Strange Justice
The news last night was all about the Rickards/Shipton/Schollum (rhymes with Gollum, hmmmm....) acquittal and the Dom this am is all over what a farce the criminal justice system is. Well, it is. We really need the Scottish verdict "not proven" as one of the options available to a jury but, more importantly, we need an end to this misbegotten adversarial system which owes more to gladitorial combat than to justice.
A jury really only has two verdicts - guilty or not guilty. "Guilty" means "the crown produced enough evidence to show beyond reasonable doubt that you did it" whearas "not guilty" can mean anything from "the crown did not produce enough evidence to show beyond reasonable doubt that you did it" to "the crown prosecutor is a moron who really didn't ask the right questions" to "it's blindingly obvious you didn't do it, the case should never have been brought".
I have been on two juries. When I was picked for the first one, my boss said "I'll write a letter and get you off" and I said "no, it's my civic duty". Ha! (The second resulted from me wanting a break from work, although I thought the t-shirt-and-jeans might get me challenged - it didn't). Never again. I will pull every string I can to never appear for jury duty again.
This jury of peers (yeah, right) was asked to consider whether a 16 year-old girl had been raped by her mother's boyfriend. She gave evidence but we could tell there was something she was not telling. The defendant did not give evidence, though his family did, as did cops, forensics and the girl's mother - for the defence!
So they send us out to consider the verdict. Are we allowed the transcripts of evidence to review? No, we can ask to have portions of the court record read back to us. Can we ask questions to clarify what the witness meant when he said " - "; no, we can only ask questions about points of law from the judge. We're supposed to consider the facts of the case, but what if you don't have the facts. The defense said that the defendant couldn't have done it because he was in a town up-country that night. The police said he could have done it and still got to the town and, anyway, we only had his family's word for him being there. But they didn't tell us about the average speed he'd have to drive to get there, or what condition his car was in - could it have made the trip at all, all the things that are going to come up in a jury room and throw doubt on a case.
Because the test is not "do I think he did it?" but "if there's any doubt at all, you must acquit". For us, the jury, the case turned on a hair - one found in her knickers. It didn't belong to the defendant, so someone else must have been spending time there. The defense position was that she'd had an affair and decided to blame this nice man (admittedly an ex-con, who her mother had met and lallen in fove with while working as a prison visitor, but rehabilitated, you know, by our fabulous corrections system) because she didn't like him sleeping with her mother.
What were we to think? She was less than truthful about something, we could tell that from her answers, but what. And that really hurt her credibility. In the end, we had to give a "not guilty" even though the consensus in the room was that this appeared to be an evil bastard who really shouldn't be on the streets. I was the foreman, and I had to read that out - one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
The worst bit came just after. We filed back into the room to collect our gear and the sherrif was talking to us, in a very matter of fact way, about the case. Turns out the crown hadn't really hoped for a conviction, but for a hung jury, so they could work on the girl to come clean. Yes, she had had sex earlier that night, but not with her boyfriend and she didn't want him to know about it. We weren't to worry about him getting away with it as he would be back soon enough for something else - he was not only a bad boy but stupid. What he'd been in jail for was hiding in the ceiling of his former house (because there was a protection order out against him) and dropping down and murdering his ex-girlfriend. Felt really good after that, I'll tell you.
But the killer? The REALLY sickening thing that got me so angry I wanted to hit something? The phantom hair, the DNA of which did not match the defendant, did match the defenants dog. And the crown prosecutor knew that but did not bring it up.
I'm angry again just thinking about that.
Long term results: I don't know what happened to the girl, but I did see a letter to the paper a few years ago after the bastard was convicted for something else where she recalled the case and how she felt let down by the jury - tough; if we don't have access to all the facts we can't consider them. The bastard was back before the beak a few years later - raped a Canadian tourist in the Bolton Street Cemetery, got preventiative detention. The brother, who gave him an alibi for being at the family house up north? That pillar of the community is now doing 25 years for the murder of two step-children. The crown prosecutor, whose incompetence let a crime go unpunished? He's still a crown prosecutor.
And me? I'm still totally, unbelievably angry about the whole debacle.
"The truth will out"? My arse it will! The court system is all about who's got the best (and not necessarily the most ethical) lawyer. Many's the poor (and I mean that literally) defendant who's picked up a legal aid brief who's just doing his time before he switches into the nice earner that is a crown prosecutor's job, or get's picked up by a big firm. The ones that get stuck there are often the ones no-one wants because they're not competent enough or they don't present well or they're the wrong - something. The truly competent legal aid lawyers are rare (I know some exist, yes) and you're very, very lucky if you get one. But that's a side issue here.
The real issue here is that the system doesn't work. Frankly, my advice would be: if you're guilty, go for a jury so you can play to their prejudices and tweak their emotions - if you're innocent, go for a judge who can sort the facts, the rules of evidence and, most importantly, the law
A jury really only has two verdicts - guilty or not guilty. "Guilty" means "the crown produced enough evidence to show beyond reasonable doubt that you did it" whearas "not guilty" can mean anything from "the crown did not produce enough evidence to show beyond reasonable doubt that you did it" to "the crown prosecutor is a moron who really didn't ask the right questions" to "it's blindingly obvious you didn't do it, the case should never have been brought".
I have been on two juries. When I was picked for the first one, my boss said "I'll write a letter and get you off" and I said "no, it's my civic duty". Ha! (The second resulted from me wanting a break from work, although I thought the t-shirt-and-jeans might get me challenged - it didn't). Never again. I will pull every string I can to never appear for jury duty again.
This jury of peers (yeah, right) was asked to consider whether a 16 year-old girl had been raped by her mother's boyfriend. She gave evidence but we could tell there was something she was not telling. The defendant did not give evidence, though his family did, as did cops, forensics and the girl's mother - for the defence!
So they send us out to consider the verdict. Are we allowed the transcripts of evidence to review? No, we can ask to have portions of the court record read back to us. Can we ask questions to clarify what the witness meant when he said " - "; no, we can only ask questions about points of law from the judge. We're supposed to consider the facts of the case, but what if you don't have the facts. The defense said that the defendant couldn't have done it because he was in a town up-country that night. The police said he could have done it and still got to the town and, anyway, we only had his family's word for him being there. But they didn't tell us about the average speed he'd have to drive to get there, or what condition his car was in - could it have made the trip at all, all the things that are going to come up in a jury room and throw doubt on a case.
Because the test is not "do I think he did it?" but "if there's any doubt at all, you must acquit". For us, the jury, the case turned on a hair - one found in her knickers. It didn't belong to the defendant, so someone else must have been spending time there. The defense position was that she'd had an affair and decided to blame this nice man (admittedly an ex-con, who her mother had met and lallen in fove with while working as a prison visitor, but rehabilitated, you know, by our fabulous corrections system) because she didn't like him sleeping with her mother.
What were we to think? She was less than truthful about something, we could tell that from her answers, but what. And that really hurt her credibility. In the end, we had to give a "not guilty" even though the consensus in the room was that this appeared to be an evil bastard who really shouldn't be on the streets. I was the foreman, and I had to read that out - one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
The worst bit came just after. We filed back into the room to collect our gear and the sherrif was talking to us, in a very matter of fact way, about the case. Turns out the crown hadn't really hoped for a conviction, but for a hung jury, so they could work on the girl to come clean. Yes, she had had sex earlier that night, but not with her boyfriend and she didn't want him to know about it. We weren't to worry about him getting away with it as he would be back soon enough for something else - he was not only a bad boy but stupid. What he'd been in jail for was hiding in the ceiling of his former house (because there was a protection order out against him) and dropping down and murdering his ex-girlfriend. Felt really good after that, I'll tell you.
But the killer? The REALLY sickening thing that got me so angry I wanted to hit something? The phantom hair, the DNA of which did not match the defendant, did match the defenants dog. And the crown prosecutor knew that but did not bring it up.
I'm angry again just thinking about that.
Long term results: I don't know what happened to the girl, but I did see a letter to the paper a few years ago after the bastard was convicted for something else where she recalled the case and how she felt let down by the jury - tough; if we don't have access to all the facts we can't consider them. The bastard was back before the beak a few years later - raped a Canadian tourist in the Bolton Street Cemetery, got preventiative detention. The brother, who gave him an alibi for being at the family house up north? That pillar of the community is now doing 25 years for the murder of two step-children. The crown prosecutor, whose incompetence let a crime go unpunished? He's still a crown prosecutor.
And me? I'm still totally, unbelievably angry about the whole debacle.
"The truth will out"? My arse it will! The court system is all about who's got the best (and not necessarily the most ethical) lawyer. Many's the poor (and I mean that literally) defendant who's picked up a legal aid brief who's just doing his time before he switches into the nice earner that is a crown prosecutor's job, or get's picked up by a big firm. The ones that get stuck there are often the ones no-one wants because they're not competent enough or they don't present well or they're the wrong - something. The truly competent legal aid lawyers are rare (I know some exist, yes) and you're very, very lucky if you get one. But that's a side issue here.
The real issue here is that the system doesn't work. Frankly, my advice would be: if you're guilty, go for a jury so you can play to their prejudices and tweak their emotions - if you're innocent, go for a judge who can sort the facts, the rules of evidence and, most importantly, the law