jury

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has scrapped controversial plans to curb some jury trials.

Sir Keir Starmer’s government had introduced proposals to allow judges to make the sole decision on cases that would lead to a sentence of less than three years.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said only complex fraud and financial offences would be judge-alone – and it proposes that thousands of medium-level crimes should stay with volunteer magistrates, who sit without a jury.

Justice Secretary Alex Norris said he had changed course came after hearing the “strength of feeling”. Criminal lawyers have welcomed the decision and the Conservatives say it is a “major victory” for those who fought to defend trial by jury.

Former Justice Secretary David Lammy first announced the plans in December following a recommendation in a major review of the court system in England and Wales.

The series of radical reforms, including scaling back jury trials, were presented as the best way of turning around record backlogs which, in turn, were exacerbating the prison population crisis.

The backlog – which has led to record delays for defendants and victims – currently stands at nearly 81,000 cases – having rocketed largely thanks to cuts before the pandemic and court closures during the national lockdowns. Official projections have estimated it could reach 100,000 before the next general election and, in a worst case scenario, climb to double that number by 2035.

There are, however, indications the backlog is now stabilising after the government committed unlimited funding to pay for more judges to sit in courts that were otherwise being unused.

Under the original plans, Lammy had wanted to reserve jury trials for the most serious “indictable” offences – meaning cases that are always sent to Crown Court, including murder and rape.

Less serious offences, where the sentence would be no more than three years, would be decided without a jury in the Crown Court by a judge alone. Even less serious offences would stay in magistrates’ courts, abolishing defendants’ right to ask for a trial by jury when they feel that is their best chance of beig cleared.

The proposals triggered an outcry across many parts of the criminal justice world, with many opponents saying that eroding the 800-year-old right to trial by jury would not solve the backlogs.

The U.S. Justice Department failed to secure felony convictions against most of the 102 protesters arrested in Los Angeles and three other major cities last year on charges of assaulting federal authorities — a record far below the norm in federal assault prosecutions.

All of the dozen cases that made it to trial, mostly in L.A., ended in acquittal, mistrial or dismissal. Experts say that’s surprising for a department known for its ability to win at trial. The last three felony assault cases, in L.A. and Portland, Ore., will go to trial this fall.

The dismal record has raised questions about rushed investigations and aggressive charging tactics by prosecutors under pressure to show the Trump administration is cracking down on people who assault law enforcement. It comes as the Justice Department is facing broader setbacks in politically charged investigations, with grand juries repeatedly refusing to return indictments and trial juries granting acquittals.

“Prosecutors tend to win because they control what cases they pursue and they have a lot of resources and discretion,” said Mary Fan, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at the University of Washington.

The fact that the government failed to win any felony assault convictions at trial calls into question “whether or not these charges should have ever been brought in the first place,” she said.

Tracking the outcome of 167 arrests

The Associated Press’ analysis focused on arrests made during protests last summer and fall in L.A., Chicago, Portland and Washington, D.C. — cities with significant protests where President Trump deployed the National Guard or tried to.

Then-Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said those who interfered with federal law enforcement would face “severe consequences.”

Most of the arrests — 102 — were for felony assault on a federal officer, which can carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Of those cases, 41% were dismissed and 34% were pleaded down to misdemeanors. Ten people pleaded guilty to felony assault. Nine people got prison time.

Of those arrested on other charges, seven were sentenced to prison for offenses including arson and obstructing law enforcement. A few defendants have diversion agreements, meaning their cases will be dismissed if they demonstrate good behavior.

The AP’s analysis shows that the Justice Department’s record failed to meaningfully improve since December, when an initial assessment showed early struggles to prosecute people on the charges for which they were arrested.

The Justice Department said in a statement that federal prosecutors are right to prioritize cases against people accused of assaulting federal officers and that “each case is based on the facts.”

“If there are mitigating factors identified in a case, then prosecutors must also act appropriately to inform the court, and in some cases downgrade or drop charges,” the department said.

Prosecutors failed to persuade

It’s rare for federal prosecutors to lose at trial. In 2024, 82% of defendants charged with felony or misdemeanor assault were convicted at trial or with a plea deal, according to data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. AP’s analysis found that less than half of the protesters charged for either felony or misdemeanor assault were convicted.

In Portland, a jury couldn’t reach agreement on felony assault charges for Oriana Korol, who was playing clarinet in a marching band demonstrating outside the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building last October when a scuffle involving officers broke out. Officers pepper-sprayed her and pushed her to the ground, where she struck one with her foot, according to court documents.

After a mistrial, prosecutors filed a reduced misdemeanor assault charge. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced Sept. 1 to time served and one year of supervised release.

Her attorneys wrote in a court filing that she “has accepted responsibility for the bad choices she made over a few seconds that caused no injury.”

Jonathan Caravello, a lecturer at California State Channel Islands, was acquitted of assault on a federal officer after a three-day trial. He was accused of throwing a tear gas canister deployed by immigration agents back at them while protesting a raid at a Camarillo cannabis farm.

Caravello said he was trying to get the canister away from the crowd. Videos showed he had tossed it high above officers’ heads and it landed far behind them. The jury acquitted Caravello after a quick deliberation.

“They’re trying to get a chilling effect out of these charges,” said Caravello, who turned down a misdemeanor plea deal.

Michael Rabbitt was among six co-defendants accused of felony conspiracy to impede a government vehicle from accessing an ICE facility near Chicago last September.

The vehicle slowly advanced despite being surrounded by protesters, leading some to put their hands on it, Rabbitt said.

After the government dismissed charges against two of the defendants, defense attorneys requested transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to the conspiracy indictment. The government eventually dropped the conspiracy charge and proceeded on misdemeanor counts of impeding a federal officer.

The judge later reviewed the unredacted transcripts and admonished prosecutors for improper behavior before the grand jury. The charges were dismissed days before trial.

Rabbitt said he was proud they fought the charges.

“This case was bigger than us,” he said. “I’m proud that we won this case, not just for us, but for protesters across the country.”

Many pleaded down

Though many federal criminal cases end in plea deals, some legal experts say it’s rare for felony assault to be pleaded down and may signal overcharging — filing a more severe initial charge so defendants will be more willing to plead guilty to one with a lighter sentence.

“I think when prosecutors bring charges ethically, they should be prepared to prove them beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

The U.S. Attorney’s office overseeing Los Angeles said it brought the prosecutions in response to a “wave of violence against law enforcement officers who were doing their jobs.” It voluntarily dismissed charges against some defendants after further investigation, it said.

L.A. prosecutors have arrested three additional people for felony assault at immigration-related protests this year. One pleaded guilty to a felony and two to misdemeanors.

In Chicago, all but one of 19 felony assault cases were dismissed. The U.S. Attorney’s offices in the Northern District of Illinois, District of Columbia and Oregon did not respond to requests for comment.

Some DOJ convictions

A man accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a hotel outside Los Angeles where federal authorities were staying was sentenced to five years in prison. Two others were sentenced to more than three years after pouring lighter fluid on a burning California Highway Patrol vehicle.

Federal judges sentenced eight people to decades in prison for their participation in a demonstration outside a detention center in Texas in July 2025 where a police officer was shot in the neck.

Three people were convicted at trial of conspiracy to impede or injure an officer for protesting outside a detention facility in Spokane, Wash., in June 2025. The Spokane and Texas cases were not included in AP’s analysis because they did not occur in one of the four cities where Trump deployed troops or attempted to.

Ding and Rush write for the Associated Press. Rush reported from Portland. AP writers Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE: A contestant on The Jury has revealed just how difficult it was for the group to reach a verdict in the latest episode

A man who appeared on The Jury has opened up on ‘most difficult’ deliberation yet.

The contestant took part in the Channel 4 hit show and explained the extraordinary difficulty of reaching a verdict as the gripping series heads towards its final episode.

James, one of the members of the specially assembled jury, admitted the group faced an incredibly challenging time when they retired to deliberate over the case.

Speaking to The Daily Mirror about the experience, he said it was “probably one of the most challenging deliberations and claimed it was the most difficult the jurors had faced across the series so far.

James added, “I know for a fact out of 2 seasons previously, it was probably the most difficult of deliberations so far, and I suppose we really, really struggled to come to a decision.”

His comments come as The Jury reached the crucial stage of its four-part run, with the final episode airing on Channel 4 tonight (September 9).

The series has placed ordinary members of the public in the extraordinary position of having to decide the fate of two brothers accused of killing their stepfather.

Unlike a conventional documentary, the programme recreates a real-life murder trial using actors, with the jurors watching the evidence and arguments before being asked to reach their own verdict.

In the real case, the brothers were accused of killing their stepfather after years of alleged abuse and violence within the family home.

The Channel 4 series changed the defendants’ names, with the teenage brothers referred to as Daniel and his older brother as Luke.

The case presented the jurors with a particularly difficult question: could the brothers’ age, background, and claims of abuse alter how responsibility for the killing should be judged?

Reaching a conclusion was far from straightforward, and for James, it was even more difficult as he was voted as the jury’s foreperson.

He recalled the moment he was left feeling “really disrespected” when he was called out by a fellow juror. He said, “There was a moment where I went around all the jury members.

“I went around individually, and I asked people for their final decision, and when it came to be, quite literally, the last person to go, I was really thinking about what I was saying. And then another member of the jury, Phil, called me out, basically said, ‘Come on mate, we’ve not got all day, get a move on’”.

James added: “I just felt really disrespected because I had been voted in as the foreperson, so I had a responsibility to moderate a conversation, a really serious one of that, but also have my say at the same time.”

You can stream the new season of The Jury on Channel 4

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is demanding testimony before a Florida grand jury in an investigation aiming to establish an intelligence community conspiracy against President Trump, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

New subpoenas being issued to former government officials represent an escalation in the yearlong investigation as the Justice Department pursues a loosely defined theory that members of the intelligence community who scrutinized Trump over the last decade, including over Russian interference in the 2016 election, conspired against him and violated his rights.

Investigators in recent days contacted some defense lawyers for witnesses advising them of forthcoming grand jury subpoenas. It was not clear how many, as of Tuesday, had received a subpoena or were still waiting to receive one, and the identities of the witnesses receiving subpoenas were also not immediately clear. The people who confirmed the subpoenas spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a secretive grand jury investigation.

The investigation has focused in large part on the Trump-Russia probe

The contours of the conspiracy investigation aren’t fully known, but agents and prosecutors over the last several months have focused intensely on one of Trump’s chief grievances: the U.S. government response to Russian interference in 2016 and an intelligence community assessment that Moscow meddled on Trump’s behalf at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump, who spent much of his first term shadowed by an investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia to sway the outcome of the election, has for years lashed out at the intelligence community finding and cast it as a “deep state” conspiracy to undermine the legitimacy of his win.

Investigators searching for potential crimes in connection with the intelligence community response have conducted numerous voluntary interviews, but the subpoenas prepared for witnesses in recent days represent an apparent effort to lock down sworn testimony before a grand jury.

It remains unclear whether anyone will be charged or for what offense, though lawyers for former CIA Director John Brennan have said they have been informed that he is a target as investigators examine whether he falsely testified to Congress — something he has repeatedly denied. The Justice Department last spring subpoenaed witnesses before a Washington grand jury as part of an investigation into Brennan but swiftly withdrew the subpoenas in favor of voluntary interviews.

The investigation is being run out of Florida, with the Justice Department in April bringing back into government service a top prosecutor from the Reagan administration, Joe diGenova, to serve as a counselor to the attorney general and help lead a team of agents and prosecutors.

DiGenova, who had previously asked then-Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to appoint him to the job and has openly and repeatedly claimed Trump was the victim of an intelligence community conspiracy, declined to comment Wednesday when reached by the Associated Press.

In an indication of the wide-ranging nature of the investigation, the AP reported last month that DiGenova’s team has sought interviews with law enforcement officials involved in the 2022 FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Fla., which recovered a trove of classified documents.

Concerns from defense lawyers about a ‘favored’ judge

Investigators have set up shop in Fort Pierce, Fla., the home court of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed jurist who repeatedly appeared skeptical of the classified documents case against him and ultimately dismissed it after concluding that the prosecutor who filed the charges was illegally appointed.

Lawyers for Brennan last year asked the chief judge of the federal court in Florida to prevent the investigation from being steered to Cannon, whom they described as a “favored” Trump judge. They have since sued the Trump administration, demanding a court order requiring prosecutors to preserve records from the investigation so that Brennan could challenge any potential prosecution of him as vindictive.

Trump came to office in 2017 under scrutiny from the intelligence and law enforcement community about whether his successful campaign had colluded with Russia, which stole politically damaging Democratic emails and orchestrated their release through WikiLeaks as part of a wide-ranging interference scheme.

The FBI and Justice Department investigated but found insufficient evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, though investigators did find the campaign eagerly hoped to benefit from Moscow’s help.

Subsequent investigations by an inspector general and Justice Department prosecutors identified errors by agents who conducted the Russia probe but found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by senior law enforcement officials or an anti-Trump conspiracy like what prosecutors are now hoping to prove.

Deeply frustrated by those outcomes, Trump has amplified his demands for retribution, which the Justice Department heeded last year by directing that prosecutors utilize a grand jury. Last year, Bondi directed prosecutors to put evidence before a grand jury after the release of documents aimed at calling into question the legitimacy of the Trump-Russia inquiry.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.