September 1, 2025 • 51 mins
From the man who accidentally stabbed himself in the back to the jury who used a ouija board to connect with the dead witness, Judith Fordham has seen a lot. The former criminal barrister joins Gary Jubelin to share some of her most memorable “unwinnable” cases, and reveals what really goes on behind the jury doors.
Want to hear more from I Catch Killers? Visit news.com.au.
Watch episodes of I Catch Killers on our YouTube channel here.
Like the show? Get more at icatchkillers.com.au
Advertising enquiries: newspodcastssold@news.com.au
Questions for Gary: icatchkillers@news.com.au
Get in touch with the show by joining our Facebook group, and visiting us on Instagram or Tiktok.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see a side of life the average persons never
exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
In part two of my chat with former criminal barrister
Due for Them, Judith continued to entertain me with stories
from the bar table. Judith also took us inside the
jury room, and some of the things you said might
make your question whether the jury system has had its
We also found out how Judith defended a client accused
of stabbing the person, a case that she thought was
(01:06):
impossible to win, And we had discussion about forensic science
in the criminal justice system. This was a really unfiltered
look at the justice system. I think you're going to
enjoy it as much as I did. Judith for them.
Welcome back to part two of I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Thanks for having me back. After the first first part.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
We considered that we had a discussion off Mike and
we said no, we'll let you back for the second part.
Can I ask you about you winning the unwinnable case,
and the way you described it to me was you're
perfect that you're representing a client that had gone into
a room and got into a fight with the person
(01:48):
in the room. The person hadn't been stabbed when your
client walked in the room, and when your client walked out,
the person had been stabbed in the back, in the back.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Take it take and you can't stab yourself back by
the way, I have one trials where we ran the defense.
He cut his own throat and that's been successful. But
you can't do his stab himself in the back. It's
just not going to work. This is a client who
came in to see me late in the day, and
she won't mind if she's still around, she won't mind
(02:19):
being identified. I know, because this may identify to someone
who actually knows her, but she won't have a problem
with it. She came in and she walked into my office,
and I'm sorry, but she wasn't very well dressed. There's
a reason that I say that she's looking pretty daggy.
(02:41):
And she'd been a gem FOSSi or opal prospector in
an outback town where they have gems and opals there,
trying not to identify things. But she was a transsexual.
And sadly, because many trans sexual clients I've had have
got wonderful dress sense, she was standing behind the door
(03:03):
when dress sense was being handed out, as my mother
would have said. And so she came in looking pretty daggy,
with terrible taste in makeup and clothes and everything. But
she was very upset, and she came in and she said,
I don't want to go to a men's prison. I said, well,
how about stop a minute. How about you tell me
what you're supposed to have done or what you haven't done.
(03:25):
Is how I often opened an interview with a client.
Tell me what you haven't done, tell me what they
reckon you've done. So I just don't want to go
to a men's prison. When I get convicted. I said, well,
let's just see if you're going to get convicted first.
And as time went on, I was starting to agree
that she would get convicted because what had happened the
background of the story was that she'd collected a whole
(03:47):
lot of gems in her prospecting days. And by the way,
she had to be pretty tough, because if you're going
to be in an back town like that as a prospector,
it's a pretty rough and tough, blokey sort of a world.
So she was pretty handy with a fist, had to be.
And she was big too, she was probably six foot
three and quite solidly built. Now she'd got all these
(04:12):
gems and she'd come to Perth to and she'd made
these dreadful souvenirs. I'm sorry, if you're listening, I'm sorry
I called your souvenirs dreadful, but they were. She'd made
these Jarrah maps of Australia, varnished them. And what you
do is you Arrol died on a precious stone where
each state capital is in the leaf TASMANI you're off
(04:34):
because that's just too darn hard. You can't do that,
and you flog them as souvenirs and you make money.
And she was going to make money for her gender
reassignment surgery. You can't. It's not sex change. It's a
gender reassignment because you're being assigned the gender that you've
always felt you were. Okay, And she went to a
(04:57):
fairly cheap boarding house in Perth with all her Jerrem
maps of Australia, and she met this young man who
was quite personable, and he said, I'll sell them for you.
You know, I reckon, I get about thirty five thousand
dollars worth of this lot or whatever the amount was.
And great, she is impressed by him. Okay, you take
them and you sell them. And he came back later on.
(05:19):
I think he only had about fifteen hundred dollars and
all the maps are gone, and it's like, where's me money?
Her money was probably up his arm. I suspect, you know,
it was in the days of Heroin. I to remember
where he would have injected and bought injected himself and
(05:40):
blown a lot of the money and brought back what
was left. And she was pretty angry, and they had
they had a real, really intense argument about this in
the sort of lounge area of this boarding house, and
it evolved into a fistfight. And as I said, my
client was, you know, really could handle herself in that situation.
(06:03):
She wasn't charged with thumping him, though, she charged with
stabbing him because although there were only two people in
the room, him and her, and he didn't have a
stab wound when he entered the room, and he did
at the end of the altercation, and no one else
had come in. I asked her all of this, did
(06:24):
anyone come in?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
No?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Did he have a stab wound when he came into
the room. No, did he have one at the end? Yes?
Did you stab him?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
No?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
I'm going I actually went read my lips. I cannot
win this trial. You are going to have to plead guilty.
I mean, she's sort of an answer to how do
you defend someone you know they're guilty. I tell them
to plead guilty. I tell them they're insane. If they don't,
I don't care. I didn't do it. How do you
get the stab wound? I don't know. Oh, you know,
(07:01):
read my lips again. I still didn't know how I
was going to win the trial, but she insisted on
going to trial. In fact, her main question was what
do I wear? She said, well, I come secretary, Will
I come astronaut? And I said, well, come secretary. That
was a mistake. I should have said astronaut, because yeah,
she I seem to remember she was wearing blue sparkles
(07:24):
and white gloves. I could be wrong, but astronaut would
have been worse, I guess, because it would have been
a silver lama.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
But anyhow would have made a statement.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So I'm at the beginning of the trial and how
am I going to defend her? And I'm looking at
the crime scene photos again, just as you do, going
through everything you've got. And it dawned on me, dawned
on me, and thank Heaven's it dawned on me before
the trial and not after, because I could never forgiven myself.
There were some stairs leading from this room, and no,
(07:58):
it wasn't that. Somebody came down the stairs with stairs
leading from this room upstairs to the kitchen, and I
said to her, I said, where did the stairs go
out of the kitchen. There was a plastic bag on
the stairs, just like a Wooly's bag or a coal's bag,
something like that. And the bag looked like it had
been damnag. I had, you know, had they made of
not great plastic? And I had like a split in
(08:19):
the bag. I said, whose bags? That shit, that's mine?
I said, well, what was in it? She said it
was me dinner. I was going to go upstairs the
kitchen cook me dinner. I said, so what was in it?
She oh, you know, me bread and you know, butter
or margarine or whatever, and misteak and me fork and
me knife knife, and there's a split in the bag.
(08:46):
I worked out what had happened. They'd had a punch up.
He'd fallen back on the stairs. The knife was in
the bag at such an angle that he actually fell
on the knife. The defense was he fell on the knife.
Luckily he only had one stab wound, because you're not
(09:06):
going to be able to run. He fell on the knife,
got up, ran backwards and fell on the knife four
more times.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
But well, that would have been a hard one to acplain.
So how did that play out at the trial? Did
the trial commence?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
The trial commenced, and she gave her evidence, and we
explained to the jury why she looked the way she did,
because they would have been wondering. And she gave not
the explanation weed rehearsed, but another explanation I said to
(09:43):
her because we had to explain what the money was
for and why she was so upset, you see, So
it was actually an essentral part of the background. So
I said, you know, what was the money for? Why
were you so angry? Because she admitted hitting him? You know,
she wasn't charged with hitting and she was charged with
something called unlawful wounding. I probably should have said that
which involves stabbing, so she wasn't charged with punching him.
(10:04):
So why were you so angry? He stole me money?
And what was your money for? It was for me
my operation, and what was your operation for? It was
for me, you know, gender reassignment surgery, and what was
that for? And she was supposed to say, was to
make me look more feminine? In fact, she was supposed
(10:24):
to I was going to ask a leading question. I
was going to say, was it to make you look
more feminine? Which is technically a leading question, But no
one was going to object, So I knew I could
get away by asking it was it to make you
look more feminine? But she forgot what she was supposed
to say, So I said, was it to make you
look more feminine. She said, Nah, it's just going to
cut me dick and me balls off. Nothing's going to
make me look more feminine. And I went, oh, you
(10:47):
could have heard a pin drop. The judge glared at me,
like this is all my fault instructing say that I
hadn't at all.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
She was supposed to say no, but you instructed her
to say what was appropriate or the one but you can't. Yeah.
It makes for court It makes for court room drama. Yeah,
things like I reckon.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
My little theory is that the jury thought no one
could give an answer like that not be telling the truth.
I reckon it.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Probably I've seen witnesses that come in there and or
people involved in trials that they're too stupid to lie,
like in the way that they're giving evidence. And that's
sounding like I think I'm smart, but there are some
people that are too stupid to lie. And like I
(11:42):
would have legal people come to me and say, well,
why do you think they're telling the truth. I don't
think this person is capable of telling a lie. Sit down,
have a chat and you'll.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Understand and continuing the lie, you know, and getting away
with it. You can tell stupid lies, but you'll get strung.
You've got to have a certain degree of intelligence to
carry the life through, would make it consistent with everything.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Else and consistently keep backing.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Anyway, this jury came back in seventeen minutes and acquitted
her in seventeen minutes. I timed it high five. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
And she gave me a necklace which I've still got,
made out of a crystal that she mined and arrol
dieted into it into something.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, are you wearing it? No?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But I do still have no treasure.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Okay, look, things like that. That makes a battler for
a whole range of reasons. But little things like that
make a difference. And you could have potentially missed that
and lost that. So that must give you some sort
of feeling of you doing doing good work.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Well, I was really pleased, but you know, most of
me was going, Thank Heavens. I noticed it before the trial,
because you know, I've beat myself up about the things
that I mess up, because honestly, she wasn't guilty. She
absolutely he wasn't guilty, and she should have been acquitted,
and I'm glad the jury did it so quickly. But
(13:07):
it was almost an accident, and I don't like that.
I don't like accidents.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I don't like it coming coming down to the life. Yeah,
I want you to take me into the jury room now,
and let's I think we touched on it in part
one that generally jurors in this country are not allowed
to speak about what goes on in the jury room.
So it's a big mystery. The jurors are shielded from
everyone involved in the trial, and they're boarding down the
(13:33):
back alleys and they're not allowed to talk to anyone.
So it's very rare that people working in this field
get an opportunity to talk to juris. How did you
come to get that opportunity?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Again, accident? There seemed to be a lot of accidents
happened in my life. I was doing a postgraduate degree
in forensic science, as you do when you've got nothing
better to do with your life, or you know, have
so much free time, and I was invited to do
(14:05):
a PhD.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
And it's the kids can look after themselves, don't worry
about that.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I'm fond of saying that mine thrived on neglect. And
again it's sort of fairly sixth sense of humor.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
There you're topping them up for the life that.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Not one of my children has a criminal record. So
I call that a success.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Or. You are a very very good barrasser.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
No, I call that an absolutely Anything better than that
is a real win. But no criminal records anyhow, accident
was what happened. You've got to do a PhD. And
when I did my postgraduate work in forensic science, here
was no such thing as forensic science for lawyers. I
had to do a proper postgraduate science course. And honestly, yes,
(14:51):
I had a science agree, but mine was biological sciences,
and you know, I was having to learn forensic chemistry,
chemistry I didn't do. Last time I did chemistry was
at school and I wasn't very good at it. And
that was yeah, yeah, So what am I going to
do with PhD? And in forensic science? What on earth
can I do? I don't actually know enough science. So
jack of all trades, master of none was me. I know,
(15:15):
I'm going to do expert evidence because that sort of
straddles the worlds of law and crime. And I thought,
I'm going to see whether I can talk to juris
because we always wonder you were saying earlier in part one,
you know, these juris sitting there, have the lawyers and
the experts lost them? The lawyers and experts having their
own learned conversation, the jurist sitting there going what happened?
(15:36):
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (15:37):
You know?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Have they forgotten about us? Because the juris just happened
to be the most important people in the court room,
and they get forgotten about. So I thought, I want
to know what works. I want to know what type
of communication works. How do they wrap their heads around it.
Do they go out and do their own investigation, their
own research, and we know that that's a complete no. No.
(16:01):
You mustn't go out and do your own research and
bring it back to the jury room. More that if
you get found out, the trial will be aborted because
you're supposed to only rely on what's presented in court.
So I'm curious about how they handle expert evidence and
the only way to do that because it is against
the law to talk to juris after trials except with
(16:21):
the permission of the Attorney General. So I went off
to the Attorney General of the day and said I'd
like to talk to juris and I'd like to find
out about this, and he was very receptive and gave
me that permission and it became a very very big study.
In fact, I think it's the biggest study that's ever
been done, certainly in Australia, UK, Canada, all the law
(16:45):
systems that are very similar where you're not allowed to
for example, you don't have the juris being interviewed on
the court steps like they do in the US. And
I had a lot of support to the law. Society
was in support. The police actually gave some funding towards it.
Legal Aid gave some funding, The Department of Justice funded
(17:08):
the Sheriff's office cooperated with me and sent out three
thousand questionnaires and yeah, and that way, you see, the
juris could remain anonymous unless they opted into the study.
So they just they sent them out. I didn't know
who they were sending them out to except it was random.
And then juriors opted in. And the amazing thing is
(17:29):
it was a twenty four page questionnaire, not just tick
a box. It was, you know, write down what happened
here and what happened there, and you know, approximately a
third of the juris actually completed that form and sent
it back, which is an amazing response rate for a
complicated form. And of those until the funding ran out,
(17:51):
we interviewed something like five hundred of them and.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So wow, that's a big cross that's.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Huge, it's huge. In the process of that, obviously I
learned a lot about what goes on behind closed doors.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Take us there where you can, what goes on behind
the juris okay.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Well, one of the things that came up because it
became not just expert evans, became a whole jury experience study.
It grew and grew and grew. One of the things
that I learned was, you know, people say, oh, you know,
the jurors would have acquitted this person because he's evil
and they're scared, and you know, it wasn't because there
(18:32):
wasn't enough evidence. It's because they were scared of this
bad dude. It was almost was in fact always, I
didn't find one instance where a juror said, and they
I do believe they're being honest with me. They had
to opt in for starters where a juror said it
was because I was scared of this bad dude, That's
(18:53):
why I quitted him. No, it was because there were
significant gaps of the prosecution case, and the prosecution was
really lying on the fact that he's a bad dude
to get a conviction, and the jurists took their oath
seriously and would only convict if there was in fact
enough evidence. Now that's a jury doing their job and
(19:13):
doing it properly. It's sort of, you know, on a
different topic which I'm sure probably end up touching on it.
It's sort of why I can sleep at night believing
that my client was a bad dude but he got
acquitted because, as I said at the start of the thing,
part of my job then was to keep the barsards honest.
(19:33):
I did come across quite a lot of examples where
the jurors actually went out and did their own investigations,
which they're totally not allowed to do, and that was
usually because they had questions that they wanted answered and
neither side had given them the answer. Because, of course,
a trial is about who presents what evidence on the day,
and there might be good reasons why certain evidence is
(19:55):
not being presented. For example, if someone has a really
bad criminal record in things that are not logically to
do with whatever they're accused of. This time. Often the
jury won't be told about that because the theory being
that they'll be influenced by that and convict him without
the proper evidence. I actually don't believe that will happen.
(20:17):
I do believe jurors do a really good job. I've
learned generally. You know, you've got the occasional rogue jury,
but again that's another story. But they have gone out
and for example, gone to the scene of a chase
or an you know, a traffic accident, or even a
(20:41):
nightclub where something's supposed to have happened, and they will
report back and tell the other jurors what they did,
or had them conduct experiments where they've thrown things out
of the window of a moving car to see how
far away they land. Now, maybe we should have had
something give that evidence so they're not tempted to do that.
(21:01):
And no, I couldn't and didn't and wouldn't report that
because everything they told me was confidential. And you can
see I'm being very very careful not to give any
identifying information about the particular trial.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
You talked about the past criminal history, and the jury
not being given that because that might influence their decision.
Us An example someone's been committed of an assault years
ago and then being charged with drug related matters or
whatever it could be. That is that going to influence
the jury. I'm a big believer and we had this
(21:34):
chat off Mike the other day that all the information
that's kept from the jury, we put our faith in
being judged by our twelve peers or whatever, and that's
the basis of the jury system. I have concerns that
not enough information is put to the jury and we
don't put enough faith in the role of the jury
(21:55):
to make informed decisions, like they're told not to. The
only thing that they need to take into account in
deciding guilt or innocence here is the information that's been
presented to the court. They still get instructed not to Yeah.
It used to don't watch the news tonight if it
was a high profile case, don't read the papers, And
they go, yeah, as if they're not watching the news
(22:18):
or reading the papers about it. And now they're instructed
not to look examine this on social media and different things,
as if they're not not doing it. I think we've
got to say there'll be reports in the media, don't
put any weight on that. That's unsubstantiated information. What you
need to do is concentrate on what we're presenting to
(22:40):
you at court. We need to make the instructions more
respectful to the role that the jury have.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Well, if we're going to have a system that completely
relies upon them, then we've got to have some trust
in them. And as I said, most of my research
uncovered the fact that they can generally be trusted and
they will have argus in the jury room. No, you're
not allowed to think about xyzz that you've learned, and
you know what the media reports will be sensationalists might
(23:08):
not necessarily be correct, and you know, we have to
only take into account what's said in the jury room.
And remember I said in part one about this jury
forty years ago, who said, we understand that there might
be some new workout on what causes ulcers, but we
weren't told about We wish we had been. Now that
(23:28):
we were forced to convict, even though we didn't feel
happy about doing it. So they will do as there
are generally. But that leads me to another thing I learned,
and that is that there are really two types of juries.
There are evidence led juries and verdict led juries and
the evidence led ones are the ones that produced the
(23:49):
most satisfactory verdict. By satisfactory, I mean they've actually considered
the evidence and come to a conclusion because the evidence
takes them there. I'll just explain that a bit. You
get the sort that will go into the jury room.
Someone has volunteered to be the four person for per offspring,
(24:11):
for you know, in charge, or the communicator of the
jury to the court, because that's really all they should
be doing, and it will often be the person who
really is they've seen on television. They just really want
to be the important and they've got fixed views about
what happened, and they're going to get this jury to
do what they want. That's why I think four persons
(24:35):
should not be chosen until a couple of days into
the trial, and some judges do that. Now, some judges
I think, have that point of view.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Just a subtle change, but I think that's a worth
wayle change because you could imagine the twelve people sitting
down there and whoever thinks I'm smarter or quicker, bigger,
I'm going to take control of this. And then you
get that bully type or domineering type that will influence
the other people. So okay, sorry I interrupted the judges
(25:04):
and now I wake wake up to that that. Let's
you don't need to pick it straight away. Just feel
the dynamics of the group, dynamics of the room, and
then work out who you think is best suited the Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Particularly the longer trial. You've got the luxury to be
able to do that. And I think it's a good
idea as well. But a verdict driven jury not let
verdict driven jury will be one where you know, the
four person says right, Let's take a pher thinks he's guilty,
who thinks he's not? All right? You know three of
you think he's not, nine of us think he is.
(25:38):
How can we pummel you through into submission? How can
we make you see our point of view? What's your problem?
And that sort of thing will happen. And I've heard
tales of jurors lying on the floor crying because of
the amount of bullying. Now that you have to say,
if there's a verdict of guilty after that sort of treatment,
(26:00):
that's not satisfactory. And no, I measured it by asking
jurors whether there was anything that happened that influence devote
a certain way, which they later regretted in the cold
light of day if you like. Now that's your verdict driven,
and that has to be in anyone's book, unsatisfactory and
(26:22):
not necessarily going to do justice. Then you've got your
evidence led where people say, right, okay, we've been told
what pieces the prosecution has to prove, what the elements
of the offense are, what things they have to prove.
Let's look at each one, what evidence we've got that
relates to that pro and con you know, what did
this witness say? What did that witness say? And go
(26:44):
through it carefully and thoroughly, and they find sometimes even
though for example, their sympathies might have been with the
victim or their sympathies might have been with the accused,
the verdict the evidence takes them to a particular conclusion
that's got to be far more satisfactory. So one of
my recommendations, if I hadn't had publication stopped by a
(27:08):
change of government, one of my recommendations was going to
be that there ought to be a facilitator in the
jury room, someone who's just experienced at holding meetings, if
you like, and getting people to some sort of agreement.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
This is going to say shallow when I say this,
and I was thinking as you were talking describing it,
I wasn't going to say facilitator, but I was thinking
that exact thing, that if you had someone there that
could just keep them all in line, and that have
to be the right person with the right personality, just
explaining what the role is there, because I could see
(27:45):
a group of twelve people going off in completely the
wrong direction. So what you're saying, facilitator, I think that
you're on the something there that would give me more
confidence that they're doing what they should be doing in
that room, because I think too much is ass of
jurists because I sit there on cases I might have
(28:07):
worked on for years and sit there and I'm getting
confused as the legal argument's going. I'm sitting there going
I'm getting lost on this, and I'm thinking these people
have just come into it. I've lived and proved it
for months or years, understand and understand the broader picture.
So I've got a better starting point. You've got these
(28:27):
people that get this sanitized version of information. They're asked
to leave the court. Why of why the is going on?
There's a legal argument in the absence of the jury
and they must be seeing there going what are they
talking about? Then coming back in and not being informed
of what was discussed other than a look at something
that wasn't relevant to your role here. We're sorry that
(28:48):
we're asking you to leave the court. But because you
now leave the court and they sit in the jury
room for three hours probably guessing what are they annassis?
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I can telle you from my watch that they are
guessing that and their offender as well. Why are we
not trusted? Why do we you know, they think we're children,
They think we can't actually, you know, sort things out. Also,
it used to be not need more, Thank Heavens that
jurors are even told not to take notes. Now they
(29:17):
can take notes, and some judges will allow them to
have copies of the transcript, in other words, the typed
up version of what's said in court. Why should it
be a memory test? Why should the person who misremembers
something holds sway in the jury. Why should it be
just the person who took notes that you know, is
the one who has more influence because they've got notes.
(29:38):
They only took notes of what mattered to them. So
access to transcript and people say oh, they'll just get
bogged down or you know, well, how about putting a
bit of faith in them and if they want to
check something, rather than having to come back into court,
which is what often happens to have transcript read to them,
(29:59):
why shouldn't they have it searchable on a computer in
the jury room and look it up for themselves.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, I think it's evolving and changing with the times,
and definitely it should be something because the jury system
is Yeah, the lineage goes back hundreds of years. The
world has changed, and it used to be we'll call
the jury from the village because you're going to be
judged by your peers. But it doesn't sort of really
sit that way anymore. There's a whole sections men.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
In fact, only that women could be on juries.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
When did they I didn't realize they let women in
the juries. When did that happen?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
You're asleep? Gary?
Speaker 1 (30:37):
All right, Well that's yeah. When did that come? When
did that come? When did it was it twelve men?
How long ago was that?
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I don't actually know, to be honest, which is embarrassing,
but you know, back in the thirties, for example, it
was always just men. I don't know when it actually changed.
But don't forget that women couldn't vote at one point.
And we only get to know the person's occupation, and
you know very little other than that their occupation, the
(31:07):
suburb they live in, unless that's changed, and you know
very little else. And all you could do is to say, well,
I guess if you're defending a bank robber, you wouldn't
want a bank manager on the jury. And it used
to be you wouldn't put teachers on the jury because
the theory was they'd be too judgmental. One other thing
I've learned from my study is the more educated the person,
(31:28):
the more useful they are as a juror. And you know,
give me a teacher any day on a jury. Even
though the received wisdom was you don't put them on juries.
That's just probably due to people's bad experiences when they're
at primary school or something. I suspect I don't see
anything that's yeah. So you know, the more educated they are,
(31:49):
the more able they are to indulge in that intellectual
exercise of putting aside preconceived notions, of examining their thinking
and being critical of their own thinking. And I mean
critical in the good sense of the word.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Do you think it would get to get to the
stage where we're not having the jury trials, Like, I
know there's options there. You can have a judge alone trial.
Do you see evolving to the point where, look, this
is all getting too complicated, forensic evidence, scientific evidence, even
AI coming into play. Do you see the courts evolving?
(32:25):
Will they keep up with the times?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Look, I still think there's a strong ament in favor
of having the appears. That's another question. But having a
jury of twelve people who are not otherwise involved in
the criminal justice system to actually judge this, because in
the end, it's society that's punishing or acquitting somebody, and
(32:50):
they're representatives of society. I think we need to get
better about how we communicate information so that things don't
get too complicated and the forms we presented in Should
we be giving them visuals? Should we be giving them,
you know, a graph? Should we be giving them pictures?
Should we learn to communicate like I'm a great, wonderful scientist,
(33:13):
and I can talk fancy language and I can use
fancy terms and all my colleagues understand me. Or how
am I going to present this to a jury? How
am I going to explain this so they understand. And
I firmly believe you can. I believe people can be
trained not just to ask the right questions of them
if you're the lawyer end of it, but as the
expert to use the right language and to explain and
(33:35):
to have you know, the lawyers help them explain it.
So I think the answers in the training, and I
don't think just having a jury of say three accountants
in a you know, fraud case is the answer at all.
And with judges, I mean, you can't pick which judge
you get. Judges, I have to say the quality of
(33:56):
judges is improving a lot a huge life over my career.
But you know, back in the olden days, I would
be very nervous if I had a judge a line
trial which judge I would get, because some judges you
knew that they were going to convict.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Some judges they had strong leanings one way the other,
the type.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Of and so you'd only go for the ability of
judge A line trials a relatively recent innovation anyway, And
I did it in the baby shaking case because at
the time of the trial there was a lot of
there was actually a public information campaign about don't shake
your babies.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Which okay, so that that could have played.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
That worried me, and I was glad that particular judge
that we got was a thoughtful, you know, very fair judge.
He may even recognize himself, but you know, I was
very glad about that. Whereas I remember one particular judge.
My client actually passed out in the dock because he
(35:00):
was so drunk. That's after they found him and got
him to court because he didn't turn up the first
day because he's on a bender and he passed out,
And I said, you're on you have to ask for
a gernks. My client's sort of unconscious, and the judge
ad miss ford them. He'll sober up and you can.
As the day goes on, he can tell him what
happened like that.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
You're not shocking me. But yeah, different different, I said
to judge.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Look, I've never been asked to justify. Did I thought
there was some sort of rule that the accused had
to be conscious.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Well, anyway, I can imagine that, I can imagine that happened. There.
Would you then a huge question? You don't have to
dig into it too much. But we've got the adversarial system,
which is not actually a search for the truth, it's
proving the guilt or guilt or innocence. And then we've
got the inquisitorial system, which is a search for the
(35:55):
truth in basically finding out what happens. Some countries have
that system in place. Do you think it's a better system,
And it's a big question. I'd just be interested in
your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
We have that in the curenter's court, where the curenter
can actually direct investigations and it is a search for
the truth, and coroners especially trained to do that, and
I think certainly from in the investigation of deaths where
it's not an attempt to pin blame on someone or
(36:26):
certainly shouldn't be. But other countries, I mean, I've been
a member of the Law and Society Association where a
lot of some of the work they do is on
just the systems, and you compare systems in different countries.
So I'm actually in a position or I do have
some views about that. And one of the issues with
the inquisitorial system. And one inquisitor, if you like, one
(36:48):
inquisitorial literally means questioning. You have one person doing that
is that they can be liable and have been in
some countries to for example, bribery or option because it's
just one person. Also, some people are better at the
job than others, and some people are better. You know,
(37:11):
if you're acting as judge and jury, which is really
what it amounts to, you may have your preconceived ideas
and you may In some countries judges are elected as well,
and you want to be elected again next time round. Yeah,
so there are all sorts of ways that system can
(37:32):
go wrong as well, do we You know, I can't
tell you whether one systems better than the other. We
have what we have, and I take some comfort in
the fact that at least society is represented. Did the
judge who's doing the inquisition, who's doing the question, did
they go to an expensive private school and never see
(37:55):
real life after they left their private school? Did they
live a sheltered life or were they beaten up by
their bully of a father, Or do they go to
and there have been cases of this, go to particular
sex clubs where they can be vulnerable to blackmail if
(38:16):
they don't come up with a certain verdict. Just because
you've got a trained judge doesn't mean you're safe. And
again I say the callity of judges today is so
much better than some.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Well, you brought up some very valid points there, because
I often erase this with you informed people, just to
try to get a sense of it. People that understand
the systems, I get frustrated with their theserial system because
quite often they don't think all the evidence is presented.
I'd like to see more evidence presented. What you touched on,
(38:51):
what you learned with your studies with the jury, they
seem to be Yeah, why don't they trust us? They're
putting us in such a powerful position, a position of responsibility,
but they were not clever enough to absorb all the evidence.
So yeah, maybe we've got the right system. It just
needs some improvements and adjustments. And I love the thought
of a facilitator in there keeping those juries on board.
(39:14):
Because you mentioned something the other day without referencing the trial,
but what the jury came out, because after all the
evidence has been presented, if people aren't aware of that,
then the juries are sent away to consider their verdict.
And what was that one? After three days they came out?
What was a question they asked?
Speaker 2 (39:31):
A murder trial? And it was actually a trial I
was involved in as a lawyer. It wasn't one of
my study ones. And the jury deliberate for three days.
In fact, we're all just debating, do we give them
more time? Are we ever going to get a verdict?
You know? The lawyers and the judge were sort of
looking at that question. And the jury is allowed to
send questions out to the court, and often what happens always,
(39:55):
except for this occasion, the judge and lawyers will agree
as to what the answer should be to the jury
particular question. And this jury came out after three days
of deliberation said does the accused have to prove he
didn't do it? And the judge didn't even bother consulting it.
He just but we looked at each other in horror, thought,
what we've been going on about for all of us?
(40:17):
Prosecution will tell the jury because of the type of
you know, you have to prove this beyond reasonable doubt.
How can you if you're.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
A they've miss missed the whole point of it. Purpose.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
But I thought about it later and I thought, Nah,
what's probably happened? And I thought about this after I
did my research. What's probably happened is that there's some
one duror who's been a complete idiot, who won't shut up,
who will say, no, the accused god to prove he
didn't do it, and he didn't prove he didn't do it,
So I'm going to convict. Everyone else's saying no, no, no,
it's not how it works. And in then they probably said, look,
(40:51):
we'll settle it once and we'll go back to court.
And as a judge, I hope that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
How yeah, you would would like to think not the
twelve of them seeing their debating that the fact that
it's now in courts. It used to be unanimous decision,
like all twelve jurors, but now there's some leeway for
certain cases that it can be majority of a decision.
I thought that was good because you only needed to
(41:18):
have one drop kick on the jury, and it could
just for whatever reason, they might just be a painful person,
a disagreeable type person that's going to sit there and
argue too the cows come home, regardless of what facts
have been presented. I think that was a step in
the right direction.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
It's not the case with homicides. It's still got to
be unanimous and that's because the stakes are so high,
and I think that's fair enough. But you can get
a verdict of eleven one or ten to two now
in many others. But this is another example of not
trusting the jury. The jury is told your verdict has
to be unanimous, and the lawyers and the judge of
(41:54):
all their fingers crossed behind their backs because I know
that if the jury is having trouble reaching verdict, they'll
have actually be told it can be ten two or
eleven one. Well, why not tell them that in the
first place. And then you get the juries where a
dura has been on a jury before and knows that,
and they'll tell the other jurors, look, we can actually
have a majority verdict. Well, why not tell them that
(42:15):
in the first place.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, give them the information that makes sense, that does
make sense.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And then it's shot out it's a turkey, who's you know,
because the juries will say, we don't have taken any
notes of you anyway, because it's just one of you.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yeah, because the chances are getting twelve people selected randomly,
and you're not going to get a drop kick or
a turkey, as you say on that group, You're going
to be pretty lucky. You've got to be pretty lucky.
The studies that you've done is available to the public.
Has it come out in any form?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yes and no. I've written several articles.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
No, it's either a yes answer or no. It can't
be yes and no.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
It can watch me.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Okay, I wish you taught me this trick when I
was in the world.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I have taught people that trick. I'll just digress and
say I teach people. What you say is you turn
to the If the lawyer's saying, I'm asking you the
questions yes or no, yes or no, give me yes
or no answer, what you do is you turn to
the judge and you say you're on. If I were
to give a yees or no answer, I would be
in danger of misleading the jury. And a jury goes
(43:25):
perfect and they'll never do that to you again.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
So perfect, perfect.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
So anyway, that was a digression. But now, what was
the question again, counsel. That's the other thing. Half the
time the lawyer's forgotten the question by then too.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
It was about the papers from your study into the juris.
Of course, is viable to the.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Is some is And you know what I'm actually first
that you can just google and you find some of
the publications. Also, if anybody is actually keen to find
out about it, I'm actually perfect happy to be emailed
about it, and you will find my email address if
you just google me. So that's pretty easy. There's nothing
private about my life or anything.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Well, the fact that you've done the study like it
was something that needed to be done. There's so much
value in what was learnt from having access to people
that were not normally given access to For anyone to
do a study, it gives an understanding. So it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
By so many bodies were on board with it and
everybody wanted the results.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Just one question, is this just a myth or a
rumor that there was a jury personal and jury trying
to use a Ouiji board to speak to the deceased
in a trial that actually I saw that in.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Some that's real and did actually happen. And what happened
was the it was a murder trial. We seem to
be talking about murders a lot, which is good. It
was one of those circumstantial cases because one of the
things that murders is usually the main witness is dead.
In fact, invariably the main witness is dead, because that's
why it's.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
A yeah, yeah, you usually need that pres but see.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Again, dark sense of hum we're actually laughing about it anyway. Okay, people,
we're a pair of sicos. Let's move on. So the
juror thought, well, you know, there's two opposing stories and
they both make sense. You know, this could have happened
this way, could have happened that way. I know, we'll
ask the deceased. And they brought the wag aboard into
(45:25):
the jury room and they said about having a seance
to try to communicate with the deceased. This was discovered
and the and the appeal was successful.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
So yeah, well see now if we had your facilitator
in there, that could have been that he could have
or she could have sorted that one out and go no,
we can't have a sance in the jury. That would
never have happen. Not allowed, absolutely, But okay, bizarre. Look,
there's a thousand more things that we could talk about.
(46:00):
I want to make mention of your book about life,
law and not Enough Shoes. How did you come up
with the title of your book?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Probably through being a girly criminal lawyer and dealing with
all the things that came with being a girly criminal lawyer.
And the thing is that shoes don't judge you. Shoes
are non judgmental. You know, Shoes love you no matter what.
And you know, sometimes I just took pleasure in the
(46:27):
fact that I could be a girl doing a blokes
job and I could still stay a girl. They haven't
been dipped in blood, but.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Right they look they rocket.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah. And also I got into trouble from a judge
for wearing zebra striped shoes once in court because he
said it was distracting the jury. I know who it
was distracting, and it wasn't the jury, And I reckon
black and white went with my lawyer's outfit anyway, So.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
You wear you go, girl, you wear that look. There's
a lot of a lot of other stuff that I
wanted to to speak to you about, but think we've
only scratched the surface of some of the things you've
seen and done. I was going to ask about cruising
the world on the q E two entertaining guests. After
sitting down with you for the podcast, I can see
why you're invited on cruise ships as a speaker. Just
(47:18):
tell us briefly about that. Experience, because that would be
quite it's not the typical career path that a high
profile barrister goes down. But the talking gig on.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Cruising, well, again, it happened by accident, of course, and
this seems to be a bit of a thing.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
I'm going to start to call you Forrest Gump. You
know how he went through his life? Ok, how did
this accident? How did this accident?
Speaker 2 (47:42):
I was actually on a cruise paying for it, and.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
There was this guy had too much to drink at
the bar and then started talking and.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
Drink what seriously, And yes, you should apologize for that
slur on my character. No, I was listening to one
of their lecturers and he was terrible. He actually got
the stuff to wheel a desk on the stage and
then sat behind a desk and read from a stack
of papers. It was awful. And see I'm carefully not
saying which cruise line it was, but it was terrible,
(48:13):
and I thought, anyone, not just me, anyone can do
better than that. So I asked him how he got
his gig, and he said, I've got an agent in
Miami and they get me the gig. So I wrote
to the agent and said, how about it, and you
have to give a bit of outline of sorts of
things you can talk about. So I gave them a
bit of an outline, and of course CSI was all
the rage and I could talk about forensics and crime
(48:34):
and next thing I knew. My first gig actually was
on the Queen Mary, and I went from there to
all sorts of other cruise lines. And what happens is
you go on these six star cruises. You don't have
to pay, You're treated as a guest. You can take
a friend, play cards. Right, No, you'd have to share
(48:56):
a room with me. You won't want to do that.
So yeah, and I have to talk about stuff I
know about. But the other cool thing about is these
audiences are usually quite well. No one's forcing them to
go to lectures. They're choosing to, so they want to learn.
They want to know about this stuff. And it's been
some of my most satisfying teaching moments, because I've done
(49:19):
a lot of teaching of my career. People will go
out and say, you know, I'm thinking about things differently
from now on. I have this thing called ABC. Assume nothing, believe,
no one check everything they said, going to be more
critical in a good sense of the word. We're not
going to take what the media tells us at face value.
(49:39):
We are going to ask questions. You know, we've learned
a different way of thinking and that just gives me
such joy.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Well, what a great gig you got there, and I
can imagine you would be very popular and entertaining for
the people listening to your talk because I've got a
sense of the way you tell a story from a
sit down today. So I want to thank you so
much for coming on the podcast. How do people get
your book?
Speaker 2 (50:09):
The only way now is you have to actually again
google me, go to my website. You can order it
there or flip me an email. It's out of print.
That went to three print runs, I might add, and
it wasn't Vanity published either, it had a real publisher,
so it's.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
A real book.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
I am. So you can contact me and while stocks last,
I can post the book or get it to people.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Well, thank you very much, and I want to thank
you for the work that you've done because I know
having people who genuinely care in the legal in the
justice system makes a difference from police of victims, everyone
involved in it. And I can see your care and
you're smart. You've got everything that people knew, and I
can see why people were lucky to have you defending
(50:56):
the move. They got into trouble. Well, if I do
get over the w A a bit. If I get
into trouble, I know who I'm calling. Not that I'm
ever going to get into trouble again. I've had enough
of that. I don't want to be in a court
again at this stage. I look okay, thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
No problem at all.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Cheez
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see a side of life the average persons never
exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
In part two of my chat with former criminal barrister
Due for Them, Judith continued to entertain me with stories
from the bar table. Judith also took us inside the
jury room, and some of the things you said might
make your question whether the jury system has had its
We also found out how Judith defended a client accused
of stabbing the person, a case that she thought was
(01:06):
impossible to win, And we had discussion about forensic science
in the criminal justice system. This was a really unfiltered
look at the justice system. I think you're going to
enjoy it as much as I did. Judith for them.
Welcome back to part two of I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Thanks for having me back. After the first first part.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
We considered that we had a discussion off Mike and
we said no, we'll let you back for the second part.
Can I ask you about you winning the unwinnable case,
and the way you described it to me was you're
perfect that you're representing a client that had gone into
a room and got into a fight with the person
(01:48):
in the room. The person hadn't been stabbed when your
client walked in the room, and when your client walked out,
the person had been stabbed in the back, in the back.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Take it take and you can't stab yourself back by
the way, I have one trials where we ran the defense.
He cut his own throat and that's been successful. But
you can't do his stab himself in the back. It's
just not going to work. This is a client who
came in to see me late in the day, and
she won't mind if she's still around, she won't mind
(02:19):
being identified. I know, because this may identify to someone
who actually knows her, but she won't have a problem
with it. She came in and she walked into my office,
and I'm sorry, but she wasn't very well dressed. There's
a reason that I say that she's looking pretty daggy.
(02:41):
And she'd been a gem FOSSi or opal prospector in
an outback town where they have gems and opals there,
trying not to identify things. But she was a transsexual.
And sadly, because many trans sexual clients I've had have
got wonderful dress sense, she was standing behind the door
(03:03):
when dress sense was being handed out, as my mother
would have said. And so she came in looking pretty daggy,
with terrible taste in makeup and clothes and everything. But
she was very upset, and she came in and she said,
I don't want to go to a men's prison. I said, well,
how about stop a minute. How about you tell me
what you're supposed to have done or what you haven't done.
(03:25):
Is how I often opened an interview with a client.
Tell me what you haven't done, tell me what they
reckon you've done. So I just don't want to go
to a men's prison. When I get convicted. I said, well,
let's just see if you're going to get convicted first.
And as time went on, I was starting to agree
that she would get convicted because what had happened the
background of the story was that she'd collected a whole
(03:47):
lot of gems in her prospecting days. And by the way,
she had to be pretty tough, because if you're going
to be in an back town like that as a prospector,
it's a pretty rough and tough, blokey sort of a world.
So she was pretty handy with a fist, had to be.
And she was big too, she was probably six foot
three and quite solidly built. Now she'd got all these
(04:12):
gems and she'd come to Perth to and she'd made
these dreadful souvenirs. I'm sorry, if you're listening, I'm sorry
I called your souvenirs dreadful, but they were. She'd made
these Jarrah maps of Australia, varnished them. And what you
do is you Arrol died on a precious stone where
each state capital is in the leaf TASMANI you're off
(04:34):
because that's just too darn hard. You can't do that,
and you flog them as souvenirs and you make money.
And she was going to make money for her gender
reassignment surgery. You can't. It's not sex change. It's a
gender reassignment because you're being assigned the gender that you've
always felt you were. Okay, And she went to a
(04:57):
fairly cheap boarding house in Perth with all her Jerrem
maps of Australia, and she met this young man who
was quite personable, and he said, I'll sell them for you.
You know, I reckon, I get about thirty five thousand
dollars worth of this lot or whatever the amount was.
And great, she is impressed by him. Okay, you take
them and you sell them. And he came back later on.
(05:19):
I think he only had about fifteen hundred dollars and
all the maps are gone, and it's like, where's me money?
Her money was probably up his arm. I suspect, you know,
it was in the days of Heroin. I to remember
where he would have injected and bought injected himself and
(05:40):
blown a lot of the money and brought back what
was left. And she was pretty angry, and they had
they had a real, really intense argument about this in
the sort of lounge area of this boarding house, and
it evolved into a fistfight. And as I said, my
client was, you know, really could handle herself in that situation.
(06:03):
She wasn't charged with thumping him, though, she charged with
stabbing him because although there were only two people in
the room, him and her, and he didn't have a
stab wound when he entered the room, and he did
at the end of the altercation, and no one else
had come in. I asked her all of this, did
(06:24):
anyone come in?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
No?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Did he have a stab wound when he came into
the room. No, did he have one at the end? Yes?
Did you stab him?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
No?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
I'm going I actually went read my lips. I cannot
win this trial. You are going to have to plead guilty.
I mean, she's sort of an answer to how do
you defend someone you know they're guilty. I tell them
to plead guilty. I tell them they're insane. If they don't,
I don't care. I didn't do it. How do you
get the stab wound? I don't know. Oh, you know,
(07:01):
read my lips again. I still didn't know how I
was going to win the trial, but she insisted on
going to trial. In fact, her main question was what
do I wear? She said, well, I come secretary, Will
I come astronaut? And I said, well, come secretary. That
was a mistake. I should have said astronaut, because yeah,
she I seem to remember she was wearing blue sparkles
(07:24):
and white gloves. I could be wrong, but astronaut would
have been worse, I guess, because it would have been
a silver lama.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
But anyhow would have made a statement.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So I'm at the beginning of the trial and how
am I going to defend her? And I'm looking at
the crime scene photos again, just as you do, going
through everything you've got. And it dawned on me, dawned
on me, and thank Heaven's it dawned on me before
the trial and not after, because I could never forgiven myself.
There were some stairs leading from this room, and no,
(07:58):
it wasn't that. Somebody came down the stairs with stairs
leading from this room upstairs to the kitchen, and I
said to her, I said, where did the stairs go
out of the kitchen. There was a plastic bag on
the stairs, just like a Wooly's bag or a coal's bag,
something like that. And the bag looked like it had
been damnag. I had, you know, had they made of
not great plastic? And I had like a split in
(08:19):
the bag. I said, whose bags? That shit, that's mine?
I said, well, what was in it? She said it
was me dinner. I was going to go upstairs the
kitchen cook me dinner. I said, so what was in it?
She oh, you know, me bread and you know, butter
or margarine or whatever, and misteak and me fork and
me knife knife, and there's a split in the bag.
(08:46):
I worked out what had happened. They'd had a punch up.
He'd fallen back on the stairs. The knife was in
the bag at such an angle that he actually fell
on the knife. The defense was he fell on the knife.
Luckily he only had one stab wound, because you're not
(09:06):
going to be able to run. He fell on the knife,
got up, ran backwards and fell on the knife four
more times.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
But well, that would have been a hard one to acplain.
So how did that play out at the trial? Did
the trial commence?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
The trial commenced, and she gave her evidence, and we
explained to the jury why she looked the way she did,
because they would have been wondering. And she gave not
the explanation weed rehearsed, but another explanation I said to
(09:43):
her because we had to explain what the money was
for and why she was so upset, you see, So
it was actually an essentral part of the background. So
I said, you know, what was the money for? Why
were you so angry? Because she admitted hitting him? You know,
she wasn't charged with hitting and she was charged with
something called unlawful wounding. I probably should have said that
which involves stabbing, so she wasn't charged with punching him.
(10:04):
So why were you so angry? He stole me money?
And what was your money for? It was for me
my operation, and what was your operation for? It was
for me, you know, gender reassignment surgery, and what was
that for? And she was supposed to say, was to
make me look more feminine? In fact, she was supposed
(10:24):
to I was going to ask a leading question. I
was going to say, was it to make you look
more feminine? Which is technically a leading question, But no
one was going to object, So I knew I could
get away by asking it was it to make you
look more feminine? But she forgot what she was supposed
to say, So I said, was it to make you
look more feminine. She said, Nah, it's just going to
cut me dick and me balls off. Nothing's going to
make me look more feminine. And I went, oh, you
(10:47):
could have heard a pin drop. The judge glared at me,
like this is all my fault instructing say that I
hadn't at all.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
She was supposed to say no, but you instructed her
to say what was appropriate or the one but you can't. Yeah.
It makes for court It makes for court room drama. Yeah,
things like I reckon.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
My little theory is that the jury thought no one
could give an answer like that not be telling the truth.
I reckon it.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Probably I've seen witnesses that come in there and or
people involved in trials that they're too stupid to lie,
like in the way that they're giving evidence. And that's
sounding like I think I'm smart, but there are some
people that are too stupid to lie. And like I
(11:42):
would have legal people come to me and say, well,
why do you think they're telling the truth. I don't
think this person is capable of telling a lie. Sit down,
have a chat and you'll.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Understand and continuing the lie, you know, and getting away
with it. You can tell stupid lies, but you'll get strung.
You've got to have a certain degree of intelligence to
carry the life through, would make it consistent with everything.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Else and consistently keep backing.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Anyway, this jury came back in seventeen minutes and acquitted
her in seventeen minutes. I timed it high five. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
And she gave me a necklace which I've still got,
made out of a crystal that she mined and arrol
dieted into it into something.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, are you wearing it? No?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But I do still have no treasure.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Okay, look, things like that. That makes a battler for
a whole range of reasons. But little things like that
make a difference. And you could have potentially missed that
and lost that. So that must give you some sort
of feeling of you doing doing good work.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Well, I was really pleased, but you know, most of
me was going, Thank Heavens. I noticed it before the trial,
because you know, I've beat myself up about the things
that I mess up, because honestly, she wasn't guilty. She
absolutely he wasn't guilty, and she should have been acquitted,
and I'm glad the jury did it so quickly. But
(13:07):
it was almost an accident, and I don't like that.
I don't like accidents.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I don't like it coming coming down to the life. Yeah,
I want you to take me into the jury room now,
and let's I think we touched on it in part
one that generally jurors in this country are not allowed
to speak about what goes on in the jury room.
So it's a big mystery. The jurors are shielded from
everyone involved in the trial, and they're boarding down the
(13:33):
back alleys and they're not allowed to talk to anyone.
So it's very rare that people working in this field
get an opportunity to talk to juris. How did you
come to get that opportunity?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Again, accident? There seemed to be a lot of accidents
happened in my life. I was doing a postgraduate degree
in forensic science, as you do when you've got nothing
better to do with your life, or you know, have
so much free time, and I was invited to do
(14:05):
a PhD.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
And it's the kids can look after themselves, don't worry
about that.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I'm fond of saying that mine thrived on neglect. And
again it's sort of fairly sixth sense of humor.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
There you're topping them up for the life that.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Not one of my children has a criminal record. So
I call that a success.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Or. You are a very very good barrasser.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
No, I call that an absolutely Anything better than that
is a real win. But no criminal records anyhow, accident
was what happened. You've got to do a PhD. And
when I did my postgraduate work in forensic science, here
was no such thing as forensic science for lawyers. I
had to do a proper postgraduate science course. And honestly, yes,
(14:51):
I had a science agree, but mine was biological sciences,
and you know, I was having to learn forensic chemistry,
chemistry I didn't do. Last time I did chemistry was
at school and I wasn't very good at it. And
that was yeah, yeah, So what am I going to
do with PhD? And in forensic science? What on earth
can I do? I don't actually know enough science. So
jack of all trades, master of none was me. I know,
(15:15):
I'm going to do expert evidence because that sort of
straddles the worlds of law and crime. And I thought,
I'm going to see whether I can talk to juris
because we always wonder you were saying earlier in part one,
you know, these juris sitting there, have the lawyers and
the experts lost them? The lawyers and experts having their
own learned conversation, the jurist sitting there going what happened?
(15:36):
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (15:37):
You know?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Have they forgotten about us? Because the juris just happened
to be the most important people in the court room,
and they get forgotten about. So I thought, I want
to know what works. I want to know what type
of communication works. How do they wrap their heads around it.
Do they go out and do their own investigation, their
own research, and we know that that's a complete no. No.
(16:01):
You mustn't go out and do your own research and
bring it back to the jury room. More that if
you get found out, the trial will be aborted because
you're supposed to only rely on what's presented in court.
So I'm curious about how they handle expert evidence and
the only way to do that because it is against
the law to talk to juris after trials except with
(16:21):
the permission of the Attorney General. So I went off
to the Attorney General of the day and said I'd
like to talk to juris and I'd like to find
out about this, and he was very receptive and gave
me that permission and it became a very very big study.
In fact, I think it's the biggest study that's ever
been done, certainly in Australia, UK, Canada, all the law
(16:45):
systems that are very similar where you're not allowed to
for example, you don't have the juris being interviewed on
the court steps like they do in the US. And
I had a lot of support to the law. Society
was in support. The police actually gave some funding towards it.
Legal Aid gave some funding, The Department of Justice funded
(17:08):
the Sheriff's office cooperated with me and sent out three
thousand questionnaires and yeah, and that way, you see, the
juris could remain anonymous unless they opted into the study.
So they just they sent them out. I didn't know
who they were sending them out to except it was random.
And then juriors opted in. And the amazing thing is
(17:29):
it was a twenty four page questionnaire, not just tick
a box. It was, you know, write down what happened
here and what happened there, and you know, approximately a
third of the juris actually completed that form and sent
it back, which is an amazing response rate for a
complicated form. And of those until the funding ran out,
(17:51):
we interviewed something like five hundred of them and.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So wow, that's a big cross that's.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Huge, it's huge. In the process of that, obviously I
learned a lot about what goes on behind closed doors.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Take us there where you can, what goes on behind
the juris okay.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Well, one of the things that came up because it
became not just expert evans, became a whole jury experience study.
It grew and grew and grew. One of the things
that I learned was, you know, people say, oh, you know,
the jurors would have acquitted this person because he's evil
and they're scared, and you know, it wasn't because there
(18:32):
wasn't enough evidence. It's because they were scared of this
bad dude. It was almost was in fact always, I
didn't find one instance where a juror said, and they
I do believe they're being honest with me. They had
to opt in for starters where a juror said it
was because I was scared of this bad dude, That's
(18:53):
why I quitted him. No, it was because there were
significant gaps of the prosecution case, and the prosecution was
really lying on the fact that he's a bad dude
to get a conviction, and the jurists took their oath
seriously and would only convict if there was in fact
enough evidence. Now that's a jury doing their job and
(19:13):
doing it properly. It's sort of, you know, on a
different topic which I'm sure probably end up touching on it.
It's sort of why I can sleep at night believing
that my client was a bad dude but he got
acquitted because, as I said at the start of the thing,
part of my job then was to keep the barsards honest.
(19:33):
I did come across quite a lot of examples where
the jurors actually went out and did their own investigations,
which they're totally not allowed to do, and that was
usually because they had questions that they wanted answered and
neither side had given them the answer. Because, of course,
a trial is about who presents what evidence on the day,
and there might be good reasons why certain evidence is
(19:55):
not being presented. For example, if someone has a really
bad criminal record in things that are not logically to
do with whatever they're accused of. This time. Often the
jury won't be told about that because the theory being
that they'll be influenced by that and convict him without
the proper evidence. I actually don't believe that will happen.
(20:17):
I do believe jurors do a really good job. I've
learned generally. You know, you've got the occasional rogue jury,
but again that's another story. But they have gone out
and for example, gone to the scene of a chase
or an you know, a traffic accident, or even a
(20:41):
nightclub where something's supposed to have happened, and they will
report back and tell the other jurors what they did,
or had them conduct experiments where they've thrown things out
of the window of a moving car to see how
far away they land. Now, maybe we should have had
something give that evidence so they're not tempted to do that.
(21:01):
And no, I couldn't and didn't and wouldn't report that
because everything they told me was confidential. And you can
see I'm being very very careful not to give any
identifying information about the particular trial.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
You talked about the past criminal history, and the jury
not being given that because that might influence their decision.
Us An example someone's been committed of an assault years
ago and then being charged with drug related matters or
whatever it could be. That is that going to influence
the jury. I'm a big believer and we had this
(21:34):
chat off Mike the other day that all the information
that's kept from the jury, we put our faith in
being judged by our twelve peers or whatever, and that's
the basis of the jury system. I have concerns that
not enough information is put to the jury and we
don't put enough faith in the role of the jury
(21:55):
to make informed decisions, like they're told not to. The
only thing that they need to take into account in
deciding guilt or innocence here is the information that's been
presented to the court. They still get instructed not to Yeah.
It used to don't watch the news tonight if it
was a high profile case, don't read the papers, And
they go, yeah, as if they're not watching the news
(22:18):
or reading the papers about it. And now they're instructed
not to look examine this on social media and different things,
as if they're not not doing it. I think we've
got to say there'll be reports in the media, don't
put any weight on that. That's unsubstantiated information. What you
need to do is concentrate on what we're presenting to
(22:40):
you at court. We need to make the instructions more
respectful to the role that the jury have.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Well, if we're going to have a system that completely
relies upon them, then we've got to have some trust
in them. And as I said, most of my research
uncovered the fact that they can generally be trusted and
they will have argus in the jury room. No, you're
not allowed to think about xyzz that you've learned, and
you know what the media reports will be sensationalists might
(23:08):
not necessarily be correct, and you know, we have to
only take into account what's said in the jury room.
And remember I said in part one about this jury
forty years ago, who said, we understand that there might
be some new workout on what causes ulcers, but we
weren't told about We wish we had been. Now that
(23:28):
we were forced to convict, even though we didn't feel
happy about doing it. So they will do as there
are generally. But that leads me to another thing I learned,
and that is that there are really two types of juries.
There are evidence led juries and verdict led juries and
the evidence led ones are the ones that produced the
(23:49):
most satisfactory verdict. By satisfactory, I mean they've actually considered
the evidence and come to a conclusion because the evidence
takes them there. I'll just explain that a bit. You
get the sort that will go into the jury room.
Someone has volunteered to be the four person for per offspring,
(24:11):
for you know, in charge, or the communicator of the
jury to the court, because that's really all they should
be doing, and it will often be the person who
really is they've seen on television. They just really want
to be the important and they've got fixed views about
what happened, and they're going to get this jury to
do what they want. That's why I think four persons
(24:35):
should not be chosen until a couple of days into
the trial, and some judges do that. Now, some judges
I think, have that point of view.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Just a subtle change, but I think that's a worth
wayle change because you could imagine the twelve people sitting
down there and whoever thinks I'm smarter or quicker, bigger,
I'm going to take control of this. And then you
get that bully type or domineering type that will influence
the other people. So okay, sorry I interrupted the judges
(25:04):
and now I wake wake up to that that. Let's
you don't need to pick it straight away. Just feel
the dynamics of the group, dynamics of the room, and
then work out who you think is best suited the Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Particularly the longer trial. You've got the luxury to be
able to do that. And I think it's a good
idea as well. But a verdict driven jury not let
verdict driven jury will be one where you know, the
four person says right, Let's take a pher thinks he's guilty,
who thinks he's not? All right? You know three of
you think he's not, nine of us think he is.
(25:38):
How can we pummel you through into submission? How can
we make you see our point of view? What's your problem?
And that sort of thing will happen. And I've heard
tales of jurors lying on the floor crying because of
the amount of bullying. Now that you have to say,
if there's a verdict of guilty after that sort of treatment,
(26:00):
that's not satisfactory. And no, I measured it by asking
jurors whether there was anything that happened that influence devote
a certain way, which they later regretted in the cold
light of day if you like. Now that's your verdict driven,
and that has to be in anyone's book, unsatisfactory and
(26:22):
not necessarily going to do justice. Then you've got your
evidence led where people say, right, okay, we've been told
what pieces the prosecution has to prove, what the elements
of the offense are, what things they have to prove.
Let's look at each one, what evidence we've got that
relates to that pro and con you know, what did
this witness say? What did that witness say? And go
(26:44):
through it carefully and thoroughly, and they find sometimes even
though for example, their sympathies might have been with the
victim or their sympathies might have been with the accused,
the verdict the evidence takes them to a particular conclusion
that's got to be far more satisfactory. So one of
my recommendations, if I hadn't had publication stopped by a
(27:08):
change of government, one of my recommendations was going to
be that there ought to be a facilitator in the
jury room, someone who's just experienced at holding meetings, if
you like, and getting people to some sort of agreement.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
This is going to say shallow when I say this,
and I was thinking as you were talking describing it,
I wasn't going to say facilitator, but I was thinking
that exact thing, that if you had someone there that
could just keep them all in line, and that have
to be the right person with the right personality, just
explaining what the role is there, because I could see
(27:45):
a group of twelve people going off in completely the
wrong direction. So what you're saying, facilitator, I think that
you're on the something there that would give me more
confidence that they're doing what they should be doing in
that room, because I think too much is ass of
jurists because I sit there on cases I might have
(28:07):
worked on for years and sit there and I'm getting
confused as the legal argument's going. I'm sitting there going
I'm getting lost on this, and I'm thinking these people
have just come into it. I've lived and proved it
for months or years, understand and understand the broader picture.
So I've got a better starting point. You've got these
(28:27):
people that get this sanitized version of information. They're asked
to leave the court. Why of why the is going on?
There's a legal argument in the absence of the jury
and they must be seeing there going what are they
talking about? Then coming back in and not being informed
of what was discussed other than a look at something
that wasn't relevant to your role here. We're sorry that
(28:48):
we're asking you to leave the court. But because you
now leave the court and they sit in the jury
room for three hours probably guessing what are they annassis?
Speaker 2 (28:56):
I can telle you from my watch that they are
guessing that and their offender as well. Why are we
not trusted? Why do we you know, they think we're children,
They think we can't actually, you know, sort things out. Also,
it used to be not need more, Thank Heavens that
jurors are even told not to take notes. Now they
(29:17):
can take notes, and some judges will allow them to
have copies of the transcript, in other words, the typed
up version of what's said in court. Why should it
be a memory test? Why should the person who misremembers
something holds sway in the jury. Why should it be
just the person who took notes that you know, is
the one who has more influence because they've got notes.
(29:38):
They only took notes of what mattered to them. So
access to transcript and people say oh, they'll just get
bogged down or you know, well, how about putting a
bit of faith in them and if they want to
check something, rather than having to come back into court,
which is what often happens to have transcript read to them,
(29:59):
why shouldn't they have it searchable on a computer in
the jury room and look it up for themselves.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, I think it's evolving and changing with the times,
and definitely it should be something because the jury system
is Yeah, the lineage goes back hundreds of years. The
world has changed, and it used to be we'll call
the jury from the village because you're going to be
judged by your peers. But it doesn't sort of really
sit that way anymore. There's a whole sections men.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
In fact, only that women could be on juries.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
When did they I didn't realize they let women in
the juries. When did that happen?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
You're asleep? Gary?
Speaker 1 (30:37):
All right, Well that's yeah. When did that come? When
did that come? When did it was it twelve men?
How long ago was that?
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I don't actually know, to be honest, which is embarrassing,
but you know, back in the thirties, for example, it
was always just men. I don't know when it actually changed.
But don't forget that women couldn't vote at one point.
And we only get to know the person's occupation, and
you know very little other than that their occupation, the
(31:07):
suburb they live in, unless that's changed, and you know
very little else. And all you could do is to say, well,
I guess if you're defending a bank robber, you wouldn't
want a bank manager on the jury. And it used
to be you wouldn't put teachers on the jury because
the theory was they'd be too judgmental. One other thing
I've learned from my study is the more educated the person,
(31:28):
the more useful they are as a juror. And you know,
give me a teacher any day on a jury. Even
though the received wisdom was you don't put them on juries.
That's just probably due to people's bad experiences when they're
at primary school or something. I suspect I don't see
anything that's yeah. So you know, the more educated they are,
(31:49):
the more able they are to indulge in that intellectual
exercise of putting aside preconceived notions, of examining their thinking
and being critical of their own thinking. And I mean
critical in the good sense of the word.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Do you think it would get to get to the
stage where we're not having the jury trials, Like, I
know there's options there. You can have a judge alone trial.
Do you see evolving to the point where, look, this
is all getting too complicated, forensic evidence, scientific evidence, even
AI coming into play. Do you see the courts evolving?
(32:25):
Will they keep up with the times?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Look, I still think there's a strong ament in favor
of having the appears. That's another question. But having a
jury of twelve people who are not otherwise involved in
the criminal justice system to actually judge this, because in
the end, it's society that's punishing or acquitting somebody, and
(32:50):
they're representatives of society. I think we need to get
better about how we communicate information so that things don't
get too complicated and the forms we presented in Should
we be giving them visuals? Should we be giving them,
you know, a graph? Should we be giving them pictures?
Should we learn to communicate like I'm a great, wonderful scientist,
(33:13):
and I can talk fancy language and I can use
fancy terms and all my colleagues understand me. Or how
am I going to present this to a jury? How
am I going to explain this so they understand. And
I firmly believe you can. I believe people can be
trained not just to ask the right questions of them
if you're the lawyer end of it, but as the
expert to use the right language and to explain and
(33:35):
to have you know, the lawyers help them explain it.
So I think the answers in the training, and I
don't think just having a jury of say three accountants
in a you know, fraud case is the answer at all.
And with judges, I mean, you can't pick which judge
you get. Judges, I have to say the quality of
(33:56):
judges is improving a lot a huge life over my career.
But you know, back in the olden days, I would
be very nervous if I had a judge a line
trial which judge I would get, because some judges you
knew that they were going to convict.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Some judges they had strong leanings one way the other,
the type.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Of and so you'd only go for the ability of
judge A line trials a relatively recent innovation anyway, And
I did it in the baby shaking case because at
the time of the trial there was a lot of
there was actually a public information campaign about don't shake
your babies.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Which okay, so that that could have played.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
That worried me, and I was glad that particular judge
that we got was a thoughtful, you know, very fair judge.
He may even recognize himself, but you know, I was
very glad about that. Whereas I remember one particular judge.
My client actually passed out in the dock because he
(35:00):
was so drunk. That's after they found him and got
him to court because he didn't turn up the first
day because he's on a bender and he passed out,
And I said, you're on you have to ask for
a gernks. My client's sort of unconscious, and the judge
ad miss ford them. He'll sober up and you can.
As the day goes on, he can tell him what
happened like that.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
You're not shocking me. But yeah, different different, I said
to judge.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Look, I've never been asked to justify. Did I thought
there was some sort of rule that the accused had
to be conscious.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Well, anyway, I can imagine that, I can imagine that happened. There.
Would you then a huge question? You don't have to
dig into it too much. But we've got the adversarial system,
which is not actually a search for the truth, it's
proving the guilt or guilt or innocence. And then we've
got the inquisitorial system, which is a search for the
(35:55):
truth in basically finding out what happens. Some countries have
that system in place. Do you think it's a better system,
And it's a big question. I'd just be interested in
your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
We have that in the curenter's court, where the curenter
can actually direct investigations and it is a search for
the truth, and coroners especially trained to do that, and
I think certainly from in the investigation of deaths where
it's not an attempt to pin blame on someone or
(36:26):
certainly shouldn't be. But other countries, I mean, I've been
a member of the Law and Society Association where a
lot of some of the work they do is on
just the systems, and you compare systems in different countries.
So I'm actually in a position or I do have
some views about that. And one of the issues with
the inquisitorial system. And one inquisitor, if you like, one
(36:48):
inquisitorial literally means questioning. You have one person doing that
is that they can be liable and have been in
some countries to for example, bribery or option because it's
just one person. Also, some people are better at the
job than others, and some people are better. You know,
(37:11):
if you're acting as judge and jury, which is really
what it amounts to, you may have your preconceived ideas
and you may In some countries judges are elected as well,
and you want to be elected again next time round. Yeah,
so there are all sorts of ways that system can
(37:32):
go wrong as well, do we You know, I can't
tell you whether one systems better than the other. We
have what we have, and I take some comfort in
the fact that at least society is represented. Did the
judge who's doing the inquisition, who's doing the question, did
they go to an expensive private school and never see
(37:55):
real life after they left their private school? Did they
live a sheltered life or were they beaten up by
their bully of a father, Or do they go to
and there have been cases of this, go to particular
sex clubs where they can be vulnerable to blackmail if
(38:16):
they don't come up with a certain verdict. Just because
you've got a trained judge doesn't mean you're safe. And
again I say the callity of judges today is so
much better than some.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Well, you brought up some very valid points there, because
I often erase this with you informed people, just to
try to get a sense of it. People that understand
the systems, I get frustrated with their theserial system because
quite often they don't think all the evidence is presented.
I'd like to see more evidence presented. What you touched on,
(38:51):
what you learned with your studies with the jury, they
seem to be Yeah, why don't they trust us? They're
putting us in such a powerful position, a position of responsibility,
but they were not clever enough to absorb all the evidence.
So yeah, maybe we've got the right system. It just
needs some improvements and adjustments. And I love the thought
of a facilitator in there keeping those juries on board.
(39:14):
Because you mentioned something the other day without referencing the trial,
but what the jury came out, because after all the
evidence has been presented, if people aren't aware of that,
then the juries are sent away to consider their verdict.
And what was that one? After three days they came out?
What was a question they asked?
Speaker 2 (39:31):
A murder trial? And it was actually a trial I
was involved in as a lawyer. It wasn't one of
my study ones. And the jury deliberate for three days.
In fact, we're all just debating, do we give them
more time? Are we ever going to get a verdict?
You know? The lawyers and the judge were sort of
looking at that question. And the jury is allowed to
send questions out to the court, and often what happens always,
(39:55):
except for this occasion, the judge and lawyers will agree
as to what the answer should be to the jury
particular question. And this jury came out after three days
of deliberation said does the accused have to prove he
didn't do it? And the judge didn't even bother consulting it.
He just but we looked at each other in horror, thought,
what we've been going on about for all of us?
(40:17):
Prosecution will tell the jury because of the type of
you know, you have to prove this beyond reasonable doubt.
How can you if you're.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
A they've miss missed the whole point of it. Purpose.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
But I thought about it later and I thought, Nah,
what's probably happened? And I thought about this after I
did my research. What's probably happened is that there's some
one duror who's been a complete idiot, who won't shut up,
who will say, no, the accused god to prove he
didn't do it, and he didn't prove he didn't do it,
So I'm going to convict. Everyone else's saying no, no, no,
it's not how it works. And in then they probably said, look,
(40:51):
we'll settle it once and we'll go back to court.
And as a judge, I hope that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
How yeah, you would would like to think not the
twelve of them seeing their debating that the fact that
it's now in courts. It used to be unanimous decision,
like all twelve jurors, but now there's some leeway for
certain cases that it can be majority of a decision.
I thought that was good because you only needed to
(41:18):
have one drop kick on the jury, and it could
just for whatever reason, they might just be a painful person,
a disagreeable type person that's going to sit there and
argue too the cows come home, regardless of what facts
have been presented. I think that was a step in
the right direction.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
It's not the case with homicides. It's still got to
be unanimous and that's because the stakes are so high,
and I think that's fair enough. But you can get
a verdict of eleven one or ten to two now
in many others. But this is another example of not
trusting the jury. The jury is told your verdict has
to be unanimous, and the lawyers and the judge of
(41:54):
all their fingers crossed behind their backs because I know
that if the jury is having trouble reaching verdict, they'll
have actually be told it can be ten two or
eleven one. Well, why not tell them that in the
first place. And then you get the juries where a
dura has been on a jury before and knows that,
and they'll tell the other jurors, look, we can actually
have a majority verdict. Well, why not tell them that
(42:15):
in the first place.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, give them the information that makes sense, that does
make sense.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
And then it's shot out it's a turkey, who's you know,
because the juries will say, we don't have taken any
notes of you anyway, because it's just one of you.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yeah, because the chances are getting twelve people selected randomly,
and you're not going to get a drop kick or
a turkey, as you say on that group, You're going
to be pretty lucky. You've got to be pretty lucky.
The studies that you've done is available to the public.
Has it come out in any form?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yes and no. I've written several articles.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
No, it's either a yes answer or no. It can't
be yes and no.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
It can watch me.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Okay, I wish you taught me this trick when I
was in the world.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I have taught people that trick. I'll just digress and
say I teach people. What you say is you turn
to the If the lawyer's saying, I'm asking you the
questions yes or no, yes or no, give me yes
or no answer, what you do is you turn to
the judge and you say you're on. If I were
to give a yees or no answer, I would be
in danger of misleading the jury. And a jury goes
(43:25):
perfect and they'll never do that to you again.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
So perfect, perfect.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
So anyway, that was a digression. But now, what was
the question again, counsel. That's the other thing. Half the
time the lawyer's forgotten the question by then too.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
It was about the papers from your study into the juris.
Of course, is viable to the.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Is some is And you know what I'm actually first
that you can just google and you find some of
the publications. Also, if anybody is actually keen to find
out about it, I'm actually perfect happy to be emailed
about it, and you will find my email address if
you just google me. So that's pretty easy. There's nothing
private about my life or anything.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Well, the fact that you've done the study like it
was something that needed to be done. There's so much
value in what was learnt from having access to people
that were not normally given access to For anyone to
do a study, it gives an understanding. So it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
By so many bodies were on board with it and
everybody wanted the results.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Just one question, is this just a myth or a
rumor that there was a jury personal and jury trying
to use a Ouiji board to speak to the deceased
in a trial that actually I saw that in.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Some that's real and did actually happen. And what happened
was the it was a murder trial. We seem to
be talking about murders a lot, which is good. It
was one of those circumstantial cases because one of the
things that murders is usually the main witness is dead.
In fact, invariably the main witness is dead, because that's
why it's.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
A yeah, yeah, you usually need that pres but see.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Again, dark sense of hum we're actually laughing about it anyway. Okay, people,
we're a pair of sicos. Let's move on. So the
juror thought, well, you know, there's two opposing stories and
they both make sense. You know, this could have happened
this way, could have happened that way. I know, we'll
ask the deceased. And they brought the wag aboard into
(45:25):
the jury room and they said about having a seance
to try to communicate with the deceased. This was discovered
and the and the appeal was successful.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
So yeah, well see now if we had your facilitator
in there, that could have been that he could have
or she could have sorted that one out and go no,
we can't have a sance in the jury. That would
never have happen. Not allowed, absolutely, But okay, bizarre. Look,
there's a thousand more things that we could talk about.
(46:00):
I want to make mention of your book about life,
law and not Enough Shoes. How did you come up
with the title of your book?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Probably through being a girly criminal lawyer and dealing with
all the things that came with being a girly criminal lawyer.
And the thing is that shoes don't judge you. Shoes
are non judgmental. You know, Shoes love you no matter what.
And you know, sometimes I just took pleasure in the
(46:27):
fact that I could be a girl doing a blokes
job and I could still stay a girl. They haven't
been dipped in blood, but.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Right they look they rocket.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah. And also I got into trouble from a judge
for wearing zebra striped shoes once in court because he
said it was distracting the jury. I know who it
was distracting, and it wasn't the jury, And I reckon
black and white went with my lawyer's outfit anyway, So.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
You wear you go, girl, you wear that look. There's
a lot of a lot of other stuff that I
wanted to to speak to you about, but think we've
only scratched the surface of some of the things you've
seen and done. I was going to ask about cruising
the world on the q E two entertaining guests. After
sitting down with you for the podcast, I can see
why you're invited on cruise ships as a speaker. Just
(47:18):
tell us briefly about that. Experience, because that would be
quite it's not the typical career path that a high
profile barrister goes down. But the talking gig on.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Cruising, well, again, it happened by accident, of course, and
this seems to be a bit of a thing.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
I'm going to start to call you Forrest Gump. You
know how he went through his life? Ok, how did
this accident? How did this accident?
Speaker 2 (47:42):
I was actually on a cruise paying for it, and.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
There was this guy had too much to drink at
the bar and then started talking and.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
Drink what seriously, And yes, you should apologize for that
slur on my character. No, I was listening to one
of their lecturers and he was terrible. He actually got
the stuff to wheel a desk on the stage and
then sat behind a desk and read from a stack
of papers. It was awful. And see I'm carefully not
saying which cruise line it was, but it was terrible,
(48:13):
and I thought, anyone, not just me, anyone can do
better than that. So I asked him how he got
his gig, and he said, I've got an agent in
Miami and they get me the gig. So I wrote
to the agent and said, how about it, and you
have to give a bit of outline of sorts of
things you can talk about. So I gave them a
bit of an outline, and of course CSI was all
the rage and I could talk about forensics and crime
(48:34):
and next thing I knew. My first gig actually was
on the Queen Mary, and I went from there to
all sorts of other cruise lines. And what happens is
you go on these six star cruises. You don't have
to pay, You're treated as a guest. You can take
a friend, play cards. Right, No, you'd have to share
(48:56):
a room with me. You won't want to do that.
So yeah, and I have to talk about stuff I
know about. But the other cool thing about is these
audiences are usually quite well. No one's forcing them to
go to lectures. They're choosing to, so they want to learn.
They want to know about this stuff. And it's been
some of my most satisfying teaching moments, because I've done
(49:19):
a lot of teaching of my career. People will go
out and say, you know, I'm thinking about things differently
from now on. I have this thing called ABC. Assume nothing, believe,
no one check everything they said, going to be more
critical in a good sense of the word. We're not
going to take what the media tells us at face value.
(49:39):
We are going to ask questions. You know, we've learned
a different way of thinking and that just gives me
such joy.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Well, what a great gig you got there, and I
can imagine you would be very popular and entertaining for
the people listening to your talk because I've got a
sense of the way you tell a story from a
sit down today. So I want to thank you so
much for coming on the podcast. How do people get
your book?
Speaker 2 (50:09):
The only way now is you have to actually again
google me, go to my website. You can order it
there or flip me an email. It's out of print.
That went to three print runs, I might add, and
it wasn't Vanity published either, it had a real publisher,
so it's.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
A real book.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
I am. So you can contact me and while stocks last,
I can post the book or get it to people.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Well, thank you very much, and I want to thank
you for the work that you've done because I know
having people who genuinely care in the legal in the
justice system makes a difference from police of victims, everyone
involved in it. And I can see your care and
you're smart. You've got everything that people knew, and I
can see why people were lucky to have you defending
(50:56):
the move. They got into trouble. Well, if I do
get over the w A a bit. If I get
into trouble, I know who I'm calling. Not that I'm
ever going to get into trouble again. I've had enough
of that. I don't want to be in a court
again at this stage. I look okay, thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
No problem at all.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Cheez
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.