Mr Speaker, Sir, only offences that carry the death penalty are subject to trial by judge and jury and this Bill seeks to amend section 178 (1) of the Criminal Procedure Code by abolishing this form of trial and substituting it with a trial by three Judges of the High Court. To state this in another way, henceforth, a human being charged with a capital offence would be convicted, if at all, not by the simple verdict of a jury, but by the reasoned judgments of three Judges. Ever since the Bill was published, informed opinion has become inflamed and agitated by forebodings of dire consequences. An institution that had worked reasonably well for about 140 years should not be lightly tampered with. It has an aura of age; and the issue now has become one on which the principal disputants are the traditionalists supporting the jury and the rationalists questioning the rational foundation or otherwise of jury trials. Romantic and emotional statements have been made about the nature and character of jury trials by brilliant legal luminaries in England. Two such statements would bear quoting if only to lay bare the historical inaccuracies that they contain. About 200 years ago Lord Blackstone writing about jury trials stated: 'The liberties of England cannot but subsist, so long as this palladium remains sacred and inviolate; not only from open attacks (which none will be so hardy as to make), but also from all secret machinations, which may sap and undermine it; by introducing new and arbitrary methods of trial, by justices of the peace, commissioners of the revenue, and courts of conscience. And however convenient these may appear at first (as doubtless all arbitrary powers, well executed, are the most convenient), yet let it be again remembered that delays, and little inconveniences in the form of justice, are the price that all free nations must pay for their liberty in more substantial matters; that these inroads upon this sacred bulwark of the nation are fundamentally opposite to the spirit of our constitution; and that, though begun in trifles, the precedent may gradually increase and spread, to the utter disuse of juries in questions of the most momentous concern.' A rudimentary knowledge of British social history would be sufficient to show that at the time he wrote, Blackstone's liberties were but the property of but a very small class of British society. Parliamentary democracy based on adult suffrage is only one generation old in Britain; and yet the palladium of liberties has become a catchphrase among some of our own legal luminaries. Next, Lord Devlin in writing about juries was able to say: 'Each jury is a little Parliament. The jury sense is the Parliament sense. I cannot see the one dying and the other one surviving. The first object of any tyrant would be to make Parliament utterly subservient to his will; and the next to overthrow or diminish trail by jury, for no tyrant could afford to have a subject's freedom in the hands of twelve of his countrymen. So that trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution: it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.' This can only be a piece of delightful rhetoric as the hard facts of British constitutional history would appear to militate against this assessment. In attempting to analyse the British attitude towards jury trial, two major matters ought to be kept in mind. The first is that jury trial has for long been regarded as a bulwark against oppression; it is part of British tradition and still surrounded by sentiment and emotion. The second is that whilst there have been attempts to assess its efficacy, these are based on suppositions and not on hard facts. Now, these assertions made in support of juries should be tested against decided cases. If all the cases cited in Wade and Phillip's Constitutional Law, in the section on the Citizen and the State are examined, it will be found that juries played an insignificant part. When a jury was used, the jury either answered questions so put that the jury could not have known in whose favour they were finding, or followed the Judge's opinion. Those of us who take seriously the assertion that the jury is a safeguard of the liberty of the subject should read Howell's State Trials where all the political trials worth noting are recorded. Many of them are sedition trials and for every acquittal there was a conviction to balance it. In 1792 Paine was convicted for publishing the Rights of Man, while in 1793 his publisher Eaton was virtually acquitted. Daniel Holt was convicted in 1793, and completely ruined, for publishing suggestions for mild reform of the franchise and parliamentary constituencies. Further examples could be multiplied if need be. The only cure for the admiration of these juries is to read the State Trials and to ponder over the question of whether these juries were lamps that showed that freedom lived or instruments of oppression and prejudice. An examination of the qualifications and mode of selection of jurors would throw further light on the character of British juries. A juror must be a �10 freeholder or a �20 leaseholder, or a householder in a valuation list of �30 in London and Middlesex or �20 elsewhere, or occupy a house with not less than 15 windows. This meant that jury service was largely confined to the middle and upper classes. It is only by some stretch of the imagination that a lower class prisoner could be said to be tried by "twelve representatives of his countrymen". The views and prejudices of jurors were more apt to be those of the middle classes than those of the poorer classes. In political terms it is true to say that jurors tend by and large to be supporters of the Conservative Party than the Labour Party. Before the Juries Act, 1922, the quaint practice of striking a jury from a panel of jurors obtained. A case decided early this century illustrates how this is done. Mr Lygon, M.P. (Conservative) brought a libel action against Mr Greenwood, M.P. (Liberal) and a newspaper owned by Mr Winfrey, M.P. (Liberal). Mr Lygon had said that he was against feeding school children out of the rates, and he was cited as being against feeding school children, the words "out of the rates" being omitted, so that a fearsome innuendo arose. A special jury was ordered to be struck. The venue was Northamptonshire, so the Sheriff of that country sent the special jury list to his London agent before whom the parties appeared and balloted for 48 names. Another appointment, a day later, was made for 'striking'. The plaintiffs' solicitor at once set off for Northampton, followed by the defendants' solicitor, to find out the politics of the panel. The result showed 35 Conservatives and 13 Liberals. The next day with unerring accuracy the plaintiff struck out 12 out of 13 Liberals, whilst the defendant said he objected to the 12 "most violent Tories". That left 23 Conservatives and one Liberal. At the Assizes the one Liberal got in on the ballot and because he was a quiet, unobtrusive Liberal, he was made foreman of the jury and he brought down the verdict from �500 to �100 by "sticking out". Had that particular panel been 36 Conservatives to 12 Liberals, the trial jury would have been all Conservatives. One is left with the question as to whether there is any need to introduce these picturesque imponderables into a mature system of administration of justice, the essential characteristics of which should be certainty and uniformity. The predominant tendency in Britain today is to have fewer and fewer jury trials, and it is doubtful indeed that if Britain were given a chance to start anew, she would deliberately choose to have jury trials. Finally, Mr Speaker, Sir, we must seek to discover the meaning of the assertion that in being tried by a jury, one is tried by one's peers or by one's neighbourhood. The formula goes as follows. "Was the prisoner willing to be judged by the neighbourhood? Would he put himself upon his country? If so, let him plead not guilty and take their verdict." In Britain it is still true that a working class prisoner is never tried by his peers or his neighbourhood. More so in a multi-cultural society like Singapore. Strictly, we should allow that a Malay-speaking prisoner should be tried by a Malay jury, a Chinese prisoner by a Chinese jury, a Tamil prisoner by a Tamil jury, and an English-speaking prisoner by an English-speaking jury. The irrational prejudices, the attendant lack of certainty and uniformity and the havoc that would be injected into the system of administration of justice should be sufficient to make any sensible person sit up and re-examine the foundations of our society. It is always dangerous to think in vacuo. When Lord Devlin assessed the virtues of trials by jury, he rested his views upon the matrix of British experience. He dealt with particulars and postulated no universals; and this is reason enough for us to ensure that these traditional notions and institutions are so adjusted as to fit squarely into the fabric of a multi-racial society. Justice must be seen to be done. I firmly believe that the proposed trial by three Judges would make for more rational, uniform and fairer trials. The accused will have the same old safeguards. The allegations against him must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. He can only be convicted of an offence known to and defined by a written law. Judges, by their very training and experience, would be and should be free from caprice and prejudice in the performance of their functions. It has been very oddly remarked that abolition of juries would lead to executive interference with the judiciary. This must inevitably imply that our Judges lack integrity and a sense of their own responsibilities in the performance of their functions. I should rather think, however, that they would respond more easily to problems of conscience and the basic rights of citizens than any jury is able to do. For the nature of their work requires that Judges should be much more than mere legal technicians. They would, for the most part, be men who understand values and have deep convictions on great social questions. It only remains for me to say that clause 3 (3) of the Bill should be deleted. If three Judges of the High Court are unable to arrive at a decision either unanimously or by majority, the Court must acquit and discharge the accused, and there should be no question of a retrial. The next step, Mr Speaker, Sir, in legal reform should now have to do with the whole problem of capital punishment. 5.05 p.m.