Louis Blom-Cooper Unreasoned Verdict sku-181020351

Louis Blom-Cooper's hardcover Unreasoned Verdict: The Jury's Out is listed in Criminal Procedure Law Books under SKU sku-181020351. The book examines a jury-trial system that has survived intact for 750 years, including its origins in the Anglo-Saxon world, its current scope and limited exceptions, and contemporary opposition to jury trials for serious offences.

It considers the roles of the professional judge and lay juror and the value of a mixed tribunal. It also discusses European jurisdictions that replaced jury trials with mixed tribunals to bring lay participants into criminal proceedings, while arguing that democracy is not an essential element of a criminal trial.

Coverage of criminal appeals runs from the Criminal Appeals Act 1907 to the present and calls for appellate reform where a trial decision is unsatisfactory as well as unsafe. Other topics include judicial ethics, court-craft, perverse jury verdicts and nullification, fraud offences, models for different crimes, and reforms to jury-trial waiver and a defendant's choice of trial mode.

The book discusses restricted exceptions through 30 years of judge-alone trials in Northern Ireland's Diplock Courts. It proposes giving defendants a role in choosing the mode of trial and, where needed, involving experts as judicial assessors or supplemental decision-makers rather than only as witnesses.