Trials
The Crown Court disposed of 83,247 committals for trial in 2003-04. Taking into account 29,752 cases still outstanding, the implied waiting time for trials was 18½ weeks. This is the time between committal or lodging an appeal and the start of the Crown Court hearing. This level of delay has been gradually worsening over the last 6 years. The average time to try a case on a plea of not guilty is about 7 hours. Since the average length of a sitting day is 4.33 hours, this implies that a not guilty case takes just over the equivalent of 1½ court days.
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Famous quotes containing the word trials:
“Old age is not a disease—it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.”
—Maggie Kuhn (b. 1905)
“All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“All middle-class novels are about the trials of three, all upper-class novels about mass fornication, all revolutionary novels about a bad man turned good by a tractor.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)