Aberdeen lawyers join rape trial boycott

Lawyers in Aberdeen are joining a boycott of plans to pilot juryless rape trials in Scotland.

They have accused the Scottish government of a "deeply troubling attack" on the judicial system.

Lawyers in Glasgow and Edinburgh have already said they will refuse to take part in the pilot, which was proposed as part of a new justice reform bill.

The government has said there is "overwhelming evidence" juries are affected by preconceptions about rape.

Aberdeen Bar Association vice president Ian Woodward-Nutt told BBC Scotland it was "very hard to see how this will proceed" without lawyers agreeing to participate in the pilot.

"Criminal defence lawyers across Scotland will not allow their clients to become guinea pigs in a scheme where the starting point of the scheme is to engineer verdicts to bring about more convictions," Mr Woodward-Nutt said.

He took issue with proposals for public reviews of decisions made by trial judges taking part in the scheme.

The lawyer said: "Never before have decisions at the Scottish criminal courts been subjected to this type of review by the executive.

"So it's clear and it will be clear to any impartial observer that this proposed pilot amounts to a deeply troubling attack, both on the criminal justice system, but also on the independence of our judiciary."

Mr Woodward-Nutt argued juryless trials would lead to a loss of safeguards.

"The Scottish government are proposing an experimental scheme that replaces juries with a specific named trial judge who will, we feel inevitably, be subjected to public scrutiny and thus pressure relative to his or her decision making," he said.

"That cannot be fair, that cannot be appropriate."

The change to trials was proposed by another senior judge, Lady Dorrian, in a review that informed the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, with Justice Secretary Angela Constance claiming low conviction rates for rape and attempted rape were hampered by the "prevalence of preconceptions".

In the most recent figures, conviction rates for rape and attempted rape were 51%, compared with 91% for all other crimes.

Responding to the news of the boycott, Ms Constance has previously said: "It is disappointing that some criminal defence lawyers oppose a recommendation of a review carried out by Lady Dorrian, Scotland's second most senior judge, to improve how the justice system treats rape victims by piloting judge-only rape trials.

"There is overwhelming evidence that jurors are subject to preconceptions about rape that can impact the verdicts they reach - which is not the case in other serious crime trials.

"Over 80% of criminal trials in Scotland are already conducted without a jury."

She added: "We have worked closely with the legal sector and will continue to do so during the development and evaluation of the pilot."