Lawyers Call on Scottish Government to Ditch Plans for No-Jury Rape Trials

The Law Society of Scotland has urged the Scottish government to abandon proposals for no-jury rape trials. The plans to experiment with just judges deciding the outcome of rape and attempted rape trials is part of the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, and are currently going through the Scottish parliament at Holyrood. Holyrood’s criminal justice committee published a report on the issue on Friday, which revealed they were split along party political lines, with the four SNP MSPs on the committee supporting the no-jury pilot and two Labour and two Conservative MSPs adamantly opposing it. Sheila Webster, president of the Law Society of Scotland—which represents barristers, said the committee report “further underlines” the concerns it had about “key elements of the bill.”...