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Speaker 1: The government wants to reduce the number of jury trials

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Speaker 1: to address backlogs in the court system. So to do this,

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Speaker 1: to get a jury trial at the moment, you must

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Speaker 1: be charged with an offense which carries a maximum penalty

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Speaker 1: of two years or more in prison. They want to

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Speaker 1: up that too, three or four years. The idea being

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Speaker 1: that fewer people will have the option of a jury

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Speaker 1: trial and will speed the whole thing up. Philip Morgan

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Speaker 1: is Casey is a barrister. He's with us this morning. Philip,

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Speaker 1: good morning, good morning, Thank you, thank you for being here.

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Speaker 1: Do you think this is going to work?

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Speaker 2: I have my doubt. I mean, cly, I applaud anything

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Speaker 2: to try and produce the backlog and the courts, but

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Speaker 2: I question the number of jury trials that will drop

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Speaker 2: merely because the threshold of two years in prison un

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Speaker 2: or more has changed to three years in prison or more,

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Speaker 2: or even four years imprisonment or more. That's because I

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Speaker 2: think that the number of very trials which proceed to

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Speaker 2: trial for which the most serious offense in the Crown

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Speaker 2: charge notice is an offense of liable to a term

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Speaker 2: of imprisonment for two or three years or more. I

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Speaker 2: think that the number of such cases is very small.

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Speaker 1: Okay, what is the hit rate? Guilty v. Not guilty

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Speaker 1: jury verse judge? What do you advise your clients?

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Speaker 2: There isn't an answer to the rate. And what I

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Speaker 2: tend to advise my clients is that there are advantages

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Speaker 2: and disadvantages in addcting either judge alone or judge and jury,

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Speaker 2: and they need to make a decision based on a

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Speaker 2: series of criteria. These days, it's fair to say that

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Speaker 2: there's no real advantage to a defendant in deciding to

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Speaker 2: go judge alone compared to a ging jury. So in

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Speaker 2: it certainly in terms of your initial election, whether you

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Speaker 2: ultimately stay and have it with the election for trial

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Speaker 2: by jury or change it back to judge alone, you

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Speaker 2: know that will vary from case to case as well.

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Speaker 1: And you can get some benefits by doing that, can't

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Speaker 1: you If you pick judge alone, Do you have to

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Speaker 1: do judge alone?

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Speaker 2: Ordinarily, yes, it's difficult to persuade a court once you've

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Speaker 2: elected judge alone or you've not made an election of

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Speaker 2: til by jury, to be able to change that to

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Speaker 2: judge alone.

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Speaker 1: And that's part of the problem, isn't it, Because that's

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Speaker 1: why everyone goes, well, I'll do jury and then I

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Speaker 1: can always flip to judge alone later.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, which.

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Speaker 1: Draws the pro whole process out, which defeats the purpose.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, all right, hey, thanks very much for

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Speaker 1: your time. That's Philip Morgan k C with us. We say,

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Speaker 1: barrister talking there about the government's plans to try and

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Speaker 1: I am on applaud it for doing something I guess,

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Speaker 1: try and reduce the backlog in our court system, because,

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Speaker 1: as they say, justice delayed is justice denied.

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Speaker 2: For more from News Talks B listen live on air

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Speaker 2: or online, and keep our shows with you wherever you

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