The quest for reform in the courts

vg said :

Wilco

Have you set foot in a Canberra court before?

Oh, and FYI, what you’re quoting is not the ‘Rule of Law’. Wikipedia hasn’t helped you

What is it? If you could help straighten this out it would be great. There’s a lot of misinformation around this subject.

vg said :

Wilco

Have you set foot in a Canberra court before?

Oh, and FYI, what you’re quoting is not the ‘Rule of Law’. Wikipedia hasn’t helped you

lol – why do these law firms and courts need rows of of those “law” books that people like to call them, when all you need is an internet enabled computer with Wikipedia as the home page ……

Wilco said :

Evidence adduced….

How is first year law treating you Wilco?

I see you’ve already completed the LAWS101 – Legalese For Its Own Sake course.

The ACT is not the only Australian jurisdiction where there is a statutory right to trial by judge alone. That right also exists in SA, WA and NSW.

The SA provisions are similar to those in the ACT. In WA, an application for a judge alone trial must be made before the identity of the trial judge is known, while in NSW an election may be made only with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

According to the 2008/09 ACT DPP’s Annual Report (Table 3), of 40 matters prosecuted in the ACT Supreme Court, there were 13 ‘guilty’ findings, 23 ‘not guilty’ and 4 ‘other’ findings, giving a conviction rate of 32.5%

The comparable conviction rates in SA, WA and NSW gleaned from those state DPP’s 2008/09 annual reports are 67.5%, 61.8% and 49.4% respectively.

As Professor Julius Sumner Miller once famously said, “Why is it so”? The ACT’s judges determine cases in a broadly similar legal environment to that in the other states, so no real help there. Are there other reasons unique to the ACT that might assist, say difference rules of evidence? Or might there just be some application of the P to the power of 7 Rule – p*ss poor preparation produces p*ss poor performance?

Interestingly, in his October 2007 retirement speech from the ACT Supreme Court, former judge Ken Crispin said:

“Sadly, the decade in which I have been a judge has seen the law in many Australian jurisdictions buffeted by fear, and knee jerk responses have often been embraced as if they had been handed down from Mount Sinai. It is fashionable to chant mantras like ‘Tough on Crime’ but judges must do justice, not merely appease simplistic demands for toughness”.

Wilco

Have you set foot in a Canberra court before?

Oh, and FYI, what you’re quoting is not the ‘Rule of Law’. Wikipedia hasn’t helped you

The faith many lay people place in the ability of judges and magistrates to dispense justice is “bewilderingly naive. A judge is merely a fallible human being like the rest of us. He has only the demeanor of the witnesses and the plausibility of the evidence to assist him in determining who is telling the truth.” *

(Ken Crispin, writing 10 years before, as Justice Crispin, he found Anu Singh not guilty of the murder of Joe Cinque.)

I’m with you Buzz819. It is all too easy to blame the police or the prosecution for any perceived failures in the justice system. Any criticism of judicial decisions is usually shouted down as the rantings of a redneck lynch mob (usually described on RiotAct as ‘spittle flecked’).

But why should judges and magistrates be above criticism? Do people imagine that when someone becomes a judge they are somehow willing and able to suppress their own personality and ego and suddenly become wise and impartial dispensers of justice?

*(From Helen Garner, Joe Cinque’s Consolation)

Wilco, don’t be going and using all that logic and stuff. Paper says they were all guilty so they must have been and it was just the liberal lefty judges letting them off. Rule of law is just book smart people trying to trick us every day working joes.

Buzz819 Are you referring to an individual case that actually exists. The figures sound a little vague. Tailored for the court of public opinion? I doubt such vagaries would stand up in a court of law.

I can think of one case that may loosely fit into your description. The case I’m thinking about should be familiar to the regular RA readers. But why should we need to be exact about which case. (Dead dog House burning etc.) He may have received a court ordered “detox thingy” in Sydney. I thought that he clearly suffered from some form of psychiatric condition.

You can keep building jails to house all the “nutters” if you like. You can even corrupt our legal system to get them there faster, cheaper and keep them longer. They still will be mentally ill when they come out. I’m yet to see a mental illness cured/managed through a deterrent/punishment.

But its hard to tell who you were talking about so I might be wrong and its a different case with a perfectly sane lucid, intelligent crim who just needs a bigger deterrent to stop beating grannies. Is that your idea to achieve justice?

The AFP AND the DPP are frustrated with the outcome of most of these pathetic sentences, it is also the law in Canberra that needs to change, we have a law of our own here, which sucks!

What I want to know does an impact statement make a difference with the judge once the person has been found guilty of a serious crime?

So I’m guessing that you are talking about the recent Hillier case… You do realize there is a number of cases heard daily hundreds per week where guilty findings are being found?

I know how the court system works. I know the Rule of Law, the Rules of Evidence and can even get my head around the Hearsay rule.

What is wrong with the court system is that defense can ask to be heard by a judge only, the judge in question is known to let people off all the time, it appears that he finds the way to be on the side of the criminal.

If all murder and sexual assault type trials went before a jury the amount of guilty findings would increase. I’m not talking about wrongful findings either.

The AFP and the DPP are working everyday to try as many cases as they can to win. It doesn’t help that a an alleged offender can say no to an interview and then come up with a defense in the 6, 12 or 24 months that it can take for the matter to be heard before the court.

It is allowing people to get away with murder. Plain and simple.

You make it so alleged offenders have to tell there side of the story, if they don’t and they try and bring in new evidence in the hearing, then that evidence should be found to be wrong.

You can say all you want about AFP and the DPP not doing their jobs, maybe you should give it ago. See how they have to play while always being stuck behind the 8 ball.