My first murder trial was back in 1999.
My client was serving a prison sentence for drug charges at Goulburn Correctional Centre.
One of his fellow inmates was a leader of the notorious Vietnamese ‘5T’ gang, which had a lot of power in prison at that time.
The 5T leader was serving a life-sentence for raping and murdering a young woman, and severely beating her boyfriend, in a ‘lover’s lane murder’ that occurred near George’s River in Parramatta.
The horrific crime involved the leader and his friend approaching the lovers while they were in their parked car, dragging the boyfriend out, bashing him and tying him to a tree, raping the young woman in front of her boyfriend and then inserting a glass bottle into her and smashing it- causing her to bleed to death.
In its infinite wisdom, the prison administration promoted the killer to the position of ‘sweeper’ in gaol – which gave him various privileges.
The killer had virtually free reign in prison and was known to arrange drug smuggling and to sexually assault other inmates with virtual impunity.
Two of the men that he had been sexually assaulting were my client and my client’s friend/cell mate.
One morning, all 3 were working in the prison’s tailor shop when the killer and his entourage sought to take my client’s cell mate into the toilets to sexually assault him.
My client had enough. He took a large pair of scissors and in a frenzied attack that lasted nearly two minutes, stabbed the killer 67 times.
Corrections officers tried to pull my client off the killer on at least two occasions, to no avail.
The act was not lawful self-defence because, by all accounts, the deceased was incapacitated after the first few stabbings.
My client had seen several other criminal lawyers before me, including barristers who were prominent at the time. They all told him that he had no chance of winning at trial and that he must plead guilty.
In fairness, my client had not told them the real reason behind his gruesome act, nor did he tell me at first.
But he had told a mental health worker at the prison shortly after he was sexually assaulted, and this came to my attention after I subpoenaed a range of materials including his Corrections Health file.
I confronted him with the information and he spoke to me candidly from that point onwards.
He was adamant that he would not plead guilty to murder, nor to manslaughter (for ‘excessive self-defence’), nor would he rely on a plea of insanity.
I advised him that I could not put forth a case consistent with his innocence, but that I could get a hold of as much information about the evil deeds of the deceased as possible and work to have that information put before the jury through other witnesses.
The strategy, of course, was to make the jury despise the deceased so much that they thought he deserved to die, and would therefore find in my client’s favour.
It worked.
We managed to put detailed evidence before the jury of the killer’s depraved history and brazen criminal conduct whilst in prison.
As was his duty, the Judge directed the jury that my client’s actions could not be self-defence if the response went beyond what was proportionate to the threat, which it clearly did.
Despite this, the jury found my client not guilty and acquitted him of all charges.
By that time, he had served his sentence for the drug charges and was therefore released from prison.
This case reinforced the importance of defence strategy; specifically, that certain cases can be won despite what the law says.
Juries deliberations in NSW
In NSW, juries do not give reasons for their findings; nor do they discuss their deliberations after the case is finalised.
So I suppose we’ll never know exactly what the jurors were thinking or why they each reached their decisions of not guilty in the outlined trial.
But the situation is a little different in the United States.
A United States example
The US trial of 44-year-old William Lynch in 2012 is a concrete example of ‘jury nullification’; which is where juries find a person not guilty despite knowing they are guilty according to the law.
Lynch was charged with felony assault and elder abuse after he attacked a priest had sexually abused him as a child.
During the trial, Lynch admitted approaching and punching the priest several times despite not being in fear for his imminent safety.
However, he also testified that the same priest molested him on a school camping trip three decades ago beforehand.
The courtroom was packed with Lynch’s supporters and other alleged victims, who even contributed to Lynch’s defence fund.
The jury ended up finding Lynch not guilty despite his admissions of guilt.
After the case was over, one of the jurors informed a reporter that he could not bring himself to find Lynch guilty in spite of what the law said.
History of juries deciding on the basis of what’s right, rather than the law
Examples of jury nullification date back several centuries.
In 1640, one English jury acquitted several men charged with unlawful assembly despite clear evidence that they were guilty.
The judge was not too happy about the verdict.
In order to get the ‘right’ decision, he sent the jurors back to the jury room, locked them up and deprived them of food.
After several days, the judge again asked for their verdict, but the jurors did not budge.
They refused to convict the men – so the judge ended up fining each of them.
Those who were unable to pay the fines were sent to prison until they could pay.
But one of the men, Mr Bushell, contested his imprisonment, and the Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas delivered a judgment in his favour.
The judge found that jurors cannot be fined or imprisoned for coming to a conclusion that is not in agreement with the judge.
Juries must be independent of the judge, or there would be no point in their existence.
They are the finders of the facts, whereas the judge is the finder of law.
And a jury’s decision is not invalid just because it is “against the weight of the evidence”; after all, people disagree about facts all the time.
