Page 2510 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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jury must work. It is then for the jury to decide the facts of the case within those parameters.
At times, the judge will be reasonably firm as to what evidence the jury can rely on and what the critical question for them to decide is. We want real life experience to guide the decisions, but it is also important that those decisions are framed by the expertise of the judges. In addition, jury trials foster community acceptance of the courts and the verdicts being handed down because of the added value that juries bring.
Nobody I have discussed the bill with has disagreed with the general starting presumption that jury trials are an important part of our criminal justice system. Mrs Dunne acknowledged this earlier in her speech when she was still talking about the bill itself. That position is well held within the legal profession, by legal academics and by the general community. Where opinions begin to differ is whether there should be an exception to the rule to allow judge-alone trials in certain circumstances.
At the outset I would like to acknowledge that there have been various views coming from the legal profession on this and that not all of them will agree with the position taken by the ACT Greens today. What I can say is that we have listened carefully to the concerns, analysed them and assured ourselves that the bill is appropriate to pass.
I would now like to turn to some of the detail we have relied upon in deciding to support this bill. I guess the best place to start is the 1993 reforms, because in assessing the changes today it is important to look back to gain an understanding of where our legal system has come to with that history in mind. Leading up to the 1990s, jury trials were the norm in the ACT. That changed in 1993 when the ability to elect for a judge-alone trial was inserted into the ACT Supreme Court Act.
Comments made by the late Terry Connolly at the time are important to repeat today. In response to requests from the Canberra Liberals for the changes to be reviewed in future years to see how they were operating, Attorney-General Connolly said in the Assembly, “We will keep an eye on how this goes. I doubt whether many people will avail themselves of the right to go to trial without a jury, but some may.”
It is clear that the government at the time did not intend for judge-alone trials to become the norm. However, 15 years later that is what has transpired. Statistics presented to the Assembly show that between 2004 and 2008, 56 per cent of criminal trials in the ACT proceeded as judge-alone trials. It is clear that the 1993 reforms have had an unintended consequence. The Greens accept that and we accept the need to address the issue. Again, this is a point relatively well accepted amongst the legal profession. Something needs to be done to make jury trials the norm once again. In light of this, the government’s bill today essentially repeals the 1993 reform to once again require that all criminal trials proceed with a jury.
This is the point at which things begin to differ. Some in the legal profession have expressed concern that the proposal raises the potential for pre-trial media to prejudice potential jurors and to make it too difficult for a fair and unbiased jury to be found.
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