A drunken man in Wales dressed up in a black bin bag and cape and attacked two cousins with a metal crutch. Why would he do that? Well, apparently he wished to join the Dark Side of the Force. The cousins had recently set up a Jedi church in Holyhead, and were making a film of themselves duelling with lightsabers when the drunken man vaulted the fence and attacked them, shouting “Darth Vader!” as he did so.
Pre-sentence reports will be heard in mid-May.
Filed under crazy stuff, criminal law, law, religion, tolerance
This article about the collapse of a legal trial against some Rastafarians cracks me up.
Apparently the five Rastas had been charged with cannabis dealing, and the trial had been running for two weeks when one of the police officers recognised a paralegal from the defence team for one of the defendants. The paralegal was said to have telephoned the police and complained about alleged drug running at the Rastafarian temple, although she denied this. What were the chances of that?
The trial descended into chaos, and the prosecution decided not to tender any further evidence. The judge decided that the defendants should be acquitted.
(Hat tip to Dave Bath at Balneus)
Filed under courts, crazy stuff, criminal law, drugs, law, religion, society
The other day, I was driving my 2 year old daughter to creche. She announced with satisfaction and great confidence from the back of the car, “One day, Mummy broke my fingers.” I saw her make an illustrative wiggle of the said fingers in the rear view mirror.
“What?” I cried with horror. “I have never done that. What are you talking about?”
“Mummy shut my fingers in the door at Nanny and Papa’s and I did cry and Nanny got bandaids for me,” she explained.
This incident is the bane of my life. About a month ago, I had started closing the door to the outside loo at Mum and Dad’s when a little Miss stuck her finger in between the hinges, and the door started to close on two of her fingers. Of course, as soon as I heard the cry, I stopped the door swinging, and although there was a little bruising, there was no blood. I was simply horrified, and also burst into tears. What was worse was that my daughter blamed me, and wouldn’t give me a kiss when she went to bed. But all was forgiven the next day when she woke up and announced, “I love you Mummy!” Or so I thought…
She keeps bringing the incident. Clearly, I am not entirely forgiven. Like her mother, she is a bit of a drama queen, and “Mummy broke my fingers” sounds far more dramatic than “Mummy accidentally bruised two of my fingers, but I was fine by the next morning.”
The moral of this story is: Never trust a two year old to recount events accurately.
I couldn’t help thinking of this when I read of a legal bid for a toddler to give evidence at a murder trial. Apparently, half way through the trial, it became apparent that the poor little boy could have possibly witnessed the killing of his mother. He was two years and five months old at the time of her death, and is now four years old. The boy’s account suggested that it was not the defendant who “hurt” his mother, but the defendant’s son (also the boy’s father). Justice Lasry refused the application for the boy to give evidence. In the event, the defendant was acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter.
Of course I can understand why the defence would have wished to lead the child’s evidence, but I think that the judge was correct to refuse the application. My own experience with my daughter the other day has convinced me even more firmly that the evidence of a toddler is not reliable!
Filed under courts, criminal law, law, motherhood
I thought I’d seen all the pathetic excuses possible for trying to get out of legal proceedings (including seceding from Australia, declaring the Court to be a hotbed of Freemasons and/or claiming that the Constitution is invalid for spurious reasons). But this is one of the best:
Richard James Howarth was remanded to appear in the Ipswich Magistrate’s Court to answer a string of traffic offences, including four counts of driving with a blood alcohol content more than three times the legal limit.
However, his lawyers said he failed to appear after having earlier informed them he would not talk to them because he is was [sic] the almighty and above answering to Queensland laws.
Early this month, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service solicitor Kevin Rose, for Howarth, told the court his client refused his office’s attempts to talk to them.
A court and a mental health expert have already deemed Howarth was mentally fit for trial, but Mr Rose maintained he has obvious mental health issues.
Mr Rose said he did not doubt Howarth genuinely believed he was God.
The Magistrate issued a warrant for Howarth’s arrest. Now if Howarth can turn the handcuffs into loaves and fishes, he might have some possibility of being believed…
Incidentally, if he is God, I have a number of questions for Him:
(Via Iain Hall)
Update:
A friend has asked that I recount one of my own craziest litigant in person stories. I came across this litigant in person who had exhibited the Magna Carta to his affidavit. Now that’s pretty stock standard with these guys. But the extraordinary thing was that his primary source for the Magna Carta seemed to be a novelty tea towel. I’m guessing it was a tea towel because of the fabric weave visible in the photocopy. Also there was kitschy gothic script. None of the judges commented on it, and I’m not sure that anyone else noticed.
Filed under cars, courts, crazy stuff, criminal law, driving, law, mental illness, religion
Update 1:
Thomas Towle, the Mildura driver who killed 6 teens and seriously injured 4 others, has been sentenced to 10 years in gaol. I told you it would be interesting to see what his sentence would be! Although Towle was convicted of dangerous driving (a lesser offence), he will be serving more time than the average sentence for culpable driving (a greater offence). Cummins J chose to treat the sentence as culmulative rather than concurrent, meaning that Towle was sentenced for a longer time. The defence had tried to argue that because the maximum penalty for dangerous driving was 5 years, the greatest Towle could face would be 5 years.
Update 2:
Someone else is thinking about whether animals with higher cognition should have more legal rights. I got there first! (thanks to Dave Bath)…
Filed under animals, courts, criminal law, driving, law
What happens if a person is brought up in a way that is more likely to cause them to act violently? Should they be criminally responsible for their actions? That’s a difficult enough question, but what happens if the perpetrator of a crime is a monkey? These questions are raised by the case of Chico the delinquent pet macaque.
Chico had already been in trouble with the law previously. When US Federal agents had visited the home of his owner some years ago, Chico had acted aggressively and threw faeces at the agents (although he was not the subject of their investigation, of course). This probably didn’t help his cause in the eyes of the law.
On the present occasion, he escaped from his home in Spokane and bit three people shortly thereafter. He was then taken into custody and held at a local humane society. Because he had bitten people, there was a chance that he could have infected them with rabies or herpes B, both of which are fatal to humans. The only way of testing for rabies is a post mortem test of brain tissue, and accordingly, it was decided that he should be put down.
One can’t help feeling sorry for poor old Chico. Apparently it’s a very bad idea to keep monkeys as pets, and they commonly become aggressive and violent. The bottom line is that in many cases, they can’t be “domesticated”, but nor can they then readapt to normal primate society either. Further, some monkeys carry diseases which can be transferred to humans. Many macaques carry Herpes B.
Should a primate like Chico have “quasi-human” rights or “primate rights”? Some might argue that we show no qualms about putting down dogs who bite humans, so a monkey is no different. However, monkeys are much closer to humans genetically speaking. Should they be given more of a chance than a dog?
Here it seems that Chico was put down primarily because of the health concerns involved, but it doesn’t seem fair that he has to pay the ultimate price for that: his misbehaviour is a direct consequence of his owner’s behaviour in treating him as a pet. Incidentally, it appears that his owner will be charged with keeping a dangerous animal. She is already awaiting sentencing for fraud proceedings in relation to a false college degrees sold over the Internet.
I can’t help wondering what would happen if a larger primate (such as an orang utan or a chimpanzee) killed a person. Should it be determined if the primate had understanding of its actions if it was proposed to put the animal down? To establish criminal liability, it is required to establish that there was an actus reus (criminal action) and a mens rea (criminal intention). It has been argued that chimpanzees could potentially be more rational than human beings (in an experiment involving the economist’s ultimatum game). Do chimpanzees and other great apes have the moral agency required to be prosecuted for a crime? I am sure I have seen a documentary where a grieving chimpanzee mother carried around her dead baby for days, until some other chimps from the group took the baby away. It was actually very distressing to watch. Clearly the mother and the other chimps had a concept of death, and what is more, the mother had a very human reaction to her child’s death.
On the other hand, having a “quasi-trial” for an animal could become farcical. There is a long and dishonourable tradition of animal trials. The most common animals which were the subject of such trials were pigs, bulls, cows or horses, or pests such as rats, mice and weevils. Edward Payson Evans wrote a book called The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals in 1906, which cited a variety of cases, including the prosecution of a number of moles in the Valle D’Aosta in 824, the charges against a cow by the Parliament of Paris in 1546 and the conviction of a Swiss dog for murder in 1906. It’s well worth reading this article in Cabinet Magazine for more details of the book – I think I need a copy.
Back to Chico: a case such as this does raise serious issues as to how we deal with criminal offences, whether committed by human or primate.
It’s a pretty sad case all in all. It sounds to me like the US is in dire need of some laws with regard to keeping primates as pets – primates are very like us in some ways, but they are not substitute children, and they do badly in a domesticated environment.
(Via Short Sharp Science blog, from New Scientist)
(Hat tip to Dave Bath for bringing this case to my attention)
Filed under animals, crazy stuff, criminal law, death sentence, good and evil, Guilt, human rights, morality
It’s easy to be an armchair judge or jury member. I must admit that I was surprised when I read that Thomas Towle was found not guilty of six counts of culpable driving causing death. Instead, the jurors found him guilty of dangerous driving causing death, which is a lesser offence carrying a lesser sentence.
In 2006, the car Towle was driving spun out of control and crashed into a group of teenagers walking home from a party, killing 6 of them and seriously injuring 4 others. After the accident, he fled the scene, leaving his four year old son and ten year old daughter in the car. The parents of the dead teenagers have been outraged and distressed by the lesser conviction, particularly after it emerged that Towle had prior driving offences about which the jury had not been told. Of course, the reports that Towle’s father blames the “sinful” teenagers rather than his son for the accident will distress the parents even further.
But I also know from my own days in practice that it’s very different sitting through an entire case than it is reading a newspaper report. Indeed, the Victorian Setencing Advisory Committee prepared a report on public perceptions of sentencing which established exactly that. In the executive summary to the report it is stated that:
{emphasis added}
The report is well worth reading in full if you have a moment. Essentially, the only criminal cases about which we are told in the media are the “juicy” and shocking ones, where the result is newsworthy and sensational. Of course, media outlets like to focus on outraged victims and/or their families in these cases. Further, we only know a small proportion of the facts that come before a judge and jury, and studies have shown that when people are given more facts, their views of an appropriate response change. So I’m wary of claims that sentencing is “too lenient”. In individual cases, mistakes happen, but it is not an across-the-board phenomenon.
Back to the Towle case. The four principal charges against Towle were:
There were other charges, but I won’t mention them here. The first two were the more serious charges, with culpable driving carrying a penalty of up to 20 years in gaol. The second two were the alternative lesser charges, with dangerous driving carrying a penalty of up to 5 years in gaol. In order to prove that Towle was guilty of culpable driving, the prosecution had to prove that Towle was “grossly” negligent, whereas for the lesser charge of dangerous driving, the prosecution merely had to prove that Towle was negligent. In judging whether Towle’s driving was grossly negligent, or merely negligent, the jury could not be swayed by the horrific consequences of the accident or Towle’s cowardly actions afterwards. The question was to what degree the driving up to the accident was negligent?
I can’t answer that question. I don’t know all the information which the jury received. It is clear that he was speeding, with his son sitting on his lap, but I don’t know what the expert evidence was.
We also don’t know what the sentence will be yet. Justice Cummins will consider that question on Monday. However, in that context, I thought I might look at another report by the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Committee, which provides a “snapshot” of sentences for culpable driving causing death. It was interesting to note that the most common sentence of imprisonment for the more serious offence of culpable driving was four years with a non-parole period of two years. The median principal imprisonment level was 5 years. So even if Towle had been convicted of the more serious offence, according to the law of averages, he may still have been facing a sentence of around 5 years. It will be interesting to see what the sentence is. I suspect it will be at the higher end for dangerous driving, but I can’t say for sure.
The other question which has been raised in the light of this case is whether juries should explain their verdicts. Dr Mirko Bagaric and Colin Lovitt QC presented opposing points of view in The Herald Sun today. Presently, juries are not allowed to explain their verdicts to the press or anyone else. This is in contrast to the US, where juries can give interviews to the press explaining why they decided as they did. Sometimes this creates an unpleasant media circus where jury members are hounded by the press.
I think I sit somewhere between Bagaric and Lovitt. I think it’s important for juries to give an idea of why they decided as they did to maintain public confidence in the criminal justice system. As I’ve noted above, the more facts people know about a decision, the more likely they are to find it acceptable. But I think it is really important that individual jury members not be interviewed or identified by the press, and they certainly should not be hounded. I would favour an agreed written statement of reasons produced by the jury, to accompany the handing down of a verdict. Of course, the problem with this is that it may lead to more appeals in criminal cases if a potential flaw is found in the jury’s reasoning. But then, as Bagaric says, isn’t it fairer that we redress flaws than leave them hidden? And I think it’s always better to know than to be left in the dark. It may be that the jury had perfectly explicable reasons for deciding as they did in this case, and I think they should be allowed to give a statement justifying their decision.
Filed under courts, criminal law, judges, juries, law, law reform, media
The question of when one can be held to be responsible as an adult is a vexed on in the law. In medieval times, one reached adulthood upon attaining the age of 7. There was no concept of the teenager until recent times.
What happens when children kill? There was a tragic case in the paper today of a 11 year old boy in Britain who was killed in a shooting. The suspects are a 14 year old and an 18 year old. I lived in Manchester at the time that toddler Jamie Bulger was abducted and killed by two 10 year old boys. It was an awful case, and one really wondered what could be done with the two perpetrators. Did they understand the gravity of what they had done? Surely they knew that to hurt another child was wrong, and that to kill another child on purpose was gravely wrong? Should they be treated as adults by the law? If so, would this create very little chance of them rehabilitating and become normal members of society? Could (or should) they be allowed to become normal members of society?
Children should know that such an action is wrong. If a killing is accidental, that’s another thing entirely, but if a killing is premeditated, then I tend to think that it should be treated very seriously. Of course, it does depend on the age somewhat, but I tend to think that children should know that killing another child is wrong from a very early age. It can get confusing when a child sees the world news and sees suicide bombers, wars, violence etc. And then there’s action movies, where the hero kills baddies all the time. Many of the boys in my primary school used to watch the Mad Max movies, and related to me in gory detail how this guy had a metal boomerang which cut peoples’ heads off. As a 10 year old, it freaked me out (which I’m sure was the intention of the boys who told me – nothing better than shocking a girl at that age). But that’s a bit different to killing another child in cold blood, and I’m somewhat wary of hysteria over movies and music being blamed for bad actions.
Filed under children, criminal law, law, morality, society
Dave Bath at Balneus has an interesting post comparing the court sketches of Dr Haneef, noting that the sketches in the Murdoch press make Dr Haneef look somewhat like a Neanderthal.
Now it could just be a matter of personal interpretation. I must confess that when I worked in and around the court system, I used to occasionally do sketches of people (witnesses, barristers etc). Some sketches were better than others. Some people might have been a bit offended had they seen some of my renditions. Sometimes a sketch took on the character of a parody, even when I hadn’t intended it to do so. Perhaps that’s what happened to the Court artist.
But Dave makes another interesting point in a later post – is it legal to present a defendant in a way which is unflattering and may lead members of the public to draw adverse conclusions about that person?
This area of the law is called “contempt of court by publication”, and it is a somewhat byzantine jurisdiction. There is an inherent jurisdiction in the court, and also legislative provisions preventing contempt of court. Contempt by publication covers the publication of material which might tend to adversely influence a jury before trial. There is of course a balance between freedom of speech and the right of a defendant to a fair trial. The question is also how far media representations do actually influence jury members. According to the WA Law Reform Commission Report on Contempt, a study (M Chesterman, J Chan and S Hampton, Managing Prejudicial Publicity (2001)) found:
1. Jurors often believed that newspaper coverage of their trial was inaccurate and/or inadequate.
2. Juries were equally successful in identifying the relevant issues regardless of whether the publicity was negative or positive towards the accused. Also, the quantity of negative publicity did not seem to make a difference to the proportion of verdicts that were ‘safe’.
3. In trials where the evidence was equivocal [that is, not strong in favour of guilt or clearly insufficient]…there was greater reason to believe that publicity may have affected the verdict.
As a lawyer who has seen cases that she has worked on reported in the press, I would agree that you really can’t trust press reports, and that it is quite a different thing to sit in court and watch witnesses testifying to reading about it in the paper. Also, seeing someone in the flesh is very different to seeing them in a photograph or even on television. Personally, I discounted much of what I had read or seen in the press in favour of my own first-hand impressions. But I don’t know if I was influenced subconsciously in any way.
In fact, this is not the first time issues like these have arisen in a high profile case. My mind went back to the media coverage of that terrible event, the Port Arthur massacre, perpetrated by Martin Bryant. Some of the papers, including The Australian, ran a picture where the Bryant’s eyes had apparently been digitally altered in order to emphasise the whites of his eyes, which gave him a crazed look. The then Director of Public Prosecutions, Damian Bugg, issued writs against various media outlets for contempt of court in the light of concern that the sensationalised media reporting would prejudice the defendant’s chance of getting a fair trial (and thus make Mr Bugg’s job much harder).
However, the then chair of Australian Press Council, David Flint, argued that Australian newspapers regularly ignored contempt-of-court provisions, indicating that the law needed to change, rather than the newspapers.
Clearly it’s not a straightforward question. I will be very interested to see what Dr Haneef looks like in a photo, and whether the Murdoch press’ portrayal is fair or not.
Filed under courts, criminal law, freedom of speech, judges, juries, law, media, Uncategorized
The Legal Soapbox 