Verdict is returned, for good or ill

ALAN Mclean lost his son in tragic circumstances and is fully deserving of our sympathy. Barry Mclean was stabbed to death and his father has told of the devastation that has wrought in family lives.

The man accused of murdering Barry Mclean was cleared by a jury at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2012. Now Alan Mclean is petitioning MSPS asking for a change in the law to allow trial judges the power to refer “irrational, unsupported or unbelievable” verdicts of acquittal to the appeal court.

He also called the current system of jury selection a lottery and called for a suitability test for potential jurors.

The fact is that the jury system is not a perfect system. But it does carry some very fundamental benefits which is why it is in common usage throughout the world. It is believed that being tried by a jury of your peers means judgement is reached reflecting the spread of values in society; it is not just the values of a legal system or the values of the learned judges but an egalitarian view which will be all the more rounded and better for it.

That will produce some results that people might find perverse, particularly if they have a very personal stake in it.

Of course there are already instances of trials without juries – complicated fraud trials for instance. And it is right to look to see if the jury trials can be improved. Hopefully Mr Mclean’s intervention will highlight the concerning lack of research surrounding juries and their decisions.

But judges should not be given the right to challenge it.

That verdict, even if it is flawed, has to be, in a democracy, valued for where it has come from.