JURIES AND BOOKMAKERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 630, 5 April 1929, Page 8

JURIES AND BOOKMAKERS

NEED FOR ALTERED SYSTEM CROWN PROSECUTOR’S PROPOSAL (From Our Resident Reporter) "WELLINGTON, Thursday. The working of the jury system was dealt with by Mr. A. T. Donnelly, Crown Prosecutor at Christchurch, in a paper read to the conference of the New Zealand Law Society tc-day. He proposed that jury lists in cases against bookmakers should only be given out just before trial. He also contended that there should be a thorough conscription of jurymen, and applications by business men for exemption should receive less consideration. “The jury system in criminal case* has been strained unfairly by placing on a lay and untrained tribunal the burden and responsibility of enforcing laws which set a standard higher than the average ethical standard of the community,” said Mr. Donnelly. “The Gaming Act Amendment, which makes bookmaking a crime, is a type of such legislation. If there is to be moral legislation of this class it should bo enforced by judges and magistrates who will administer the law as they find it. "We should not accustom the community, even in gambling cases, to constant failure of the administration of criminal justice, because, as in diseases of the human body, a small infection may spread through the whole system. Great social evils may follow from a trivial breakdown in the criminal law and the experience of the United States teaches us that these evils can extend until they threaten the foundation of civilisation itself. “Two amendments In criminal cases may be considered together. Firstly copies of the jury list should not be issued to litigants by the sheriff until a brief time before the trial, say 24 hours. Secondly, the Crown’s right to stand aside should be abolished There is little interference with juries in New Zealand, except in cases of the bookmaking type, and that little would disappear if jury lists were withheld until just before trial, because any successful tampering with the jury is dependent on a sufficiency of time for the purpose.”