There will be more than enough fervent comment about the High
Court's acquittal of Cardinal George Pell on sexual assault
charges. The purpose of this present item, however, is to look at
the balance between jury verdicts and the judges in criminal
appeals; and at how that has played out in the case of Cardinal
Pell.
The jury from medieval times
The jury in criminal trials is an ancient institution. The
English like to claim it as one of England's great
contributions to modern jurisprudence, but there is some evidence
that the jury concept came to England with William the
Conqueror.
The underlying idea is simple: an accused person should only be
adjudged guilty of crimes by a group of people drawn from the
community where the accused lived. In the expression "a jury
of his peers", the word "peers" conveys not merely
some sort of social stratum, but also the notion of "people
like the accused". In medieval England the term was sometimes
expanded to a jury "of
