Sir, - As an American lawyer attending school in Dublin, I have closely followed your coverage of the Louise Woodward trial and its aftermath. It is unfortunate that world exposure to the justice dispensed by juries in thousands of United States courts every day is limited to the rare and sensational cases carried on Court TV. Some would say it is even more unfortunate that television cameras are allowed in courtrooms because of their tendency to invite participants to employ soap operatics in the real-life drama of a trial.
Trial by jury is the foundation of the criminal justice system in the United States, Ireland and Great Britain. Reaching a just verdict is the province of jurors, not judges, because jurors bring their collective life experience and common sense to bear in reaching a decision on guilt or innocence. Yet, as human beings, jurors are not infallible. The not guilty verdict returned by the O. J. Simpson jury, with little deliberation, is cited as the most renowned example of this. People expressing outrage over the Woodward verdict have compared the Woodward case to Simpson's; some have even gone so far as to compare Louise Woodward with the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six. These comparisons are wrong because the cases are fundamentally different. Both the Woodward homicide case and the O.J. Simpson double homicide case were covered by Court TV from gravel to gravel and defence lawyer Barry Scheck was an additional common link between the two cases, as he skilfully handled the medical evidence in each. However, while these are superficial similarities, the sub-texts of the cases were very different. The trial within a trial in California was not about O.J. Simpson, who relied on his constitutional right against self-incrimination and did not testify, but about the lies under oath which allowed the defence to successfully put the system on trial, because there is nothing American jurors despise more than lying cops. The trial within a trial in Massachusetts was about Louise Woodward's credibility because she put that directly in issue by taking the stand and unequivocally denying that she had anything to do with the baby's death. The jurors, after assessing her veracity, unanimously rejected her testimony.
To speak of Louise Woodward in the same context as the Guilford Four and the Birmingham Six is preposterous. There has been no allegation that police or prosecutors fabricated evidence, as they did in those British cases. Nor has she expended the automatic appeals she receives in our system, which are designed to address defects occurring at the pre-trial or trial stage.
Finally, the Woodward jury did not have the opportunity to fully dispense justice because of the defence team's "go for broke" strategy, which precluded the jury's consideration of every reasonable verdict.
I have tried enough homicide cases to know that, when your client is facing a mandatory sentence for murder, you don't roll the dice with your client's life by denying the jury the option of returning a lesser verdict of guilt - i.e., manslaughter. Nor is it right to place blame for this tactical decision on a 19-year-old girl, when you are paid to represent her best interests and advocate her best defence.
To repeat, a jury trial is a real life drama! It isn't a soap opera in which participants are allowed to play to the camera. Let's hope that Judge Hiller Zobel corrects this arrogant defence error and dispenses justice in his post-trial rulings. Uniquely, Massachusetts law authorises him to reduce the murder conviction to manslaughter. - Yours, etc,
Sandymount, Dublin 4.