In March Conrad Black will stand before a jury in Chicago facing 14 charges of fraud and theft. Over the past year, the prosecutors have submitted nearly two million documents as evidence for a trial expected to last four months. Pursued by an aggressive prosecutor and a legal system tilted in the Government’s favour, Lord Black of Crossharbour is relieved that his fate depends upon 12 anonymous citizens rather than a single judge.

The former media tycoon hopes to prove to the jury that he is a victim of malicious persecution because he is rich. The recent success of US prosecutors in obtaining convictions by juries in complicated fraud trials, including Enron and WorldCom, has apparently not undermined Lord Black’s confidence in juries.

That inalienable civil liberty — to be judged by ordinary citizens — granted by Magna Carta in 1215 has served ever since as the cornerstone for criminal justice among common law countries. Yet since 2003 Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, and Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, have ferociously sought to abolish the right to jury trials in serious fraud cases in England. To save money and guarantee better justice — that is, more certainty of convictions — they propose that the Lord Chief Justice would be empowered to dispense with juries in individual fraud trials. So far, four times, their attempts have been stymied by Parliament.

Round five of the attempt to abolish juries hearing serious fraud trials is under way. Next Thursday, despite a small revolt by Labour MPs, the Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill will be approved by the House of Commons and pass to the House of Lords. Inevitably, their Lordships will assert Magna Carta’s indestructible divinity and reject the Bill. Opponents nevertheless fear that, just before the summer recess, the Government will invoke the Parliament Act and impose the law despite the overwhelming opposition of England’s judges, criminal lawyers and academics.

The Government’s original justification for abolishing jury trial was that juries could not understand complicated financial evidence and were unwilling to tolerate the disruption caused by lengthy trials. The campaign was inspired by the Serious Fraud Office’s embarrassing failure to obtain unchallenged convictions in more than 62 per cent of their prosecutions. The acquittal of the Maxwell brothers and the disarray after fraud trials such as Blue Arrow, the Lloyds’ insurance brokers, George Walker, the ex-boxer, Roger Levitt, and three Guinness trials convinced Labour’s law officers that juries were to blame. Two inquiries investigated those failures. Although neither recommended a single judge for fraud cases, both blamed the jury system, although both lamented that British law prevented any research of juries to understand their low conviction rate.

Supporters of juries, quoting America’s success, scoffed about the jury’s culpability. Practitioners blamed the lamentable pre-trial management of fraud cases by the judges and the poor presentation of evidence to jurors by prosecutors.

The climax of the Government’s case was the collapse of the two-year trial, in March 2005, over an alleged £60 million fraud in the construction of the Jubilee Tube line in London. In the aftermath of the collapse, Lord Goldsmith and Lord Falconer blamed the jury system. An investigation by Stephen Wooler, a lawyer in the Attorney-General’s office, reported in 2006 the opposite. The jury, he said, was not a factor in the trial’s collapse. Rather, he reported, the prosecutor, the judge and the Crown Prosecution Service were to blame. Interviews of the jurors in the Jubilee case, conducted by Wooler’s office, were revealed. His report stated: “The jury did not appear to have had a difficulty understanding the evidence or the essentials of the case.” Equally pertinent was the discovery that the jurors were “pleased” to serve for nearly two years and “took their task seriously and were committed to jury service”.

That revelation destroyed the Government’s case against jury trials. To justify their continued zeal, Labour’s law officers have scrabbled to quote “modernisation” and “streamlining” as the justification for their cause. Despite the evidence from the Jubilee inquiry, Lord Goldsmith argues that because of the strain, jurors cannot be asked to serve for more than four months. The opponents of abolition allege that his justification is the thin end of the wedge. Trials of terrorists, drug dealers and health and safety crimes are often longer and more complicated than fraud trials. To be certain of convictions, the Government would eventually hope to also abolish juries in those trials.

Opponents hope that, after Tony Blair’s departure, Gordon Brown and his new ministers would not use the Parliament Act. If the new prime minister did cross the red line, insiders trust that Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, would “not dare” to order a serious criminal trial to be heard without a jury. But the battle is far from over.

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