Friday, April 22, 2011

This Is No Farce - But It Is A Problem

This report in the Daily Mail is misleadingly headlined as a farce, following that paper's agenda of sneering at the justice system whenever possible. There is a serious difficulty when jurors (or magistrates for that matter) do their own research on the Internet rather that relying on what they have heard in evidence, but for a juror to contact someone involved in the trial raises matters one more notch.
According to the Mail report, there were also cock-ups with police preparation of the files - I am personally familiar with cases coming to a grinding halt when interview transcripts (ROTI's) have been clumsily or carelessly redacted to exclude inadmissible material.
The senior wigs are working on a policy to avoid the Internet problem, but it won't be easy to devise something that is practical and enforceable.

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