Diplock courts were
criminal courts in
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...
for
non-jury trial of specified serious crimes ("scheduled offences"). They were introduced by the
Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973 and used for serious and
terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...
-related cases during
the Troubles
The Troubles () were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed t ...
.
The
Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 ended the automatic use of non-jury trials for scheduled offences but they are still used in Northern Ireland upon certification by the Director of Public Prosecutions on a case-by-case basis.
Description
Technically, the Diplock court was not a specially constituted court, but rather an ordinary
criminal court before a single judge. From 1991 the relevant court was the
Crown Court
The Crown Court is the criminal trial court, court of first instance in England and Wales responsible for hearing all indictable offences, some Hybrid offence, either way offences and appeals of the decisions of magistrates' courts. It is ...
;
[Currently Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 s.4; previously Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1991 s.9(1); Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1996 s.10(1); Terrorism Act 2000 s.74 as enacted and as amended by Constitutional Reform Act 2005 Sch.4 par.288(2)] before that it was the
Belfast City Commission (alternatively the Belfast
Recorder's Court until that was abolished in 1975
[Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973 s4; Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) (Amendment) Act 1975 s6(1)]). A Diplock Crown Court usually sat in Belfast but the
Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland
The Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland is a judge who presides over the courts of Northern Ireland and is the head of the Northern Ireland, Northern Irish judiciary. The present Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland is Siobhan Keegan, Dame ...
had power to direct a particular case, or class of cases, or part of a case, to be heard elsewhere.
The list of scheduled offences required to be tried by Diplock court included:
* the
common law offence
Common law offences are crimes under English criminal law, the related criminal law of some Commonwealth countries, and under some U.S. state laws. They are offences under the common law, developed entirely by the law courts, having no specif ...
s of
murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...
,
manslaughter
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th ce ...
,
arson
Arson is the act of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, watercr ...
, and
riot
A riot or mob violence is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people.
Riots typically involve destruction of property, public or private. The p ...
.
*
statutory offences relating to explosives, firearms, rioting, and subversion, as defined under the
Malicious Damage Act 1861,
Offences against the Person Act 1861
The Offences against the Person Act 1861 ( 24 & 25 Vict. c. 100) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that consolidated provisions related to offences against the person (an expression which, in particular, includes offences of ...
,
Explosive Substances Act 1883, and several acts passed in 1968 and 1969 in response to the outbreak of the Troubles.
For some scheduled offences, the
Attorney General for Northern Ireland
The Attorney General for Northern Ireland is the chief legal adviser to the Northern Ireland Executive for both civil and criminal matters that fall within the devolved powers of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Attorney General for Northern Irel ...
could specify a jury trial of a particular case, so that for example a non-political murder would not use the Diplock courts.
History
The courts were established in response to a report submitted to the
UK Parliament
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of ...
in December 1972 by
Lord Diplock
William John Kenneth Diplock, Baron Diplock, (8 December 1907 – 14 October 1985) was a British barrister and judge who served as a lord of appeal in ordinary between 1968 and until his death in 1985. Appointed to the English High Court in ...
,
[Report of the Commission to Consider Legal Procedures to deal with Terrorist Activities in Northern Ireland]
( Cmmd. 5185); full text of the Diplock Report which addressed the issue of dealing with
physical force Irish republicanism through means other than
internment
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without Criminal charge, charges or Indictment, intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects ...
(which
had been implemented in August 1971). In his report, Diplock cited two primary reasons for his recommendation that jury trials should be suspended:
* the danger of
perverse acquittals, and,
* that
jurors had been threatened, "of which we have had ample evidence".
Gerald Gardiner's ''Minority Report'' as part of the ''Parker Report'' in March 1972 found "no evidence of
ntimidationor of perversity in juries". The report marked the beginning of the policy of "criminalisation", whereby the State removed legal distinctions between political violence and normal crime, with political prisoners treated as common criminals. The report provided the basis for the
Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973, which, although later amended (with the
Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 and subsequent renewals), continued as the basis for counter-terrorist legislation in the UK.
Two years later, Lord Gardiner's review of the removal of trial by jury included attempts to bolster Diplock's findings as follows:
The establishment of the Diplock Courts can be seen as an early example of the
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA), officially known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA; ) and informally known as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary force that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland ...
's (IRA's) long-term aim of making "the Six Counties ... ungovernable except by colonial military rule". This was a central pillar of the "Long War" strategy set out in the 1977 ''
Green Book''.
Diplock courts mainly tried republican or
loyalist
Loyalism, in the United Kingdom, its overseas territories and its former colonies, refers to the allegiance to the British crown or the United Kingdom. In North America, the most common usage of the term refers to loyalty to the British Cr ...
paramilitaries. In the first case in which a person not associated with the Troubles was tried and convicted,
Abbas Boutrab, a suspected
al-Qaeda
, image = Flag of Jihad.svg
, caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions
, founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden
, leaders = {{Plainlist,
* Osama bin Lad ...
sympathiser, was found guilty of having information that could assist bombing an
airliner
An airliner is a type of airplane for transporting passengers and air cargo. Such aircraft are most often operated by airlines. The modern and most common variant of the airliner is a long, tube shaped, and jet powered aircraft. The largest ...
. A sentence of six years was handed down on 20 December 2005.
Conviction rate
The conviction rate, expressed as a percentage, represents the proportion of cases resulting in a legal declaration of Guilt (law), guilt for an offense, against the total number of trials completed. It is calculated by dividing the number of con ...
s in Diplock courts were not considerably higher than in jury trials.
Between 1984 and 1986 the conviction rate was 51%, compared to 49% for jury trials in Northern Ireland and 50% in
England and Wales
England and Wales () is one of the Law of the United Kingdom#Legal jurisdictions, three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. Th ...
.
The number of cases heard in Diplock courts reached a peak of 329 yearly in the mid-1980s. With the
Northern Ireland peace process
The Northern Ireland peace process includes the events leading up to the 1994 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire, the end of most of the violence of the Troubles, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and subsequent political develop ...
and paramilitary ceasefires of the latter 1990s, that figure fell to 60 a year in the mid-2000s.
The 1998
Good Friday Agreement
The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) or Belfast Agreement ( or ; or ) is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April (Good Friday) 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland since the la ...
underpinning the peace process included a British commitment to "security normalisation" including abolition of Diplock courts.
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin ( ; ; ) is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The History of Sinn Féin, original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffit ...
pressed for this in the agreement negotiations, arguing that lack of juries denied accused republicans of the
right to a fair trial
A fair trial is a trial which is "conducted fairly, justly, and with procedural regularity by an impartial judge". Various rights associated with a fair trial are explicitly proclaimed in Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, th ...
. On 1 August 2005, the
Northern Ireland Office
The Northern Ireland Office (NIO; , Ulster-Scots: ''Norlin Airlann Oaffis'') is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for handling Northern Ireland affairs. The NIO is led by the Secretary of S ...
announced that the Diplock courts were to be phased out, and in August 2006 they announced that the courts were to be abolished effective July 2007. This was achieved under the
Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007.
Post-2007 non-jury trials
The
Criminal Justice Act 2003
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (c. 44) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide-ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland a ...
, applicable throughout the UK, allows jury-less trials where there is a risk of jury tampering (s.44).
["Jury trials 'to become the norm'"]
BBC News Online
BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. It is one of the most popular news websites, with 1.2 billion website visits in April 2021, as well as being used by 60% of the U ...
, 11 August 2006
The
Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 abolished the idea of "scheduled offences" automatically tried without a jury. Instead it allows for the
Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland to certify a non-jury trial for any
indictable offence
In many common law jurisdictions (e.g. England and Wales, Ireland, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore), an indictable offence is an offence which can only be tried on an indictment after a preliminary hearing ...
provided it was committed either from a motive of "religious or political hostility" or by on behalf of a group which is both proscribed under the
Terrorism Act 2000
The Terrorism Act 2000 (c. 11) is the first of a number of general Terrorism Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It superseded and repealed the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 and the Northern Ireland (E ...
and "connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland". The act seeks to address the concerns which led to the establishment of Diplock courts by enhancing
jurors' anonymity to prevent intimidation, and increasing randomised
juror selection to prevent bias.
The
Northern Ireland Office
The Northern Ireland Office (NIO; , Ulster-Scots: ''Norlin Airlann Oaffis'') is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for handling Northern Ireland affairs. The NIO is led by the Secretary of S ...
's explanatory notes for the 2007 act characterise its changes as "repeal" of "the Diplock system" and its replacement with "a new system of non-jury trial".
On the other hand, courts in such trials have much the same format as the pre-2007 Diplock courts, and have been called "Diplock courts" in the media.
List of famous cases tried in Diplock courts
*
Shankill Butchers[British plan to abolish Diplock courts next year]
''The Irish Times
''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It was launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is Ireland's leading n ...
'', 11 August 2006
*
Sean Kelly, who perpetrated the
Shankill Road bombing[
* The Christy Walsh case]["Christy Walsh: a miscarriage of justice"]
, British Irish Rights Watch
* The Milltown Cemetery attack
The Milltown Cemetery attack (also known as the Milltown Cemetery killings or Milltown massacre) took place on 16 March 1988 at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the large funeral of three Provisional Irish Republican Arm ...
* The corporals killings
* Danny Morrison
* ''R v McCormick'' (1978) NI: Justice McGonigal ruled that slaps of the hand were permissible and not a form of torture or "degrading and inhumane treatment".[ Taylor, Peter (1999). ''Loyalists: War and Peace in Northern Ireland''. TV Books, p. 158. .]
See also
* Special Criminal Court
The Special Criminal Court (SCC; ) is a juryless criminal court in Ireland which tries terrorism and serious organised crime cases.
Legal basis
Article 38 of the Constitution of Ireland empowers the Dáil to establish "special courts" with ...
: Republic of Ireland's equivalent of the Diplock courts
* Court of Castle Chamber
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Diplock Courts
Former courts and tribunals in the United Kingdom
Law of Northern Ireland
The Troubles (Northern Ireland)
1973 establishments in Northern Ireland
2007 disestablishments in Northern Ireland
Courts and tribunals established in 1973
Courts and tribunals disestablished in 2007