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Anyone who has ever sat on a jury or taken part in a Crown Court trial as an advocate, witness, expert or Judge, knows that to dismiss them as no more than an exercise in administering the criminal law and determining guilt or innocence is a massive over-simplification.

A Crown Court trial is first and foremost about people. Individuals who, because of poor luck, bad decision making, a particular predilection towards a criminality that sits in their characters or a combination of all three, have ended up accused of a crime, or as the victims of a crime.

Their narratives and background often go way beyond the strict confines of the law and the legal process, and so, we as lawyers try to fit their behaviour and their characters into the process as best we can. Together with judges we strive for fairness, for objectivity and to ensure that the criminal justice system achieves the goal of protecting society from those individuals who commit crime and ensuring that the criminals in turn receive the correct sentence.

As I leave Court every day, I do a roll-call, when I ask myself if the people I've dealt with that day, as either a prosecution or defence advocate are in the right place: is the kid who dealt drugs at school been given a chance to rehabilitate himself via a suspended sentence; are the men who fought in the street with bottles and sticks properly behind bars; is the young women who was raped content that the man who subjected her to her ordeal has been properly punished. Overwhelmingly, the answer will be yes - not because of any particular skill by me, but because of the collective efforts of the police, the court staff, the probation service, the CPS, defence lawyers and the Judiciary.

And Juries play a pivotal role in that process.

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Gareth Roberts

Twelve ordinary people, given the extraordinary role of judging the evidence and casting a verdict on strangers that will almost always be life-changing for them.

They sit in the theatre of Court, twelve pairs of eyes, watching and listening, taking in every nuance of the evidence, recording in their minds every time a witness flinches or procrastinates and every tearful denial or assertion, and then at the end, they are given a law lecture by the Judge and go off to the sanctity of their room to consider what they've seen and to apportion guilt, if they can. I have never been in a jury room, or sat on a jury, but I can only imagine, that once they are discussing the evidence, and asking the questions they are directed to consider, the fact that you have 12 different people, with different experiences of life and different perspectives is invaluable as they take up the challenge of reaching a true verdict.

I say that with confidence, because, in my 26 years as a barrister, during which I have watched many hundreds of juries go through this process, I can think of only a handful of occasions where I thought that they've reached the wrong verdict.

Labour's announcement that they are considering replacing juries with judges for all but the most 'serious offences' is an attempt to mend a system by smashing it into tiny bits.

The principle of being tried by your peers is an important one. The criminal law is not something that can be imposed upon us without our consent, it must be something that we all feel part of, that we all buy into and trust. The jury system is a vital part of that process, because it brings ordinary people into the system and gives them a role that brings it alive...