July 20 That we should abolish trial by jury

[MsElliott]

Round 5: Monday, July 20th 2015 at 7pm

That we should abolish trial by jury

Round five is power-paired (teams will debate against a team adjacent to them on the ladder). Draws for round five will be released after round four.

[MsElliott]

A suggested rebuttal to have pools of jurors, some with more experience or security clearance than others. Eg. assets.justice.vic.gov.au/justice/resources/5096dc0c-bf78-4307-998b-0268a3480965/list_of_victorian_authorised_witnesses.pdf

The idebate site: idebate.org/debatabase/debates/law-crime/house-would-limit-right-trial-jury-some-criminal-cases

A really good page outlining the jury justification: www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP9697/97rp11

History and Importance of Trial by Jury in a Democratic Society
I have suggested elsewhere that the jury system can help to defuse conflict during turbulent times,(6) and I have offered as an Australian example the acquittal of the Eureka rebels, following the rebellion and massacre. British prosecutions for treason, sedition, unlawful assembly and the like provide further illustrations: cases such as those involving William Penn, Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke.

Those who have studied such matters and those who have had experience of the jury system have generally favoured the system as one which facilitates the democratic participation of the community in the administration of justice. Lord Devlin observed that each jury 'is a little parliament'. He added that the first object of any tyrant 'would be to make parliament utterly subservient to his will'; the next would be 'to overthrow or diminish trial by jury'. He concluded with characteristic eloquence that trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution: 'it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives'.(7)

In Australia, judges and retired judges have made similar observations. The former ACT justice Xavier Connor QC has listed some of the features of the system:

The twelve jurors chosen at random are likely to represent community views and values in a way that a single judge does not.
Trial by jury is democratic in that the community participates in a vital way before people accused of serious crime can be convicted.
Juries, because they do not give reasons for their decisions, can bring the conscience of the community to bear on issues in a trial in a way that a judge cannot do.
The community participation in the administration of criminal justice, by way of jury service, promotes an understanding of the system and confidence in it in a way that no other system does.
Trial by jury is and is seen to be a system better adapted than any other to preserving the liberty of the subject against oppression by the State.(8)
Like air and water, trial by jury is best appreciated by those who have had its benefits withdrawn from them. When the British parliament provided, in 1787, for a military tribunal in New South Wales, with a Judge-Advocate presiding over a panel of six military officers, the citizens soon came to appreciate the superiority of the jury system. The military tribunal could be manipulated by Macarthur and others and could not be relied on to be impartial, especially when military interests were involved. William Wentworth and others campaigned vigorously for the British system, and numerous petitions for jury trial were lodged with the authorities. Eventually, in 1847, that system was introduced into New South Wales and made applicable to the Port Phillip district.(9) By the time of federation, the citizens of all Australian colonies were quite familiar with the benefits of trial by jury in serious criminal cases.