In this episode of Insight, Lindy Chamberlain and Saxon Mullins put Australia's jury system on trial. Is the idea of twelve members of the community randomly selected to decide whether a person is guilty still fit for purpose? And do they always get it right?
In 1982, a jury found Lindy Chamberlain guilty of murdering her nine-week-old baby Azaria in one of the most famous miscarriages of justice in Australian history.
Lindy spent the next three years in prison before she was released after a crucial piece of evidence was found.
Her conviction was later quashed in 1988, and Azaria's death certificate was amended in 2012 to say the cause of death was a dingo. Lindy and her then husband Michael had always maintained that a dingo took Azaria from their tent at Uluru/Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory.
It has since been proven that the evidence presented in the initial trial was flawed.
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Lindy clearly remembers the day her fate was left in the hands of a jury.
"I knew that the judge had summed up for acquittal", Lindy told Insight.
The Chamberlains' lawyers explained to Lindy and Michael that "[the deliberation] was going to be quick" if the jury believed the judge.
"But it wasn't quick. It took hours, which meant they weren't agreeing with the judge or with one another," Lindy said.
Azaria's matinee jacket was the new evidence. Source: Supplied / NT Police The jury delivered a guilty verdict after seven hours of deliberation. Michael was convicted of being an accessory after the fact and Lindy was sentenced to life in prison with hard labour.
"I just felt like they hadn't been peers of the evidence," Lindy said.
"They didn't understand it. They had no idea."
Lindy says that the blood evidence presented in the trial was "so difficult" that her and Michael's lawyers, Crown lawyers and other lawyers all sat down with scientists to learn about and understand the evidence — "and to know even how to ask questions".
"[The lawyers had] plenty of previous time to read and absorb, then the jury just hears it once, and it's way over their heads," Lindy said.
After Azaria's jacket was found and Lindy was released from prison, a subsequent royal commission ruled the forensic evidence at her trial was faulty.
When asked if this could have been prevented, Lindy said: "At the time, probably not because there didn't seem to be any checks and balances to see who did what."
Lindy believes that only reliable and relevant evidence must be presented to jurors, and four decades on, she is advocating for changes to the jury system.
Australia's jury system
Australia's jury system is largely inherited from the legal traditions of 13th-century England and is used for indictable (serious) offences. Juries are used in both criminal and civil cases, but are rare in the latter.
While laws regarding criminal trials vary by state and territory, usually 12 jurors are selected at random from the electoral roll. The randomness aims to bring diverse views to the case, which may balance out any individual bias.
The jury's role is to consider only the evidence and arguments presented in court.
The group then deliberates in private to decide whether a criminal defendant is guilty 'beyond reasonable doubt', which means the evidence is so compelling that there are no sensible or logical explanations as to the defendant's innocence.
However, as technology progresses, Lindy is concerned evidence is becoming too complicated.
"I've come to the conclusion that, instead of the adversarial system that we have in Australia, I would like to see all forensic expert evidence from both sides given to a roving panel of experts," she said.
Lindy proposes the panel could be made up of local and international experts who would be tasked with analysing the validity of evidence in their specific field of study. After which, only evidence approved by the panel would be presented in court.
'I couldn't live with her being in jail'
Yvonne Cain was one of the jurors in Lindy Chamberlain's trial. She says she was surprised when they called her name to take a seat in the jury box.
"I didn't think I would be chosen," Yvonne told Insight.
"I thought I'd be going home. I wasn't an important person."
Yvonne publicly identified herself as a juror in Lindy's case, convinced the jury had reached the wrong decision. Source: SBS She says that after the trial, she thought about Lindy "non-stop".
Convinced the jury had got it wrong, she publicly identified herself after Lindy was sentenced and was dubbed the "crying juror" by the media.
"The judge said she was going to do life with hard labour and that got to me ..." Yvonne said.
"Those words stayed with me, and I couldn't live with her being in jail."
Jurors and the media
Understanding exactly how juries come to their decisions is difficult to study as jurors are prohibited fr…
Read the full article at SBS News →
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