Rejected petition Maintain the Ancient Magna Carta Right to a Fair Trial by Jury

Removing juries to speed up the backlog trades fairness for administrative convenience. Juries can get it wrong; however, it is the safest piece of machinery that the Criminal Justice System has in order to safeguard against unsafe convictions.

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The right to trial by jury, while imperfect, remains the strongest safeguard of fair and impartial justice. It brings together ordinary citizens who have no prior connection to the defendant and tasks them, under judicial direction, with assessing whether the evidence meets the threshold for conviction. Replacing jury trials to tackle court backlogs undermines this safeguard. Faster processing means cases receive less scrutiny, reducing the time and care given to evaluating the evidence.

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

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You may wish to sign the following petition, which calls for similar action:

Do not remove trial by jury for certain cases
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/751480

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 25 November 2025
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