Lord Chief Justice says courts will ‘loosen up’ and introduce trial via Skype and Facetime
The Lord Chief Justice in England, Lord Thomas has signalled that the criminal courts could see accused giving evidence via Skype and Facetime.
Lord Thomas
He said that the courts need to “loosen up” over their use of the technology.
“There are innovative ways of providing open justice bearing in mind things such as Skype and FaceTime,’ said Lord Thomas.
“We need to loosen up our use of Skype and FaceTime, which current IT systems don’t really allow.
“I am very keen that we should because with most of what happens in court you don’t have problems with security, and we can be much more open to use of Skype and FaceTime than we traditionally have been.”
He indicated that the technology could be trialled at the pre-trial stage of criminal proceedings.
“A lot of the difficulties we have are that to make a court case work well you need a pre-trial hearing,’ he said.
“But it is often very expensive to get a prisoner or a person who is out on bail to come to court, to get the lawyers to come to court and I think a lot of this can be solved by the use of technology.”
Lord Thomas was appointed to the role last month.