Weaponizing our criminal justice system against men
Bettina Arndt’s latest newsletter reports on a presentation by prominent Sydney barrister Margaret Cunneen. She was speaking at The Presumption of Guilt Conference run by the Rule of Law Education Centre in Australia.
Her online presentation focussed on the impact of the new sexual consent laws that Attorney General Mark Speakman aims to ram through NSW Parliament. Speakman appointed the NSW Law Reform Commission to examine proposed changes to these laws but then ignored their warnings about the injustice that could result and proudly announced he is giving the feminists what they want
Feminist academics have been lobbying for years for a ‘’yes means yes’’ affirmative consent model where enthusiastic consent must be given at every stage throughout the sexual encounter. Under the new laws an accused would have to prove to have taken active steps to ascertain consent throughout the sexual proceedings. And as Cunneen pointed out, this would render most of the sex most of us have as potentially illegal.
The system is already stacked against men:
That was the real bombshell in the Cunneen presentation – her expose of the extent to which the feminists have already succeeded in stacking the system by removing the filtering system which once ensured that only rape cases with sufficient evidence went through to trial. Now almost all cases are pushed through into court, where many get thrown out by juries.
That means conviction rates go down, inspiring more rage from the feminists, more politicians frothing at the mouth demanding more be done to ensure the safety of women and ever more legal measures to ensure rapists get their comeuppance.
Bettina discusses Cunneen’s presentation here:
I apologise for not writing as soon as this post came out. I just needed time to contemplate the right response to what is being intergraded into the western world and how the effects of that will play out.
I picked up on the word weaponizing and that lead me thinking how another country in another time justified the persecution of another group of humans. They wanted to take their land, money and get them out of the way.
Most people think WW2 started in 1939. Well, it did but that is just the date, the old white men of that time said no. That’s just the date the guns opened fire.
The build up to hostilities happened a long time before that. Following on the heals of the harsh Treaty of Versailles 28 June 1919. Hitlers rise to power began in September 1919.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
What you do is you say to your starving and hard done by population, that group of people have what is rightfully yours.
The Jews who, at that time, owned almost everything. Owned the land, businesses, only employed other Jews, lent money to Jews and left little to the native people of that land. It was tightly controlled.
You say that group of people is the reason why you have nothing. That group of people is the reason why you are hungry and are missing out. You dehumanise those people and get the population to purge them from power and take their money and land.
There were laws laid down in the courts that were constantly tweaked to take their land and business. It grew and grew. You hold political party meetings, you convince the people those Jews are the reason why you find life hard.
When the Jews had their lands taken, their business taken, they were just left on the streets. Herded into ghettos the Jews were considered undesirables. Unwanted, a nuisance. In the end you hold a meeting to deal with that mess. “what to do with the Jewish problem?” There is a movie called “Conspiracy” you should watch. It details what really happened in those times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWLvq0jC-c0
There was a time when only men owned the house. It was in his name only. He worked for it and she raised the children. Got up early and worked hard to boil the water to wash the clothing, rinse and ring it out. Clean the house. If she left she got nothing. I don’t agree with that way of living for woman. And these days cleaning washing and drying clothing is as easy as pushing a button, folding it and putting it away.
We do not have newspapers as they did back then. We have something more effective than that these days.
Rather than work and pay for something, would you mislead someone if you could gain their real estate? The law now says your partner after just 36 months can own half your home. In some cases it can be just 24 months if there is a child involved.
And if that doesn’t work you can always go nuclear, have normal sex then claim rape. The man tossed in jail, before trial in the news that causes the loss of his job, make him unemployable, loss of access to his children and home. Everything in that home.
Now living in a boarding house or worse, a car, unemployed, he then has to defend himself against the most senior lawyers of the state with no limit on funding. It may take a year or two.
There are 2 main courts that are set up to remove men from society.
The Family Court was setup to protect children from violent families. This court you don’t even get notice to turn up and defend yourself. You are removed from your home, stopped from seeing your children, enrolled into a violence program you must attend or go to jail.
Fight it as you can, it can take years to win. It can take over a decade to fight back. The cost over that time, including your new overhead to pay her to live in that home will easily reach into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A rape trial is not a pleasant thing. You will have to defend yourself on what little funds you have left, no job and if you lose, you will lose the right to get a well paying job, you will lose the right to travel. The right to any sort of normal life.
If you win that will not win your house back. It will not win your children back. It will not put you back to where you were. It will destroy your mind, your wellbeing, the very essence of your soul.
You will still be unemployable.
You can be sent to prison on a hearsay without evidence.
The ease of destroying a man, a dad has been set way to low and that needs to change.
A lawyer when I asked, recently said to me there is no legal way to protect your home from claim should you separate.
Gentlemen. We have entered a time of winter. Tell your sons they can no longer be safe with that sort of set up. Tell your sons under no circumstances allow that woman into your home. Tell your sons, if you sleep with her, and reject her, make sure there is audio recorded evidence to show the police when they interview you. And since a charge can be laid 60 years later, that is the minimum length of time you need to keep that recording.
I can’t even imagine living in a country who would allow any human to suffer the indecency of facing a false sex trial just because his partner found someone else or she wanted to take all he has.
You could be a man who rejected a woman only to see all you have got taken.
With the new sexual violence bill, telling your accuser (NOT VICTIM) your defence in advance, you may end up in prison with no real arguable defence left, you might as well have no trial at all.
You would think intelligent people, leaders of a nation would not give this shit a moments entertainment. But here we are sitting in our homes watching these new laws sail into legislation without resistance.
When senior barristers speak out and they are taken no notice of just as they were in 1930’s Nazi Germany, they were silenced. First by shaming and then by prison or assassination.
Today it is still done by public shaming. The assassination is carried out by suicide.
Who is the real victim? How can she be seen victim when she gets all that he worked for free, and he is put in his cold grave or ashes drifting in the sea.
Young males – Do not climb on board this machine. You have a 50% chance of being buggered for life.
Do not let her inside your home. Have it owned by a trust that is managed by professionals. Never take her there. Never let her know it exists. Do not get a woman pregnant. Consider moving to a country that respects men and fathers.
Comment by Lukenz — Fri 2nd July 2021 @ 7:14 am
A wise man said.
“You have nothing to fear, but fear itself.
#1 Lukenz.
Nice comment.
It is near a carbon copy.
Minus the dictator, I think.
It’s when denigration is normalised.
As is, the denigrating of men, in culture is today.
They mocked the Jews, as lesser humans.
As you said, the slow creep, of laws.
Until all men are guilty, at a whim.
Wearing White Ribbons, and PSOs at hand, helpless.
Soon the Gestapo.
Comment by DJ Ward — Fri 2nd July 2021 @ 5:37 pm
When I saw the video of what John posted it started to make me wonder what the next step would be after this one. How can you make defendants guilty when they are not?
The removal of Juries is the next step. How do you delete juries. Its simple. You whittle it down over time, building on the last block you laid. That last block laid was in Johns post.
Okay, so you say this is impossible in New Zealand. You are wrong. We have been there before.
The purported inability of jurors to comprehend complex law and evidence led to the introduction of judge-only trials in New Zealand in 1979.
You can rightfully say Juries take away the states power to convict and puts it in the hands of the public. Push and shove as feminists do, the absolute vast public are, time and time again saying “piss off liar, he is not guilty”. Statistically they do it 87% of the time. And it is not a 50/50 vote. It is a 100% vote. 12 out of 12 members of the public vote not guilty.
How close is removing juries in parliament? Well those MP’s who prepare and make the law, sit on select committees are in office now. They just do not have the numbers yet. But they could very well have the numbers under the MMP system where the minority can hold the keys.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-11-21/debates/8BF93744-89C2-426C-98E3-CF8C9839C028/RapeMythsAndJuries
Source of material here.
https://blog.6kbw.com/posts/without-rhyme-or-reason-the-removal-of-juries-from-rape-trials#_edn5
I am cutting and pasting the content because I have often found blog links, if they go against the narrative are removed without trace. Full credit to Ailsa McKeon who must have taken quite some effort to put what she wrote togeather and backed it up with links.
Ailsa McKeon
10 January 2019
Ann Coffey MP recently gave a speech in Parliament seeking a wide-ranging inquiry into rape prosecutions.[1] One of Ms Coffey’s proposals was that juries be removed from rape trials. Increasing rates of acquittal, particularly of younger men, were said to suggest that jurors carry societal prejudices against sexual offence complainants into their deliberations. The result, Ms Coffey asserts, is that predominantly female victims of sexual violence are being denied justice.
This is far from the first challenge to jury trials, nor will it be the last. In that light, it is worth considering what mischief it is said removing juries will cure. A brief survey of several common law jurisdictions reveals three motivations for legislative exclusion of jury trials: the impact of adverse publicity; the risk of jury tampering; and the competence of jurors.
Adverse publicity is of greatest concern to defendants, who question in notorious cases whether their trials may be fair. The prominence of the internet has caused increasing concern, as the passage of time no longer guarantees jurors will not be exposed to adverse press when a case comes to trial. This concern influenced the rise of judge-alone trials in Australia.[2] Despite the modern media landscape, however, jury trials for serious offences predominate.
In the UK, adverse media coverage is dealt with primarily by reporting restrictions under the Contempt of Court Act 1981. Instead, jury tampering was the catalyst for judge-only trials, with ‘Diplock courts’ developing in Northern Ireland during the 1970s.[3] Established under emergency powers, these juryless trials were only ever available for certain scheduled offences and have been in the process of being phased out since 2007.[4] However, just a few years before, judge-alone trials had become possible across the UK pursuant to section 44 of the Criminal Justice Act (“CJA”) 2003, which permits the prosecution to apply for a judge-alone trial where there ‘is evidence of a real and present danger that jury tampering would take place’ that cannot be ameliorated. Section 46 CJA 2003 enables a judge to discharge a sitting jury and continue without them, if satisfied jury tampering has occurred. Again, such trials are extremely uncommon
Of most relevance to Ms Coffey’s proposal is the third reason for excluding juries. The purported inability of jurors to comprehend complex law and evidence led to the introduction of judge-only trials in New Zealand in 1979[5] and also played a role in Australia.[6] The same imperative led to section 43 CJA 2003, permitting the prosecution to apply for ‘serious or complex fraud cases’ to be heard by a judge alone. This was part of the fallout from the 2004/05 ‘Jubilee Line case’, which was abandoned after 21 months.[7] Section 43 has in fact not been brought into force, arguably because its necessity has simply not been shown. Two additional points may be made about that case: first, it was not the jurors’ lack of ability, but poor case preparation that brought the case to its knees. Secondly, case management reforms commenced by Lord Judge, when Lord Chief Justice, are considered adequate by the judiciary to address the concerns that case raised.[8]
“What we certainly do not know is that jurors acquit rape defendants because of anti-victim bias”
The idea that all jurors are unable to consider a case fairly and impartially due to inherent societal prejudices is another species of complaint as to incompetence. Some argue that such concerns are not founded in evidence, and view juries from a disparaging and elitist point of view.[9] Unfortunately, mandatory secrecy means that we know very little about what goes on inside jury rooms. What we certainly do not know is that jurors acquit rape defendants because of anti-victim bias.
Indeed, the purpose of having randomly-selected juries is to ensure verdicts are reached by broad cross-sections of society, from various walks of life, with distinct cultural and educational backgrounds, and different life experiences.[10] While many may be aware of certain stereotypes around sexual offence complainants, it cannot be said that all view them in the same way and are inevitably biased.
More relevant, it seems, is that rape trials often depend on a ‘credibility contest’ between oral evidence of a defendant and a single complainant.[11] Humans are in fact poor lie detectors and, research suggests, likely to be less confident in their judgment where they are in fact correct that someone is lying than when they are wrong.[12] In these cases, then, jurors are faced with a very challenging task.
Adding to the jurors’ burden is the specialist language used in courtrooms and the emphasis during trial on oral advocacy and evidence.[13] Of significant concern is a finding that jurors may not perceive oral evidence as ‘proper’ evidence, on which they can rely in reaching their decision.[14] In general, jurors commonly report that they would appreciate greater guidance in how to approach their task.[15]
These factors do not point to an inherent incapacity among jurors to understand cases before them. Rather, they suggest that those who are accustomed to working in courts are not sufficiently careful to ensure that juries do, in fact, understand.[16] Although Ms Coffey relies on recent research linking prejudice and acquittal, this is just one study. Correlation and causation must also be carefully distinguished.
Research confirms that jurors approach their task and view its consequences seriously.[17] If we operated on a balance of probabilities, many more convictions might follow because, on balance, a complainant may be believed. But that is not the standard by which criminal courts operate and jurors know it. So it does not follow as Ms Coffey suggests that juries acquit because their prejudice causes them to disbelieve complainants. On balance, a jury may find a complainant’s account credible, but simply not find this sufficient to make them sure that the defendant committed the offence charged. It is an element of rape in particular that the defendant ‘does not reasonably believe that [the complainant] consents’.[18] The defendant’s state of mind is something to which a complainant cannot directly attest, and the jury’s view on this says nothing about whether they believe her account. Victims must be assisted by the court system and others to understand this.
All three motivations for removing juries suggest that judges are more robust and protected than others in society, and to some degree this is true. However, judges are still human and susceptible to societal influences. One need not be conscious of a preconception to be affected by it. At least among 12 jurors, subconscious biases may be voiced and debated.
In fact, despite their training and experience, it seems judges are no better equipped than laypersons at excluding extraneous information from their minds.[19] Such matters need not only relate to the defendant – reliance may be sought, for example, on purported bad character or sexual history evidence with respect to the complainant or another witness in the case. The judge will have to rule on this – but the jury will never know of it and will be able to reach their verdict untainted by such inadmissible material.
Given human frailties, it is therefore a strength of the jury system that its arbiters of fact and law are distinct
Ms Coffey’s proposal positions juryless trials as a silver bullet for victims, but there is no evidence that this will be the case. Given human frailties, it is therefore a strength of the jury system that its arbiters of fact and law are distinct. Of course, more research on juries, including an expected report from Professor Cheryl Thomas, is to be welcomed. Until there is evidence that jury trials are an impediment to justice, we ought to be resistant to change. The availability to all of trial before a jury for serious offences remains an important facet of equality before the law and ought not to be arbitrarily restricted.
[1] See House of Commons Debates, 21 November 2018, Column 344-350WH .
[2] Rebecca McEwen, John Eldridge and David Caruso, ‘Differential or Deferential to Media? The Effect of Prejudicial Publicity on Judge or Jury’ (2018) 22 International Journal of Evidence & Proof 124; Jodie O’Leary, ‘Inspiring or Undermining Confidence? Amendments to the Right to Judge Alone Trials in the ACT’ (2011) 10 Canberra Law Review 30, 32-33.
[3] Liz Campbell, ‘The Prosecution of Organised Crime: Removing the Jury’ (2014) 18 International Journal of Evidence & Proof 83; Louis Blom-Cooper QC, ‘Article 6 and Modes of Criminal Trial’ (2001) 1 European Human Rights Law Review 1.
[4] See Section 9, Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007.
[5] Neil Cameron, Susan Potter and Warren Young, ‘The New Zealand Jury’ (1999) 62(2) Law and Contemporary Problems 103, 117.
[6] O’Leary (n2) 32.
[7] Sally Lloyd-Bostock, ‘The Jubilee Line Jurors: Does Their Experience Strengthen the Argument for Judge-Only Trials in Long and Complex Fraud Cases?’ [2007] Criminal Law Review 255.
[8] Ibid 259-66, 271; Robert F Julian, ‘Judicial Perspectives in Serious Fraud Cases: the Present Status of and Problems Posed by Case Management Practices, Jury Selection Rules, Juror Expertise, Plea Bargaining and Choice of Mode of Trial’ (2008) 10 Criminal Law Review 764, 766.
[9] See Lee Stuesser, ‘The Jury in Canada’ (2007) 90 Reform 51, 52.
[10] Julian (n8) 772; Peter McLellan, ‘Looking Inside the Jury Room’ (2011) [W] Bar News 64, 65.
[11] Michael Green, ‘Credibility Contests: the Elephant in the Room’ (2014) 18 International Journal of Evidence & Proof 28, 29, 34-35.
[12] Ibid 30.
[13] McClellan (n10) 65-67, 69-70.
[14] K Warner, J Davis and P Underwood, ‘The Jury Experience: Insights from the Tasmanian Jury Study’ (2011) 10 Judicial Review 333.
[15] Ibid; Stuesser (n9).
[16] Cameron, Potter & Young (n5) 118; McClellan (n10).
[17] McClellan (n10) 65; Warner, Davis & Underwood (n14).
[18] Section 1, Sexual Offences Act 2003.
[19] McEwen, Eldridge & Caruso (n2) 13
Comment by Lukenz — Sun 4th July 2021 @ 10:44 am
@3 I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding in what you’ve written.
There has been a significant increase in MP participation by member’s bills in the law making process along with a significant increase in participation by the Law Commission meaning the House of Representatives can participate without understanding.
If our democracy is based on rule of law then neither the ruler or the ruled should have undue authority over the other but that’s where we are sitting at the moment, on the cusp of authoritarianism.
Comment by Evan Myers — Sun 4th July 2021 @ 11:23 am