The idea has received the sort of reaction you would expect from the usual quarters you would expect it from.
My hope is we might want to look at something similar here.
The wait, like in the UK, for a trial is absurd. The system is overwhelmed.
Getting a jury is hard work and will never get any easier.
So if we accept the system doesn’t function in a way we would want, judge-alone would be an immediate improvement in efficiency.
Could I be controversial and suggest the reality also is that most people who end up in court are in fact guilty of what they are accused of doing? Which is not to change the idea that you are innocent until proven otherwise.
It's just that you can mount a fairly solid argument that a jury is made up of a collection of people who may or may not want to be there, may or may not know what's really going on, may or may not get nuance and minutiae of certain aspects of the law and, therefore, as a collective be a fairly weak representation of the justice you seek.
In a way it's like democracy. We love the idea but at local body level we literally can't be bothered. We don’t even turn up so is the idea still a sound one, even if it doesn’t work?
Being judged by a jury of your peers - what a wonderful 1800's style thought. But here in the real world it's got a very stale, arduous vibe to it.
Why is it important that 12 people agree on something? Well, it isn't if they can't because in some cases we then make it that only 11 people need to agree. So you see, rules are malleable.
In some places it's 10 needed. So lets not get all rigid, because the law has been around a while.
If the basic premise is justice being seen to be done then the “doing” has to have an element of pace about it. Not rushed, not rubber stamped and open to skullduggery, but an efficient system seen to be working well.
You can't argue we have that, or anywhere close.
Lammy of the UK has been bold and good on him.
Let's hope the same boldness resides somewhere here as well.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
The wait, like in the UK, for a trial is absurd. The system is overwhelmed.
Getting a jury is hard work and will never get any easier.
So if we accept the system doesn’t function in a way we would want, judge-alone would be an immediate improvement in efficiency.
Could I be controversial and suggest the reality also is that most people who end up in court are in fact guilty of what they are accused of doing? Which is not to change the idea that you are innocent until proven otherwise.
It's just that you can mount a fairly solid argument that a jury is made up of a collection of people who may or may not want to be there, may or may not know what's really going on, may or may not get nuance and minutiae of certain aspects of the law and, therefore, as a collective be a fairly weak representation of the justice you seek.
In a way it's like democracy. We love the idea but at local body level we literally can't be bothered. We don’t even turn up so is the idea still a sound one, even if it doesn’t work?
Being judged by a jury of your peers - what a wonderful 1800's style thought. But here in the real world it's got a very stale, arduous vibe to it.
Why is it important that 12 people agree on something? Well, it isn't if they can't because in some cases we then make it that only 11 people need to agree. So you see, rules are malleable.
In some places it's 10 needed. So lets not get all rigid, because the law has been around a while.
If the basic premise is justice being seen to be done then the “doing” has to have an element of pace about it. Not rushed, not rubber stamped and open to skullduggery, but an efficient system seen to be working well.
You can't argue we have that, or anywhere close.
Lammy of the UK has been bold and good on him.
Let's hope the same boldness resides somewhere here as well.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
The Lucy Letby trial in the UK appears to be a massive miscarriage of justice. In that case the jury was presented with complex scientific information and would have had no idea that the hypotheses presented by the prosecution were incorrect.
The 18th/19th century jury was what one might call a semi-professional one: educated, literate gentlemen who spent a lot of their time on juries. They would hear a batch of unrelated cases and then take an hour or two to go over them and come to a decision about each.
A jury made up of ornery hoi-polloi folks only became a reality after the property ownership criterion was abolished.
I do not trust ornery folks to be capable of evaluating much of the evidence presented in many a trial, especially where that evidence becomes highly 'technical'.
The jury system is largely responsible for the adversarial nature of trials under the British system - all too often this encourages lawyers hoodwinking bamboozled juries.
The costs of jury trials can be astounding, especially where the State has to provide protection for jury members in cases involving big organised crime.
We don't have juries at all in my home country (Netherlands) or any 'Napoleonic' European system. Our trials follow an inquisitorial rather than adversarial model. I need a lot of convincing that this is an inferior model. On the contrary, I think a very strong case can be made for this being a superior model - and one that the British themselves have been moving towards over the past decades, initially in civil cases, but with criminal cases now also on the discussion agenda.
I would NEVER seek a jury trial in NZ.... The only folk sitting as jurors now are the unemployed, new arrivals [little English], and those who live on their phones, or the totally sleepy. I witnessed such in a criminal trial a few years back in Manukau. Barristers suggested I detail the jury activity. Then of course the poor Judges. Dead BORING listening to such drivel, daily. The judges are apparently failed barristers. And the court staff bored too..... unable to file papers correctly.
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