Trial to be held without a jury. The court found that the prosecution’s argument that it will be impossible to assemble an impartial jury is unsound. The matters relied on: pretrial publicity, the polarized political atmosphere, the social linkages, are borne out of fears, none of which are backed by concrete evidence that they may in fact influence juries, chosen after the careful process of challenges outlined in section 3 of the Jury Ordinance (paras 50-65, 68) R v Mirza and others [2004] UKHL 2 at para 16, R v West [1992] 2 Cr App R 374, R v McCann (John Paul) (1991) 92 Cr App R 239, R v Abu Hamza [2006] 2 WLR 227 CONSIDERED.
The prosecution’s argument that the smallness of the size of the jury pool is also not a good reason to deprive the defendants of their right to a jury trial as despite the size of the jury pool, jury trials are held regularly in this country and there has been no demonstration of the likelihood of jury tampering (paras 66-68).
The court found that due to the nature of the cases against the present defendants, the complexity thereof and the probable length of trial, factors that fall to be considered under s 58(3)(a)-(c) of the Criminal Procedure Ordinance (CPO), the power of the court to order a trial without a jury in the interests of justice has been properly invoked (paras 69-85).
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