JURY SYSTEM

Southland Times, Issue 20488, 16 May 1928, Page 10

JURY SYSTEM

MAJORITY VERDICTS. JUDGE’S ADVOCACY. Sydney, March 30. Now and again the question of majority verdicts comes up for discussion wherever the jury system is in force. It was revived recently in Melbourne when the foreman of the jury in a criminal case asked Mr Justice Woinarski if an eleven-twelfths verdict could be accepted. The Judge was compelled to inform the foreman that it could not under the law as it stands at present but he expressed the opinion that the law should be reformed in this respect, with the reservation that there should be a unanimous verdict in cases involving a death penalty. Subsequent inquiries among barristers indicated that there was strong support in legal circles for the Judge’s views. Those of the public who take an interest in the administration of justice are impressed, says one writer, with the case of majority verdicts, and many would not confine the majority to eleven out of the twelve jurors. In innumerable cases where the evidence seems to have established the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt there have been necessitating a new trial, and in many others the public sense of justice has been outraged by verdicts of “Not guilty,” where the prisoners’ guilt must have .been evident to any honest juror. This has been particularly noticeable in criminal trials in Sydney and Melbourne and has often given rise to a suggestion of jury-squaring. It has been shown that the case for unanimous verdicts is at best an academic one. It is held that if one man on a jury does not believe that a prisoner is guilty, there must be a doubt of his guilt, and that the prisoner should receive the benefit of it. Even if it be presumed that the one juror holds an honest view, it is beyond all reason to suppose that he is right and the other eleven jurors are wrong. Given that he has not been corrupted by outside influences, there remain the chances that he is too stupid to weigh the evidence properly, that he is of stubborn nature and impervious to reason, or that he holds such views on present social arrangements that he deliberately refuses to help existing social machinery to function properly. “When such factors as these are taken into consideration,” says the “Australasian,” “it is seen that the chances of the wrongdoer escaping the punishment due to him are greatly enhanced, and the chances of the community receiving its due protection correspondingly diminished.”