Pjen, although he/she has a bit of a reputation for cynicism, may be quite close to the truth actually; there’s a hell of a lot of posturing going on in politics right now (Somebody will say that there always has been, but I think it’s become more honed in recent years).
I support the option of retrying a case where there is sufficient new evidence, or that the outcome was clearly influenced by outside factors.
A similar proposal is under consideration in NZ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=news&thesubsection=&storyID=2043519. A killer was aquitted of murder, despite being later convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice during his trial. Of course he should be retried. Also, new forensic techniques are constantly being developed that may shed light on cases where conviction did not occur.
Of course no-one should be subjected to multiple retrials if there is no conviction, but the blanket prohibition on retrials needs to be lifted.
I’m not in favour of these reforms, but I’m also confused: my mind is fighting with my gut reactions.
As a victim of crime, my emotional reaction is to mention previous convictions in any trial. As a bleeding heart, I can see how easily that would produce prejudiced convictions. Is there some kind of halfway house that could be achieved? IANAL so I’m presuming previous convictions can currently be considered when sentencing?
I can see how jury trials are costly, lengthy and a pain in the arse for all involved. Magistrates’ courts already bypass trial-by-jury for smaller cases. I’m wondering, if I were the accused, where I’d feel more protected from miscarriages of justice?
Double jeopardy law being reformed also sounds logical, but again open to abuse. I note some recent successful civil court ‘convictions’ of felons has already gone some way to subverting double jeopardy rules. Perhaps extension of rulings in civil conviction to include more than financial recompense would constitute a halfway-house?
Yes, previous convictions are taken into account at the sentencing stage.
Occasionally they are taken into account in the trial stage - if the crime has some very, very unusual feature, and the defendant has a previous conviction for a crime which displays the same very, very unusual feature, this can be mentioned.
But in general previous convictions have virtually no probative value. Suppose my house was broken into. Of the tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people who have a previous housebreaking conviction, only one (at most) can guilty of this particular housebreaking. Hence the fact that somebody has a previous conviction for housebreaking, or even several previous convictions, is not evidence that he is guilty of this latest housebreaking.
If it were, conviction rates would be a lot higher. The police could simply pick up an old regular and charge him with any new offence, arguing that his record was evidence that he was guilty of the new offence.