Mark George debates juror's views on rape cases on BBC Radio Manchester  

Researchers Dr Emily Finch and Dr Vanessa Munro used trial and jury room simulations to discover how the 2003 Sexual Offences Act is operating The report said: "Present research indicates that the Sexual Offences Act 2003 provisions, while well-intentioned, may ultimately prove to be of limited effect. The inherent complexity in the concepts of freedom, capacity and reasonableness invoked in the legislation appear to leave too much scope for the proliferation of a new set of malleable legal tests and unpredictable legal outcomes."

The report found that less than 6% of rape allegations lead to conviction, despite the provisions brought in by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. However, Mark George pointed out that this should be balanced against the statistic that almost 90% of reported cases don't get as far as Court, but that then of these, almost 50% do end in conviction.

Despite the areas highlighted in the report as to juror's attitudes towards alleged rapists and complaints, Mark's view was that "we have gone about as far as we can do in the courtroom scenario". By far the greater barrier to increasing the proportion of convictions is to increase the volume of these which are progressed by the police and CPS to trial.

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The interview was broadcast on 07/12/06 at 07.20am- the show can be heard for the next 24 hours via the "Listen Again" service online by clicking on the following link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/noscript.shtml?/radio/aod/manchester_aod.shtml?manchester/terry_christian "

You should then fast forward through the 80 minutes of the programme to reach the interview at 07.20am.

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> Read more at : Rape juries still hard to convince, ITV news 7/12/06