On the day the Jubilee Line fraud case finally collapsed, with timely coincidence the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, issued a protocol for the control and management of heavy fraud and other complex criminal cases.
In announcing the protocol, he stated that these trials, although only a minority of cases, “blighted the reputation of the criminal justice system”. There can be little doubt that the Government wants to address that concern by removing the right to jury trial in fraud cases. In a world of spin, an attractive image would have portrayed the Jubilee Line case collapsing because the defence had confused the jury.
