Judges should hear rape trials alone in a bid to combat jury bias and unwarranted acquittals, a criminal law academic has proposed, claiming that he has backing from politicians and lawyers.
Dominic Willmott, a doctoral researcher at the University of Huddersfield, acknowledged that ditching jury trials would amount to “a massive break with ancient English legal tradition”. However, he claimed yesterday that he had support for the proposal from politicians, lawyers and senior police officers. He said that the idea of judge-only rape trials was “gaining traction among policy makers”.
“I thought there would be so much resistance,” Mr Willmott said. “But there is a growing number of important people in a number of different agencies who agree with what I am saying.”
The researcher