A return to requiring jury unanimity is the central recommendation of a report published on 9 May by APPEAL, the working name of the Centre for Criminal Appeals (‘Doubt dismissed: race, juries and wrongful conviction’).
The report is authored by Naïma Sakande and Nisha Waller. Their challenging thesis regarding the history is that the introduction of majority verdicts by Roy Jenkins in the Criminal Justice Act 1967 was classist and racist:
‘Against the backdrop of tumultuous race relations in 1960s Britain, as well as the swift expansion of juror eligibility to include more working class and negatively racialised people, doubts arose about the ability of these newly diverse juries to render just decisions. These concerns were classist and racist, typified by fears that this group of freshly eligible jurors would lack the educational ability, moral integrity, or shared sense of right and wrong to come to correct and united decisions’ (p26).
APPEAL’s report is
