this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
23 points (92.6% liked)

Australia

3520 readers
130 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

But you haven't answered my question. Let me try putting it another way.

Should this anonymity, which you stated to be the most important thing for any case, apply to ALL criminal and civil trials, or only to alleged rape cases?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

In my personal opinion? I guess.

Life goes on fine without knowing who all the people are in courts around the world are right now. Unless the public is involved or impacted, or there's an entity like a business or association on trial, I don't really see what lacking the choice of anonymity does to help anyone, especially the innocent.

I'm no lawyer though and it's surely not as simple as that. But just like anything involving personal or sensitive information about a person, it should be protected. Especially when, at least in principle, the justice system is there to protect, under innocence until proven guilty with no bias.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

"Principle of open justice

...a principle that is fundamental to our society and method of government: except in extraordinary circumstances, the courts of the land are open to the public. This principle arises out of the belief that exposure to public scrutiny is the surest safeguard against any risk of the courts abusing their considerable powers. ..."

Lots more at Source

I understand that it's tragic that some innocent people are destroyed either directly or indirectly by the justice system, both the unjustly accused that are acquitted, and also those wrongly found guilty. Lindy Chamberlain anyone? Hell, people have been hanged and later proven innocent. And the media in general sucks.

But I think the alternative to open justice would end up being a lot worse.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Do you think the idea behind open justice would lose any merit if a person on trial has their name redacted from media publications?

I'm not lost on the irony of, public scrutinises court, good; public also scrutinises defendant, bad.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Honestly, I think in a lot of cases, it's silly.

Let's be honest. We all know who we're talking about in this specific case, right? Whether the media is allowed to print the name or not doesn't matter at all.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Yeah, I imagine high-profile cases would be quite obvious :)

I don't know if there's anything stopping a person going to the media about a case before it even starts either, but imagine that's a tactic. Cochran proved the power of appeal to the public so I imagine that someone on a mission will try whatever advantage possible.