Jury intimidation or “nobbling” is not new; it has been going on for centuries. It was a series of attempts to intimidate jurors that led to the introduction of majority verdicts in the Criminal Justice Act 1967, so that there could be a conviction even if one or two jurors disagreed.

There was another outbreak of jury nobbling in the 1980s, when several trials had to be stopped, one after seven months. In 1983 eight people were convicted of trying to bribe jurors and were jailed for between 18 months and seven years.

The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 brought in an offence of intimidating or causing, or threatening to cause, harm to a juror or witness, punishable by up to five years in prison.

There was concern, however, that criminals were still getting off through jury nobbling, particularly in cases of organised crime.

Introducing the Criminal Justice Act 2003, David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, warned that “if we do not change the law, we will end up with such situations over and over again”. In London alone, he said, more than £9 million was being spent on 24-hour surveillance for a large number of trials.

People who intimidated juries and threatened their lives and those of their families did so “for one reason only — because they think that those in front of the judge and jury will be convicted”.

The plans were opposed by civil liberties groups and Labour MPs including Vera Baird, QC, now Solicitor-General, who feared they eroded the principle of trial by jury.

She also raised the problem of how a defendant could challenge a judge-only trial if he or she did not know the evidence that was being put forward — the objection made yesterday by defence lawyers, who say they do not know details of the alleged tampering.

Section 44 of the 2003 Act states that a trial without jury can be applied for if there is “evidence of a real and present danger that jury tampering would take place”.

Judges must also be satisfied that less stringent security measures, such as jury protection, would not prevent tampering. Yesterday the appeal judges said that such measures would not be effective.

Diplock courts, the only precedent in the UK for judge-alone trials in serious cases, were introduced in Northern Ireland in 1973, to defeat jury intimidation by paramilitary groups. The Government plans to phase them out but recently announced plans to keep them for at least another year.

In 2006 there were about 60 non-jury cases in Northern Ireland compared with more than 300 two decades ago.

The only comfort for yesterday’s defendants is that in Northern Ireland the acquittal rate by non-jury courts is just as high as those with juries.

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