instead is to be looked at by Government, The Royal Gazette can reveal.

The juryless trials would be held in cases involving drugs, armed robbery and serious injury, according to legal sources.

One said: "There have been a lot of acquittals in cases where perhaps there shouldn't have been.

"I understand this has caused some worry and measures like this, which have been used elsewhere in the places using the English legal system, have been looked at for some time.'' It is understood the United Bermuda Party will make possible reform of the jury system a part of their General Election campaign, expected to get under way shortly.

The Royal Gazette understands Government will pledge to look at changes in the legal system in consultation with judges and lawyers' `trade union', the Bermuda Bar Association.

Home Affairs and Public Safety Minister Maxwell Burgess yesterday declined to comment.

The move, however, is understood to have come after persistent complaints that juries on the Island tended to acquit in the majority of Supreme Court cases -- sometimes against the evidence.

In 1995, not guilty pleas in Supreme Court saw juries find for the accused in 60 percent of cases.

Both then-Minister of Labour and Home Affairs Quinton Edness and ex-Police Commissioner Colin Coxall later expressed fears that juries were not taking their responsibilities seriously enough.

Mr. Coxall, giving evidence in a Commission of Inquiry into the drugs squad last year said that the size of the Island might mean that juries could have difficulty maintaining their impartiality.

He admitted the Supreme Court acquittal rate was "worrying'' and that juries had brought in not guilty verdicts "against the facts of the evidence'' in some cases.

And Mr. Edness went public to complain about the high rate of acquittals -- especially in cases involving drugs offences.

The no-jury system is not used in England, the legal model for Bermuda, except in Northern Ireland.

Known as Diplock courts -- after the English judge who recommended them -- they were introduced to deal with the trials of alleged terrorists amid fears of jury intimidation and bias.

Lawyer Delroy Duncan represented ex-drugs squad detective Lendrea Davis, whose allegations about colleagues sparked the Commission of Inquiry.

He said there had been a "disquieting'' number of acquittals in trials which, on the face of it, appeared straightforward.

But he turned his face against juryless trials and insisted verdicts rendered by a defendant's peers had "community acceptance'' and were better than the machinery of the state alone determining guilt or innocence.

COURTS CTS