The court system established by the Diplock report in December 1972, which was concerned with the problem of dealing with terrorist violence other than by internment. The report marked the advent of a policy in which the use of prosecution through the courts was gradually to replace executive detention in an attempt to bury the distinction between political violence and 'normal crime. The report provided the basis for the Northern Ireland(Emergency Provisions) Act, 1973, which, although later amended, continued as the basis for anti-terrorist legislation.
Diplock Courts went into affect in Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles. Named after Lord Diplock's Commission. It was difficult in the North to get a jury to sit and not be intimidated by fear of escalating violence from a para-military organization, so the British answer was a system with one judge and no jury. The decision of the judge was largely based on statements made by those interrogated, often through torture. The judge would then convict and sentence. The jury system was invented by the British in 1215 and this institution was undermined in the 1970s with the Diplock courts in Northern Ireland.
Diplockcourts, the non-jury trials in which thousands of Northern Ireland terrorist suspects have been tried since 1973, are to be abolished by next summer.
Among notorious cases tried by Diplockcourts were the loyalist paramilitary gang, the Shankill Butchers, who were sentenced to life imprisonment in the 1970s for murdering Catholics in north and west Belfast.
Barra McGrory, a solicitor who has taken many cases through the Diplockcourts, said he was concerned at proposals to allow the DPP sole power of discretion as to which cases should be heard without juries.
Any experienced court observer has only to note the exhaustion, and sometimes the distress, of jurors as a case of some length or complexity moves towards its end and the enormity and complications of their decision-making task is belatedly brought home to them.
But it is commonplace for juries, having retired to consider their verdict, to return to court to ask the judge to be reminded of what a witness has said and, often, for a copy of his written witness statement.
With encouragement from the Court of Appeal, (Criminal Division), and greater emphasis in training, judges and magistrates are now more alert than formerly to their power and duty to intervene to prevent repetitious or otherwise unnecessary evidence and to control prolix, irrelevant or oppressive questioning of witnesses.
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