Making Judgement !

Different countries - Different laws  !   The law in Australia is based on English law because when the first fleet arrived this colony was deemed an extension of England as far as it's governors were concerned and judges enforced the law on that basis.  New laws were added when the complexities of this new land warranted.

Today, there has been a divergence of law between the two countries.  This concerns what juries are allowed to hear in relation to past crimes that apply to a person before them for judgement.  In England the judge presiding over a case has an obligation to make the jury aware of past convictions relating to that person.  In Australia, the jury is shielded from that knowledge - and only informed in very special circumstances.   Pressure is building to change the law and automatically make the jury aware of all past convictions.

There are two very pertinent sides to this argument.  It is argued that an accused must only be judged on the particular crime event on which he or she is on trial and that the decision must be made solely on the evidence put before the court.    It is the job of the prosecutor to convince the jury on the basis of that evidence, and the job of the defence to prove that this evidence does not convince them of guilt.   The judge is the arbitrator that keeps prosecution and defence within the boundaries of the law in their presentations.

Much depends on individual assessment each juror makes on the character of the accused.  In most cases, this person is a complete stranger and that evaluation is made entirely on what the juror observes in his or her manner in court, and in the skill of the defence lawyer in portraying innocence. Should that juror be made aware that this same person has a long history of similar convictions to the present charge that would surely help in making that evaluation.

This panders to the families of victims who are aware that an accused has a long and sordid history of similar crimes, and yet they sit at the trial and hear the defence portray the accused as a person of fine character.  It must be galling to see this go unchallenged and often leads to their notion that justice was not entirely served - and that the sentence imposed was inadequate.

Selecting a jury is a delicate process given that jurors are picked at random from electoral rolls. Where major crimes are concerned the law seeks the unanimous verdict for a conviction, but that has now been reduced so that a single holdout can no longer abort a trial.  Both prosecution and defence have a limited ability to reject individuals during jury selection and an effort is made to weed out those who may have strong partisan views on law procedure.

But - it all comes down to the individual makeup of the twelve people who sit in judgement.  They are counselled to be fair and only consider whatever evidence is put before them in court and yet their prejudices on morality, religion, politics and a host of other emotions will come into play as they make up their minds.   Often, a single person with strong persuasive powers will dominate a jury and sway the verdict either way.

It is possible to make a case on the admission of past crimes with opposing views.  Certainly the decision relates entirely to the event for which the accused is before the court and the decision must apply to that matter only, but at the same time a person who habitually perpetrated very similar events should be evaluated with that fact in mind when giving the case consideration.   The past criminality of the accused is a pertinent factor in character evaluation.

This is another of those issues that will probably only be decided by the justices of the Australian High Court.