When we cheer for shortcuts against defendants we despise, we’re sawing off the branch we’re sitting on.

TANNERSVILLE — England announced Tuesday it’s scrapping jury trials for criminal cases carrying sentences under three years. Offenses like threats to kill, house burglary, and dangerous dog ownership will now be decided by a single government-appointed judge instead of twelve citizens.

Justice Secretary David Lammy called it efficiency. The courts are clogged. Victims are waiting years. Something had to give.

What gave was an 800-year-old right.

Here in Monroe County, we don’t face the same crisis. But we face the same temptation—the impulse to skip due process when a defendant seems obviously guilty, obviously dangerous, or obviously deserving of whatever’s coming to them.

It’s worth asking: When we wish away protections for the accused we despise, what exactly are we wishing for?

The Timeline Is Hard to Ignore

The jury rollback isn’t happening in a vacuum.

Since July, Britain has arrested over 2,400 people for “supporting” Palestine Action, a pro-Palestinian group the government designated as a terrorist organization. The arrests weren’t for violence. They were for holding signs. Wearing T-shirts. Displaying a Private Eye cartoon. One arrestee was an 83-year-old retired priest.

Now consider the sequence:

• July 5, 2025: Palestine Action proscribed as terrorist
• July–November 2025: 2,400+ arrests for “supporting” the group
• December 2, 2025: Jury trials eliminated for offenses under three years

I can’t prove the rollback was designed to target these protesters. But when a government creates a new category of criminal, arrests thousands in that category, then removes their right to a jury—the burden of proving good faith falls on the government, not on skeptics.

Those 2,400 defendants will now be tried by the same government that designated their cause as terrorism, ordered their arrests, and will supply their judge.

You might not like Palestine Action. You might think they crossed a line.

But do you believe an 83-year-old woman holding a sign deserves to be judged by a government official rather than twelve of her neighbors?

The Slope Is Slippery Because They’re Greasing It

Five years ago, Lammy himself called jury trials “fundamental” to democracy. He warned that eliminating them would “damage democracy.”

Now he’s doing the eliminating.

The justification is always practical. There’s always a crisis, a backlog, an emergency demanding we set aside old protections just this once, just for these defendants.

But “just this once” becomes permanent. “Just for these defendants” expands.

Baroness Helena Kennedy, a Labour peer and barrister, warned: “It’s going to be almost inevitable that it will end being judge-alone trials that will be advocated by those who don’t like jury trial at all.”

Today it’s activists whose tactics you find extreme. Tomorrow it’s someone protesting something you care about. The precedent doesn’t distinguish between causes—it just establishes that government can designate, arrest, and try without juries.

Why This Matters in the Poconos

You might think: That’s England. We have the Sixth Amendment.

But rights don’t vanish at once. They erode through exceptions, through courts deferring to “practical necessities,” through a public that stops caring.

Monroe County sees cases that inflame opinion—gang homicides, drug trafficking, domestic violence, sexual assault, political protests. The impulse to skip straight to punishment is understandable. The defendant seems monstrous, or radical, or offensive. The trial feels like a technicality.

But the trial isn’t for the defendant. It’s for us.

Jury trials exist because history taught us what happens when the state decides guilt without citizen oversight. Judges have career incentives. Prosecutors are evaluated on conviction rates. Police lie. Evidence gets fabricated. Confessions get coerced.

And sometimes the person everyone knows is guilty turns out to be innocent. The Innocence Project has documented over 3,500 exonerations since 1989—people convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Those wrongful convictions happened with jury trials.

The Real Lesson

England’s Criminal Bar Association pointed out the obvious: “Juries have not caused the backlog.”

The backlog exists because courts are underfunded. Eliminating juries doesn’t fix that. It just makes conviction easier. And easier conviction isn’t the same as more justice.

The next time a local case makes you want to skip the trial, pause. Remember the protections aren’t for the defendant—they’re for the principle. For the next person accused. For you, should you ever face an allegation.

Every defendant—the accused murderer, the accused drug dealer, the accused protester whose cause you find repugnant—is entitled to be judged by their neighbors, not by the government.

Because the moment we decide some defendants are too offensive to deserve a jury, we’ve handed the government the power to define “offensive.”

And governments define it broadly.

The Monroe County Court of Common Pleas is located at 610 Monroe Street, Stroudsburg. Learn more about jury service at pacourts.us.