JURIES AND JUSTICE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 255, 24 July 1936, Page 12

JURIES AND JUSTICE

Wisdom in a Multitude

STATE OF JUDGE’S LIVER “In a multitude of jurors there is wisdom.” This was the core of the speech delivered by Mr. J. A. Lee (Government, Grey Lynn) during the second reading debate on the Judicature Amendment Bill in the House of Representatives yesterday. In a characteristically happy speech, Mr. Lee developed his theme by stating that a judge had never administered justice that had nothing to do with the state of his liver. “I have recently been reading an interesting account of a trial in Russia,” Mr. Lee said, “and the problem for the assessors was practically whether the accused had committed an offence against Society. It is interesting to hear from lawyers that similar considerations, perhaps unconsciously, weigh with our juries. . There is not one of us who does not know that in time of war it is easier to obtain a verdict on a charge of sedition than in time of peace. In our society, while it is true that the judge determines questions of law, the jury determines whether the offence is against other human beings. On the whole, a jury determines some sort of democratic justice. A judge seems to gain in capacity of intellect, but at about the age he arrives on the bench he seems to lose the capacity for physical living.” Mr. Speaker: Order, order. Intellectual Living. “I am not reflecting on judges,” Mr. Lee said. “I am merely stating a fact. The longer a judge lives the more he lives an intellectual and less a physical life. We want to make sure that cases are tried at least partly by men who are in touch with physical life—by men, in fact, who may look at the prisoner in the dock and know that they, too, might have sinned.”

Mr. R. A. Wright (Independent, Wellington Suburbs): You want sympathy for the sinner. < Mr. Lee said that he was always inclined to look askance at the just man —the man who was so confident in his capacity to resist sin that he developed self-righteousness to a fault. Mr. Lee made play with the official description of special jurors, as “gentlemen of the best condition.” “What chance has a slender-waisted man like myself?” he asked. “How do we measure a man in the best condition? Do we put the tape measure round his brow or round his middle? One might almost call it justice by avoirdupois. Men with the title .of esquire are eligible for service on special juries. What is an esquire? Probably he is a man who owns a motor-car on the time-payment system. When he buys his motor-car, the firm which has sold it to him writes him a letter calling him esquire. When he defaults in his payment they write him a letter calling him something else.” Worker and Esquire. No doubt, added Mr. Lee, the member for Wellington Suburbs considered that he was an esquire. Mr. Wright: I am a worker. Mr. Lee: Of the best condition? (Laughter.) Mr. Wright: A worker all the same. Mr. Lee: Of superlative condition. (Laughter.) He is entitled to keep a seat in the pew—what do you call it? —in the jury-box. “I still believe that in a multitude of jurors there is wisdom,” continued Mr. Lee, “because the judgment of one is likely to be more faulty than the judgment of many. I think that in a motor accident case we should have a pedestrian on the jury as well as an ‘esquire,’ for it is just as well to have one of those liable to be bumped off as well as ong of those who do the bumping off.”