Category: Let's talk
In the wake of the trial of Schapelle Corby, an Australian student who's been convicted of attempting to bring marajuana into Bali, Australians have generally exploded in outraged conviction that she's innocent. The media have gotten behind it, charities have canceled funding to Indonesian causes, randoms on the street don't hold back in ranting at other randoms about the injustice of it... it's brought out the most redneck and biggoted side in Australia. Just when that's settled down, another high profile case, Michael Jackson's trial, returns an unpopular verdict, and we're off again. We know he's guilty... the jury were all bought... it's just cause he's a celebrity... Where do we get this conviction that we know best? In trials where the general public aren't personally involved or affected, aren't educated in law, aren't exposed to all the material which was presented in court, and are basing opinion solely on media portrayal, how can we possibly think we know best? It completely baffles me. Any thoughts from you guys?
I couldn't agree more Erin with what your saying! "such and such a person was guilty!" "such and such a person wasn't guilty!" how on earth do we get to be so sure about these things? it's not as though we were even at the trials of said persons never mind at the original incidences!
further to that though why do we even care so much about these high profile trials? take the michael jackson trial as a case in point. now i'm not for one second suggesting that the things that he was accused of weren't extremely serious because, obviously, they were, but why does everybody feel the need to follow this trial all the way to the end? of course i know the answer to that! its a retorical question but my point is that it is sad that we seem to have this voyeuristic fascination with celebrity that frankly boarders on sick if you ask me!
leave these people alone! laws and courts are there for a reason!
Would they be so bothered if he was Australian? I think that sometimes when citizens of a country are on trial abroad, people of that country seem to rally behind them for some reason. In the UK, everybody seemed to be behind Louise Woodward when she was on trial in America in the mid 1990's. I think that the media play a significant part in influencing people's views in such cases and it's wrong to form your view based on the nationality of the people at the centre of an issue.
Well, I think there are a whole host of factors that determine how we react. Firstly, I think it depends on the severity of the crime, and also on how high profile it is. And, on how that crime is portrayed in the media. For instance, when Holly Wells and Jesica chapman went missing, the story was on every news bulletin, for 14 days, until the time their bodies were discovered. After that, the hunt was on for the killer, and by the time someone was arrested, the public needed there to be someone who had committed the crime. Ian Huntley had been found guilty by the public before he’d even been convicted by a jury. Now in this case, Ian Huntlye was actually found guilty, but let’s say he’d been found not guilty. The public would have said that he was guilty anyway, purely based on what we had been told by the media.
I think in cases where people are accused of crimes abroad, often, the situation is that they are in a country where their human rights laws are perhaps not up to the same level as our’s, and therefore, we might have some doubt as to whether they actually did it, and often, if they are found guilty, the punishments can be very harsh.
In the case of louise Woodward I think it was outrageous. She killed a child and was found guilty as such, and yet when she returned to this country she was as good as treated as a hero, purely because the media portrayed her as being innocent. The reality is, that we have legal systems for a reason. If the public were allowed to decide who was, and was not guilty of a crime, then we’d have lynch mobs out therea fter everyone who had been accused of certain crimes, and those who didn’t look guilty would walk free whether they were or not.
And actually the public appear not to always know best. Ironically yesterday I was listening to a slot about women who have been convicted of killing their babies and some of whom have now had their convictions quashed. The people who were talking about it then mentioned a woman who was convicted in 1995 of killing two of her children. She had always protested her innocence. There were campaigns to have her convictions overturned, that she was innocent, that there was no evidence to convict her and that she had been wrongly convicted. She had been likened to Sally Clarke and Angela Cannings who have subsequently been freed and yet her appeal was rejected. Then last year in prison, she confessed to having killed, not only the two children she had been convicted for, but also her first child. She has since had her sentence extended. So you see, we definitely do not always know best.