Very few defendants opt to have their cases tried by jury, even though they have that right, according to recent research.
The research was carried out by Prof John Jackson and Prof Sean Doran of Queen's University in Belfast, for a conference on the jurisdiction of the criminal courts yesterday.
At the moment there are three courts with jurisdiction in criminal cases: the district court, where minor offences are tried; the circuit court, where more serious crimes are tried; and the Central Criminal Court, which is a division of the High Court and deals with rapes and murders.
Over 95 per cent of cases, are disposed of in the district court, with just 4.7 per cent sent forward to higher courts.
However, Mr Justice Fennelly, chairman of the working group on the jurisdiction of the courts, which organised the conference, said that the law was in some confusion at the moment about the basis on which cases went from one jurisdiction to another.
In some cases the Director of Public Prosecutions was the sole decider as to whether cases should be tried in a district court or go forward to circuit court level. In others, especially cases involving theft, the defendant had the right to elect to be tried by a jury in the higher court. So two sets of rules operated, he said.
The working group is also considering the division of offences between the circuit and Central Criminal courts. At the moment this is rigid, with all rapes and murders going to Central Criminal Court, while other sexual offences and serious crimes like fraud being tried at circuit court level. There was no flexibility in this system.
Mr Justice Fennelly told The Irish Times that there were different options to sort out these anomalies.
One was to have a single national criminal court, spread around the country, where all criminal trials would take place. Another was a more flexible system of transfer between the courts.
This would mean, for example, that more complex cases involving a wide range of offences could be transferred from the circuit court to the Central Criminal Court.
The research by Profs Jackson and Doran also showed a high level of satisfaction with the existing system from judges, prosecutors and other practitioners.
The working group is expected to finish its report next spring, according to Mr Justice Fennelly.