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Another Bain beat-up
By Steven | March 2, 2009
I think the SST overplayed its lead story on the Bain jury. The headline:
David Bain murder retrial: Jurors must be tested for bias – expert
The first two paras:
A TOP law professor has called for tougher testing of jurors to minimise the risk of prejudice in the retrial of David Bain on five murder charges.
His comments come as one of New Zealand’s leading jury researchers says it is impossible to be sure that pre-trial publicity about Bain’s case will have no effect on a jury’s verdict. The retrial is set to start in the High Court in Christchurch on Friday.
What’s a “top” law professor? (Scott Optican is an associate professor, actually, and I’ve got a lot of time for him, but I don’t have any idea why he’s toppier than any other senior academics).
More importantly, Optican never says in the article that Bain jurors “must” be tested, which is surely the operative part of that headline. He thinks it might be a good idea, and it’s a chance for the lawyers involved to made an application that’s never been granted before in NZ. But that’s not a “must”, which suggests that the trial would necessarily be unfair without it.
And on that point, of course, we have Yvette Tinsley (a colleague of mine, rightly described as one of NZ’s leading jury researchers) saying she can’t rule out possible jury prejudice caused by pre-trial publicity. Well, that’s not really the thrust of what she says. She says her research found little evidence of such prejudice and concluded that any prejudice was likely to be minimised by the process of jury deliberation. Of course, no-one can ever rule out the possibility of prejudice, though, she points out.
Was this really a front-page lead?
Topics: Contempt of Court, General, Media ethics | Comments Off on Another Bain beat-up