In the US about 94% of cases don't go to a trial. Defendants are strongly incentivised to accept a plea deal even if they are not guilty, because the cost of a trial and the risk of a guilty verdict are too high.
The BBC is currently embroiled in an election interference scandal after it doctored a video of the President to fit the BBC's chosen political narrative.
And it turns out this was just one of a series of political interventions made by the BBC.
This comes after a string of child sexual abuse scandals and cover-ups perpetrated by senior members of the BBC.
The BBC is an alternative news source we'd do well to avoid
Hardly an election interference of a fairly crap panorama special that wasn't even available to watch in the USA.
We can all fairly easily agree GBNEWS is the bottom of the barrel
I’m sorry that you are upset that the BBC edit showed the president calling for violence in a summarized form that is apparently extremely different from his long form call for violence.
This whole scandal is straight up 1984 “don’t believe your lying eyes” level bullshit
The UK is best understood as a "managed democracy" where there are nominally elections, but the government decides who will constitute its voting population, what they are allowed to say, and now whether they will be allowed to acquit people the government decides it would prefer to punish.
Agreed, and I am reminded that Putin once called Russia a "managed democracy." I may not always agree, but I am very glad America has the first, fifth, sixth, and seventh amendments, among others. This tactic by the British government is absurd and offensive to freedom. What I find more baffling, but perhaps I am narrowly thinking about it, is how much the British people are letting it happen. I am not political, but if anyone tried to take our rights under the Bill of Rights, or declared an emergency to cancel elections, I will be in the streets with, I hope, literally every one else.
Some things are just too critical to a free and fair nation, and jury trials are right up there.
A lot of public law jurisdictions don’t have jury trials, just a judge who decides the facts based on the constitution and the case presented by the prosecutor. Finland, for example.
Right. In fact, AFAIK only a handful of countries have a jury, which are mainly ex british colonies. Almost everywhere else there is constitution and so.
>I am not political, but if anyone tried to take our rights under the Bill of Rights, or declared an emergency to cancel elections, I will be in the streets with, I hope, literally every one else.
I'm sorry but the last decade has shown how much the US really likes to mirror the UK. I have been burned so many times thinking the US is some unique snowflake. Its just a Anglo-Saxon colony that moved out on its own but is still part of that same soul and mindset. I know a large chunk of the majority white population is now of German descent, but it still seems like the Anglo-Saxon mindset rules the land. If you want to know what happens to the future of the US just look at the UK as they are always the OG hipsters.
The UK voted for Brexit on the premise of making Britain british again (or some hogwash of that nature). The US would never make a silly mistake of that nature right? Oh wait they did just months later. The UK has this obsession of having cameras everywhere so much so there have been famous books written about that culture. The US is doing the same just that they got away with it by hiding it under other excuses such as anti-terrorism, security, protecting the children, etc.
Now the U.S. is slow walking into erosion of free speech, erosion of rights. And have the population put up a fight? No. They're acting exactly like the U.K. population. Maybe even more cowardly. And would you even blame them? What is their recourse? People here like to cosplay about the second amendment, but you know what when push came to shove, they acted exactly as their British compatriots did.
It was also rejecting being part of the anti-democratic runaway train that is the EU with its unelected president. Britain has enough trouble with its own government - for many it seemed like a reasonable move to remove the government running our government.
- voting population? What are you on about? It's everyone older than 18.
- you are not allowed to say "let's go and kill xxxyyy" or "burn hotel xxxyyy" but more or less you can say anything else. You might get sued if you say "Kier Starmer is an XXXYYY" but possibly not.
- this is using a system such as the one that operates in many countries - like France. But note: Germany ditched jury trials in 1924...
I've seen a couple of stories - like this one - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15302729/Assault-vi... - that make me think there's a very liberal interpenetration of "hate crime", as in there doesn't need to be an underlying crime but speech alone if offensive enough is criminal.
16 year olds have just been given the vote by the Labour government in an attempt to shore up their support because they’re going to lose the next election. Lowering the power of my vote as an adult taxpayer by enfranchising teenagers who get their political nous from TikTok is pretty disgusting.
This site obnoxiously tries to instantly give me an "anonymised.io" pop-up, which Fennec thankfully decides to ask me whether I want to visit. Apparently they're some sort of AI-powered marketing thing, whatever that means? Surprisingly wasn't instantly blocked by uBlock Origin.
On one hand, Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs are clear on why jury trials work poorly in multicultural societies. On the other hand, UK judges do not exactly have the best reputation recently, especially on matters of ... criticizing the UK. So ... yeah ... no good options here
The UK is a very different society from Singapore.
Are his objections to jury trials correct in the first place? If they are, then do they apply to the UK? I find it very hard to imagine why multiculturalism should be a problem so can you explain what he thinks they work poorly/.
I always found the idea of jury trials terrifying.
We make legal education very hard, very thorough, we teach prospective lawyers about subtle nuances of law, guilt, evidence, bias, epistemology even. We make them do mootings.
Then we say lawyers are the very people who cannot sit in juries, and instead random people are to judge. Actually worse than random - people who have better things to do try to get out of it, or are resentful that they couldn't.
It's a bit like having highly educated doctors explain symptoms, possible diseases, as well as a crash course in biology, immunology and statistics to a panel of randos, who then vote on the best treatment for the patient.
Its only slightly worse than judges and prosecutors under reelection pressure though...
That’s the whole point though - it’s a cohort of your peers who are regular normal people who really aren’t trained being guided by the available evidence presented by those who are trained. There should be enough evidence of your guilt to convince 12 of them that you committed the crime, rather than the state and the feudal lord saying you did it and locking you up forever.
I don't know about the UK, but in the US lawyers can be jurors.
The main point of a jury from the "arrive at the legally correct solution to the issue before the court" point of view is to settle questions that are questions of fact rather than questions of law.
Generally in a legal dispute you have two parties who disagree over the underlying facts. For example I say your drone broke my window and I want you to pay for a new window. You say your drone was not flying at the time my window broke. Whether or not your drone broke my windows is a question of fact, not a question of law.
Once it is decided whether or not your drone broke me window, then applying the law is straightforward. The difficulty is determining whether or not your drone broke my window.
Once the jury has decided on all the questions of fact they have to apply the law tp them, but for that the court will have given them instructions. Generally that is in the form of a form they can fill out that's basically a decision tree. They just have to fill in what they decided are the facts, follow the branches, and they end up with the correct legal result for those facts.
Sure. But "fact" in a court of law means "facts subject to a legally-sanctioned epistemology". Every now and then you read about a judge instructing the jury to disregard some evidence, because it turns out to be inadmissible. Are random people really capable of doing this? And, likewise, leaving their biases at the courtroom doorstep? I have my doubts.
And yes, I believe trained lawyers are excluded from jury duty in the UK. But even if not, the average juror will not have had any training in discerning bias, weighing evidence, statistics etc.
In the US about 94% of cases don't go to a trial. Defendants are strongly incentivised to accept a plea deal even if they are not guilty, because the cost of a trial and the risk of a guilty verdict are too high.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_...
For those who don't like the source, also reported here by the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy7vdvrnnvzo
Meaning for the sheeps who only want to read official state propaganda.
The BBC is currently embroiled in an election interference scandal after it doctored a video of the President to fit the BBC's chosen political narrative.
And it turns out this was just one of a series of political interventions made by the BBC.
This comes after a string of child sexual abuse scandals and cover-ups perpetrated by senior members of the BBC.
The BBC is an alternative news source we'd do well to avoid
Hardly an election interference of a fairly crap panorama special that wasn't even available to watch in the USA. We can all fairly easily agree GBNEWS is the bottom of the barrel
what’s your preferred mainstream (or alt) news source?
I’m sorry that you are upset that the BBC edit showed the president calling for violence in a summarized form that is apparently extremely different from his long form call for violence.
This whole scandal is straight up 1984 “don’t believe your lying eyes” level bullshit
They literally changed the meaning of his words. Dont be partisan.
The UK is best understood as a "managed democracy" where there are nominally elections, but the government decides who will constitute its voting population, what they are allowed to say, and now whether they will be allowed to acquit people the government decides it would prefer to punish.
Agreed, and I am reminded that Putin once called Russia a "managed democracy." I may not always agree, but I am very glad America has the first, fifth, sixth, and seventh amendments, among others. This tactic by the British government is absurd and offensive to freedom. What I find more baffling, but perhaps I am narrowly thinking about it, is how much the British people are letting it happen. I am not political, but if anyone tried to take our rights under the Bill of Rights, or declared an emergency to cancel elections, I will be in the streets with, I hope, literally every one else.
Some things are just too critical to a free and fair nation, and jury trials are right up there.
There are functioning democracies out there without jury trials. I would not say it's "critical to a free and fair nation'.
> There are functioning democracies out there without jury trials.
Could you name a few? I'm genuinely ignorant on how most of the world handles criminal affairs - do they just have the judge rule on the matter?
A lot of public law jurisdictions don’t have jury trials, just a judge who decides the facts based on the constitution and the case presented by the prosecutor. Finland, for example.
Right. In fact, AFAIK only a handful of countries have a jury, which are mainly ex british colonies. Almost everywhere else there is constitution and so.
The Us has small claims courts right?
>I am not political, but if anyone tried to take our rights under the Bill of Rights, or declared an emergency to cancel elections, I will be in the streets with, I hope, literally every one else.
I'm sorry but the last decade has shown how much the US really likes to mirror the UK. I have been burned so many times thinking the US is some unique snowflake. Its just a Anglo-Saxon colony that moved out on its own but is still part of that same soul and mindset. I know a large chunk of the majority white population is now of German descent, but it still seems like the Anglo-Saxon mindset rules the land. If you want to know what happens to the future of the US just look at the UK as they are always the OG hipsters.
The UK voted for Brexit on the premise of making Britain british again (or some hogwash of that nature). The US would never make a silly mistake of that nature right? Oh wait they did just months later. The UK has this obsession of having cameras everywhere so much so there have been famous books written about that culture. The US is doing the same just that they got away with it by hiding it under other excuses such as anti-terrorism, security, protecting the children, etc.
Now the U.S. is slow walking into erosion of free speech, erosion of rights. And have the population put up a fight? No. They're acting exactly like the U.K. population. Maybe even more cowardly. And would you even blame them? What is their recourse? People here like to cosplay about the second amendment, but you know what when push came to shove, they acted exactly as their British compatriots did.
It was also rejecting being part of the anti-democratic runaway train that is the EU with its unelected president. Britain has enough trouble with its own government - for many it seemed like a reasonable move to remove the government running our government.
Tell me you know nothing about the UK without telling me you know nothing about the UK.
Nonsense.
- voting population? What are you on about? It's everyone older than 18.
- you are not allowed to say "let's go and kill xxxyyy" or "burn hotel xxxyyy" but more or less you can say anything else. You might get sued if you say "Kier Starmer is an XXXYYY" but possibly not.
- this is using a system such as the one that operates in many countries - like France. But note: Germany ditched jury trials in 1924...
I've seen a couple of stories - like this one - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15302729/Assault-vi... - that make me think there's a very liberal interpenetration of "hate crime", as in there doesn't need to be an underlying crime but speech alone if offensive enough is criminal.
- voting population? What are you on about? It's everyone older than 18.
It'll be 16. And I believe bringing in more population that is a lot more likely to vote for your is also part of that.
16 year olds have just been given the vote by the Labour government in an attempt to shore up their support because they’re going to lose the next election. Lowering the power of my vote as an adult taxpayer by enfranchising teenagers who get their political nous from TikTok is pretty disgusting.
GB news!? More sober sources describe it as "considering scrapping" rather than "intends to scrap".
This site obnoxiously tries to instantly give me an "anonymised.io" pop-up, which Fennec thankfully decides to ask me whether I want to visit. Apparently they're some sort of AI-powered marketing thing, whatever that means? Surprisingly wasn't instantly blocked by uBlock Origin.
What's the demographics of the people who will replace juries? How does the fate of Underrepresented minorities fare in light of this?
On one hand, Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs are clear on why jury trials work poorly in multicultural societies. On the other hand, UK judges do not exactly have the best reputation recently, especially on matters of ... criticizing the UK. So ... yeah ... no good options here
I found the recent Banksy work to be very .. illuminating.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/new-banksy-mural-londons-hi...
The UK is a very different society from Singapore.
Are his objections to jury trials correct in the first place? If they are, then do they apply to the UK? I find it very hard to imagine why multiculturalism should be a problem so can you explain what he thinks they work poorly/.
the good option is to keep trial by jury.
Unfortunately the system has basically been collapsed by industrial scale theft and fraud, and the impact of covid...
What matters of criticizing the UK? Let's have the specifics to discuss?
Flagged for the source, which is not reliable.
Unreliable according to whom? Those who find GB News stories politically inconvenient maybe?
Wikipedia considers them to be generally unreliable.
Wait what?
GB News is a terrible website, here's a Guardian link: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov/25/moj-considering-... who have their issues but are a far stretch from that rightwing rag.
If political tribalism could be summed up with a single HN comment...
[flagged]
"NHS, housing, water, gas, electricy" aren't a core part of the government. Justice is.
I always found the idea of jury trials terrifying.
We make legal education very hard, very thorough, we teach prospective lawyers about subtle nuances of law, guilt, evidence, bias, epistemology even. We make them do mootings.
Then we say lawyers are the very people who cannot sit in juries, and instead random people are to judge. Actually worse than random - people who have better things to do try to get out of it, or are resentful that they couldn't.
It's a bit like having highly educated doctors explain symptoms, possible diseases, as well as a crash course in biology, immunology and statistics to a panel of randos, who then vote on the best treatment for the patient.
Its only slightly worse than judges and prosecutors under reelection pressure though...
That’s the whole point though - it’s a cohort of your peers who are regular normal people who really aren’t trained being guided by the available evidence presented by those who are trained. There should be enough evidence of your guilt to convince 12 of them that you committed the crime, rather than the state and the feudal lord saying you did it and locking you up forever.
My experience of the general public is that they aren't very good at nuanced thinking. And crime, or legal disputes in general, are often nuanced.
I don't know about the UK, but in the US lawyers can be jurors.
The main point of a jury from the "arrive at the legally correct solution to the issue before the court" point of view is to settle questions that are questions of fact rather than questions of law.
Generally in a legal dispute you have two parties who disagree over the underlying facts. For example I say your drone broke my window and I want you to pay for a new window. You say your drone was not flying at the time my window broke. Whether or not your drone broke my windows is a question of fact, not a question of law.
Once it is decided whether or not your drone broke me window, then applying the law is straightforward. The difficulty is determining whether or not your drone broke my window.
Once the jury has decided on all the questions of fact they have to apply the law tp them, but for that the court will have given them instructions. Generally that is in the form of a form they can fill out that's basically a decision tree. They just have to fill in what they decided are the facts, follow the branches, and they end up with the correct legal result for those facts.
Sure. But "fact" in a court of law means "facts subject to a legally-sanctioned epistemology". Every now and then you read about a judge instructing the jury to disregard some evidence, because it turns out to be inadmissible. Are random people really capable of doing this? And, likewise, leaving their biases at the courtroom doorstep? I have my doubts.
And yes, I believe trained lawyers are excluded from jury duty in the UK. But even if not, the average juror will not have had any training in discerning bias, weighing evidence, statistics etc.