One day, a couple of decades ago, a yob in a tee-shirt, shorts and thongs wandered into a hearing the ACT Supreme Court and sat down in the public gallery.
Chief Justice Richard Blackburn was presiding.
The yob presumably had something to do with the case – a relative of the accused, perhaps.
In any event, a court attendant took one look at him, approached him, whispered in his ear and led him from the court.
Blackburn had seen this with half and ear and eye from the bench. When the attendant returned, Blackburn interrupted proceedings and asked the attendant, “What did you say to that young man?”
The attendant rather sheepishly said that he had advised that the man’s dress was not up to scratch and he should leave the court.
“Get him back,” ordered Blackburn. “The courts are open to the public.”
Blackburn was right. Justice must be done in public.
But there is one dark area in the administration of justice in Australia where the cleansing searchlight of public scrutiny is not permitted: the deliberations of the jury room. Jurors could draw straws on guilt and no-one would know. By and large, they probably do their limited best, but no one knows for sure because they are not taxed to the extent of having to provide reasons why they have acquitted someone who might well be a psychopathic axe murdered or convicted the innocent mother of the murder of her child.
So what a refreshing change it was this week to see a news conference of the jurors in the Michael Jackson case. There should be more of it. We should adopt the practice in Australia, so we can see the “wisdom” of the jury first hand.
The Jackson jury was a model of prejudice and illogicality. What else would one expect if you pick people randomly off the street and exclude anyone in the professions, in a business or trade or (in Australia) who is over 65? You have immediately excluded anyone with an ounce of discretion, brain or wisdom.
Incidentally, this will get worse in Australia under new industrial relations rules under which employers will not have to pay full wages to jurors while they are away from work – more grounds for employed people to escape jury duty; more room for the unemployable who on average will be less capable of the task.
But back to the illogicality in the US.
One of the Jackson jurors (Juror No 5) told the news conference that she objected to the mother of Jackson’s accuser.
She said, “”I disliked it intently when she snapped her fingers at us. That’s when I thought, ‘Don’t snap your fingers at me, lady.’ ”
Oh dear, a man charged with child molestation gets a jury vote on the grounds that a witness snapped her fingers.
Juror No. 1, Raymond Hultman, 62, a civil engineer, said he was initially leaning toward conviction, but changed his mind during the deliberations.
“I feel that Michael Jackson has probably molested boys,” Hultman said. “To be in your bedroom for 365 straight days and not do something more than just watch television and eat popcorn, that doesn’t make sense to me. But that doesn’t make him guilty of the charges that were presented.”
Compelling logic.
Juror No 10, plucked from the street and unable to escape jury duty because she did not have a business or a job or even the wit to say that her job-seeking obligations should preclude her, came up with a circular argument that El Greco could not match.
She said of the accuser’s mom, “What mother in her right mind would allow that to happen? Just freely volunteer your child to sleep with someone. Not so much just Michael Jackson but any person for that matter. That’s something that mothers are naturally concerned with.”
In short, the juror says the man is a molester. This mother handed her son to the molester. What sort of mother would do that? Therefore I cannot believe any of her accusations. Therefore the person she handed her son to was not a molester.
She is probably a nice, well-meaning woman, but clearly not capable of absorbing four months’ of evidence and coming to a reasoned conclusion.
Jury foreman Paul Rodriguez, 63, a retired school counsellor, said he was put off when the accuser’s mother, who is also Hispanic, singled him out.
He said: “The mother when she looked at me and snapped her fingers three times and she says, ‘You know how our culture is?’ and winks at me. No, that’s not the way our culture is.”
Nothing like reverse racism to help reach a verdict.
Juror Hultman crystalised the illogic by saying of the man he acquitted: “We would hope he doesn’t sleep with children anymore.”
In short, we find you are innocent, but just don’t do it again.
The only sensible conclusion was drawn by prosecutor Tom Sneddon who said, “In 37 years, I’ve never quarrelled with a jury’s verdict.”
You cannot quarrel with illogicality.
The Jackson jury was beyond reasoned argument. In Australia prosecutor Sneddon would be spot on: How could anyone quarrel with a verdict for which no reasons are given at all?
Jackson may well be innocent, but can we have a bit of public rigour and reason in drawing that conclusion?