Page 5337 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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would impress on this Government and any future government in the Territory, is chapter 10, which is headed "Other Aspects of Jury Trials". That is important. There are a number of recommendations there which will greatly simplify the law, especially the criminal law at its more serious level, that is, at the Supreme Court level, in terms of procedures in that court and procedures in relation to juries.
I will devote about half of my speech to that particular chapter because I think that is something on which the committee was basically unanimous. The legal profession is unanimous in terms of necessary alterations to the law to simplify the criminal justice system and the administration of that system.
Mr Speaker, majority verdicts have been in place in four Australian States and Territories for periods ranging from about 10 years or so, in the case of the Northern Territory, to over 60 years in South Australia. Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory have very successfully had majority verdict systems for a number of years. In the Northern Territory it is in for every type of offence, including capital offences. In the other States you need a unanimous verdict for a capital offence such as murder. If the ACT is to go down the track of introducing a majority verdict situation, we felt, as a committee, that it should adopt the model of the other southern States and exclude capital offences, such as murder, where a unanimous verdict should remain.
I might say that Mr Collaery and Mrs Grassby did not see the need for majority verdicts, and no doubt they will make reference to that should they wish to speak to this particular report. I believe, on balance, Mr Speaker, that majority verdicts would be of benefit to the Territory. It would save a number of retrials.
I suppose that, in a way, I have a closer knowledge of jury trials than the other two members, certainly Mrs Grassby, and perhaps even Mr Collaery, in that I have been involved in a large number of jury trials as a prosecutor. They are certainly very interesting creatures and they are a very relevant part of the criminal law.
The benefit of a majority verdict system, Mr Speaker, if it is adopted - we did recommend this - is that it enables 10 out of the 12 jurors to agree, after a period during which they could not reach a unanimous decision, that the person was either guilty or not guilty. That often prevents the need for a retrial, which causes a lot of trauma to the defendant, to the victim if there is one, and to the other witnesses and other persons involved. Also, it is a fairly costly exercise.
Luckily, in recent years in the Territory the incidence of hung juries has been fairly minor, and that is good. I recall that in the early 1980s probably up to about 20 per cent of our trials would result in juries being unable to
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