heavily convicting regime” in the past.
NEW PODCAST SERIES: Inside the Case
Seventh episode: "The Killing of Jill Dando"
One of Britain’s best-known criminal barristers has warned against replacing jury trials with judge-alone hearings, as plans are being looked at by Andy Burnham.
Mansfield argues that the move potentially risks more wrongful convictions while failing to address the real causes of the crisis in the criminal justice system.
The KC says years of underfunding and mismanagement – rather than juries – are responsible for the huge backlog facing the courts, which is delaying trials for two to three years.
“At the moment, cases are being fixed for 2028 and 2029 and even 2030,” he says. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Speaking in the latest episode of The University of Law’s video podcast “Inside the Case”, Mansfield says he is “very, very anxious” about proposals to dramatically reduce the number of cases heard by juries.
Under controversial proposals made by the retired senior judge, Sir Brian Leveson, the right to elect jury trial would be removed from thousands of middle-ranking cases.
However, The Times reported last week that the Prime Minister is looking at a proposal that would keep the right to elect jury trial for such offences but place the decision on trial in the hands of the judge, rather than with defendant.
Mansfield warns that the move could risk more potentially wrongful convictions.
“If it had been left to judges, we’d have very different decisions,” he says, referring to what he describes as a “heavily convicting regime” in the past.
He adds: “The reason they [want to] cut jury trials has absolutely nothing to do with the jury itself.”
“A jury trial doesn’t make a trial longer, block the arteries. The system has been improperly funded and resourced for too long under different governments.”
Mansfield rejects the argument that juries are responsible for lengthy trials, saying the evidence and witnesses still have to be heard regardless of whether a judge or a jury reaches the verdict.
“The addition of a jury to a trial makes little or no difference because you've still got to hear the witnesses, they’ve still got to be cross-examined and so on.”
Instead, he says the answer lies in tackling delays throughout the system and properly funding courts, lawyers, prisons and the police.
“There’s improper funding for lawyers of all people and improper funding for the prison service so they get clogged up. Improper funding for police as well.
“So all the way through, it has been mismanaged by different governments. So more money, more resources all the way through, but not tampering with jury trial.”
Miscarriages of justice and the Post Office scandal
Mansfield’s legal career has been devoted to defence work including prominent miscarriages of justice, including the Birmingham Six. He also acted for the family of Stephen Lawrence.
In the podcast episode, conducted by legal journalist and former Times legal editor Frances Gibb, he warns that the mechanisms for identifying and correcting wrongful convictions remain deeply flawed.
“The system is not foolproof by any means,” he says, adding that “particularly the higher courts are not beyond reproach”.
He says there are continuing problems surrounding the Criminal Cases Review Commission, citing the case of Andrew Malkinson as an example of the miscarriages of justice still occurring.
Andrew Malkinson was wrongly convicted of rape in 2004 and spent 17 years in prison despite maintaining his innocence; his conviction was quashed in 2023 after DNA evidence identified another man. Asked whether the risk remains as serious as it was 20 or 25 years ago, Mansfield replies: “Yeah, I do. I really do think that.” And asked whether the system for correcting miscarriages has improved, he says: “No, it hasn’t, no, because it’s never the system that rights it, it’s the individual like Malkinson who has to wage a campaign.”
Mansfield points to the Post Office scandal as a stark recent example of institutional failure.
“How that’s happened in our lifetime. Ordinary people being convicted on the back of a computer suggestion that… they’d stolen the money,” he says.
Recalling an interview with one of those affected, Mansfield says: “She said she was driven mad. She said, ‘I haven’t had £30,000. I start ripping up the carpets in my office because I think maybe I’ve hidden it under the floorboards.’”
“Driving people to insanity,” he adds. “And here are judges allowing cases to go through, lawyers advising people to plead guilty.”
He says the scandal demonstrates that miscarriages of justice are not simply a problem of the past. “That’s recent history. So it means the system is still not infallible.”
Mansfield says no justice system can be expected to be perfect but argues that it must be capable of uncovering its own failures and responding to those who say they have been wrongly treated.
“I don’t expect it to be infallible, as long as we have methods of unravelling what’s gone wrong in each case. I think we haven’t listened hard enough over the years.”
Jill Dando and Barry George
The wider warnings emerge during an episode devoted primarily to Mansfield’s involvement in one of Britain’s most notorious unsolved murders – the 1999 killing of BBC presenter Jill Dando.
Mansfield represented Barry George at his first trial and subsequent appeal. George was convicted of Dando’s murder in 2001, before his conviction was quashed in 2007. He was acquitted following a retrial in 2008.
More than 25 years after Dando was shot dead outside her Fulham home, her murder remains unsolved.
Mansfield tells “Inside the Case” that he never believed George fitted the circumstances of the killing. “This was a professional assassination.”
“This was not a sort of vagrant, oddball character as the press tried to describe him, who couldn’t have organised a tea party, let alone a murder of this magnitude.”
He says the intense public pressure surrounding the murder pushed investigators towards George. “This was an extremely focused murder, one which the police had to come up with some answers,” Mansfield says.
“I think at the end of the day, they went back to the usual suspects and they went back to Barry George.”
Mansfield describes being devastated when George was convicted.
“I couldn’t believe the verdict. I just couldn’t believe it.”
He recalls walking the 13 miles from the Old Bailey to his home in Battersea afterwards because he was so “angry and upset” by the result.
George’s eventual acquittal did not, Mansfield argues, resolve the wider failure surrounding the case. He says subsequent leads have not been properly pursued and claims the police have failed to reassess their approach following George’s wrongful conviction.
The episode of Inside the Case, by The University of Law, examines the Dando investigation, the prosecution of Barry George, the disputed firearms evidence and Mansfield’s continuing belief that the murder was the work of a professional killer.