Something I'm clueless about, but why aren't jurors allowed to know prior convictions? That seems like highly relevant information. If a person has robbed ten banks before why not tell the jury in the trial for the eleventh?
Sure if a person had a multitude of driving convictions in a child abuse case I can understand the court denying it as irrelevant, but that isn't what's happening here.
To flip your question around, should a prosecutor have the power to, upon an 11th bank robbery occurring, simply drag in the guy who did the last 10 and present him as "probably" the guilty party? This has happened any number of times in the past. It's important that each case stand on its own merits, to the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt".
That said, judges have a lot of latitude to allow evidence of prior conviction if they feel it is in aid of a fair trial. They wield this power in order to keep all parties honest and unbiased as best they can. In this case - rightly or wrongly - the judge has decided that knowledge of the outcome of the first case would prejudice the second case, especially due to the emotional nature of the allegations. That's why the order was made.
While I have nothing but contempt for Cardinal Pell, who represents pretty much everything I dislike about the church, he has as much right to a fair and unbiased trial as any other person. Months of media saturation might indeed prejudice that, so I reluctantly support the intent of this kind of power, appropriately limited and temporary. It certainly is more complicated in the age of global media, however, and I really don't know what the answer is, if there even is one.
I personally feel like the best way to be persecuted in this world... Is to be persecuted in the first place. I know this all too well, personally. A history of misfortune or injustice is basically a recipe, and in fact a justification, for future injustice. Probably most tyrannies of peoples in the history of the world falls under this category.
Prior criminal history isn't relevant at all to a criminal trial. Just because he robbed 10 banks before doesn't mean he robbed this one. It's prejudicial and really problematic any time a repeat offender is on trial-- the mentality becomes "well, the evidence is weak and nobody saw him do it, but he must be guilty...he's a criminal!"
Convictions are supposed to be made after considering the facts of the case as presented, not speculation based on past behavior.
I totally agree with your point and I'm setting a dangerous precedent by arguing the point I'm going to argue for in a second. Please note that I am fully against what I'm going to argue now but I'm going to argue it for the sake of playing the devil's advocate.
That being said ...
Convictions are supposed to be made after considering the facts of the case as presente
The fact that someone robbed 10 banks is a fact. You're literally witholding (relevant) facts from the case.
How is a person's history not a fact? I mean, the robbery happened in the past, which is also a fact. How are the two different.
So we rob a bank at T=10, Imagine that person robbed a bank at T=1, not relevant, what if person robbed a bank at T=2, T=3, .. etc. Even if we rob a bank at T=9.999... it is suddenly not relevant anyore?
I realize the absurdity of the point I'm making but how is previous crime not a valid feature? If we train a machine learning algorithm to predict guilty/not guilty (I'm going into dangerous territory here, I realize this) and the training set contains criminals that are repeat offenders, wouldn't "repeat offender" get a high feature weight in say a random forest?
Indeed, a prior conviction raises the Bayesian probability of a given suspect having committed a similar crime. In probability terms, the prior probability of suspect S having committed crime Cn, given that they committed crime C0, C1, etc., is certainly higher than without that information.
But how much higher? Given 8 billion people in the world, the priors are quite low for any given person P having committed any particular crime Cn. On the other hand, humans (including jurors) are liable to bias, and without other alternatives they can very easily be fooled. By the time someone has been dragged in front of you, and you're told that they committed C0, C1, etc., then you're asked if they committed crime C and to you it looks very plausible because it's hard to take into account the (still) very low prior, especially if you lack other alternative hypotheses.
So while you're right that it is a valid inference, we choose not to allow that inference in order to counter the much higher magnitude of bias caused by the representativeness heuristic and the like.
The legal world is, officially, very humble. It isn't a fact that someone robbed 10 banks. It is a fact that they were /convicted of/ robbing 10 banks. The legal system isn't perfect, lots of basically guiltless people get chewed up by the machine. An acceptance of that reality permeates a lot of legal practice (embedded in the system, although I expect a lot of lawyers get it too).
How is a person's history not a fact?
The key word you are missing is relevant fact. Some very great minds have put a lot of effort into making the legal system robust against the unreliability of all the evidence that passes through it. The rules regarding evidence in the Common Law tradition are quite well thought out. A case starts by gathering evidence of what transpired, proceeds by assessing it against some standard and finishes taking a (more or less) predictable action.
If someone has 10 convictions, they have received an appropriate treatment for what they have done. Imagine that a bank robbery has occurred and someone has a history of 10 bank robberies is the suspect. If the case is borderline, and the 10 prior convictions is what pushes it over the edge, then this is effectively the same as further punishment for past misdeeds.
If the 10 past misdeeds are acceptable evidence, then it is equivalent to punishing someone further for past crimes. That isn't acceptable - the sentence at the prior conviction is meant to be the end of the matter and to allow otherwise violates principles of fairness. For reason of fairness, they can't be accepted and the current case must be tried on the merits of only evidence about that instance of crime.
I can see how from a risk and prevention perspective, prior convictions are highly relevant. The ML example factors into this. Banks would not be unwise to lock the doors when a person with 9 bank robbery convictions walks past.
In fact, I would suspect that even if the jurors should base it just on the facts, the person is more likely to end up in front of the court because the police would run through the list of convicted bank robbers in the area.
The risk of an incorrect conviction for this person must go up.
The facts standing on their own is important because it's not just about risk prevention, ML learning is a (potentially highly accurate) guess, but still a guess. Admitting prior convictions is basically the same for humans, it fires up the predictive nature of our brains.
Because its prejudicial nature outweighs its evidence. If someone robbed a bank, their character shouldn't be necessary to figure out if they did or didn't. If the prosecutor wants to put him on trial for all the banks at once, then he can do that.
The problem with all of this is that we aren't trying to predict whether the guy will ever rob a bank again or assess the odds of him doing this one, which is where your logic works best-- we are trying to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that he did, in fact, rob this one.
That he robbed banks before is a fact, yes, but not one that puts him at the scene of this crime. Statistical likelihood is not a relevant fact in a criminal trial (but might be acceptable in a civil matter, where the standards are lower).
Does anyone really put much faith in character witnesses though? One possible point: someone who can’t produce anyone to say something positive about them is clearly guilty.
Yet in judge-only trials the judge is allowed to know the defendants criminal history. How are they able to overcome this bias?
The whole reason for the need of this rule is we actively select the dullest of our communities to sit on juries. As the saying goes if you are guilty you want a jury trial and if innocent a judge-only trial.
Whether there is a prior conviction or not has no impact on the truth of this instance. Prior convictions are taken into consideration during sentencing
Comments
Something I'm clueless about, but why aren't jurors allowed to know prior convictions? That seems like highly relevant information. If a person has robbed ten banks before why not tell the jury in the trial for the eleventh?
Sure if a person had a multitude of driving convictions in a child abuse case I can understand the court denying it as irrelevant, but that isn't what's happening here.
To flip your question around, should a prosecutor have the power to, upon an 11th bank robbery occurring, simply drag in the guy who did the last 10 and present him as "probably" the guilty party? This has happened any number of times in the past. It's important that each case stand on its own merits, to the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt".
That said, judges have a lot of latitude to allow evidence of prior conviction if they feel it is in aid of a fair trial. They wield this power in order to keep all parties honest and unbiased as best they can. In this case - rightly or wrongly - the judge has decided that knowledge of the outcome of the first case would prejudice the second case, especially due to the emotional nature of the allegations. That's why the order was made.
While I have nothing but contempt for Cardinal Pell, who represents pretty much everything I dislike about the church, he has as much right to a fair and unbiased trial as any other person. Months of media saturation might indeed prejudice that, so I reluctantly support the intent of this kind of power, appropriately limited and temporary. It certainly is more complicated in the age of global media, however, and I really don't know what the answer is, if there even is one.
I personally feel like the best way to be persecuted in this world... Is to be persecuted in the first place. I know this all too well, personally. A history of misfortune or injustice is basically a recipe, and in fact a justification, for future injustice. Probably most tyrannies of peoples in the history of the world falls under this category.
This question gets asked a lot.
Prior criminal history isn't relevant at all to a criminal trial. Just because he robbed 10 banks before doesn't mean he robbed this one. It's prejudicial and really problematic any time a repeat offender is on trial-- the mentality becomes "well, the evidence is weak and nobody saw him do it, but he must be guilty...he's a criminal!"
Convictions are supposed to be made after considering the facts of the case as presented, not speculation based on past behavior.
I totally agree with your point and I'm setting a dangerous precedent by arguing the point I'm going to argue for in a second. Please note that I am fully against what I'm going to argue now but I'm going to argue it for the sake of playing the devil's advocate.
That being said ...
The fact that someone robbed 10 banks is a fact. You're literally witholding (relevant) facts from the case.
How is a person's history not a fact? I mean, the robbery happened in the past, which is also a fact. How are the two different.
So we rob a bank at T=10, Imagine that person robbed a bank at T=1, not relevant, what if person robbed a bank at T=2, T=3, .. etc. Even if we rob a bank at T=9.999... it is suddenly not relevant anyore?
I realize the absurdity of the point I'm making but how is previous crime not a valid feature? If we train a machine learning algorithm to predict guilty/not guilty (I'm going into dangerous territory here, I realize this) and the training set contains criminals that are repeat offenders, wouldn't "repeat offender" get a high feature weight in say a random forest?
Indeed, a prior conviction raises the Bayesian probability of a given suspect having committed a similar crime. In probability terms, the prior probability of suspect S having committed crime Cn, given that they committed crime C0, C1, etc., is certainly higher than without that information.
But how much higher? Given 8 billion people in the world, the priors are quite low for any given person P having committed any particular crime Cn. On the other hand, humans (including jurors) are liable to bias, and without other alternatives they can very easily be fooled. By the time someone has been dragged in front of you, and you're told that they committed C0, C1, etc., then you're asked if they committed crime C and to you it looks very plausible because it's hard to take into account the (still) very low prior, especially if you lack other alternative hypotheses.
So while you're right that it is a valid inference, we choose not to allow that inference in order to counter the much higher magnitude of bias caused by the representativeness heuristic and the like.
Ok. IANAL :)
The legal world is, officially, very humble. It isn't a fact that someone robbed 10 banks. It is a fact that they were /convicted of/ robbing 10 banks. The legal system isn't perfect, lots of basically guiltless people get chewed up by the machine. An acceptance of that reality permeates a lot of legal practice (embedded in the system, although I expect a lot of lawyers get it too).
The key word you are missing is relevant fact. Some very great minds have put a lot of effort into making the legal system robust against the unreliability of all the evidence that passes through it. The rules regarding evidence in the Common Law tradition are quite well thought out. A case starts by gathering evidence of what transpired, proceeds by assessing it against some standard and finishes taking a (more or less) predictable action.
If someone has 10 convictions, they have received an appropriate treatment for what they have done. Imagine that a bank robbery has occurred and someone has a history of 10 bank robberies is the suspect. If the case is borderline, and the 10 prior convictions is what pushes it over the edge, then this is effectively the same as further punishment for past misdeeds.
If the 10 past misdeeds are acceptable evidence, then it is equivalent to punishing someone further for past crimes. That isn't acceptable - the sentence at the prior conviction is meant to be the end of the matter and to allow otherwise violates principles of fairness. For reason of fairness, they can't be accepted and the current case must be tried on the merits of only evidence about that instance of crime.
Keeping in mind you are playing Devils Advocate.
I can see how from a risk and prevention perspective, prior convictions are highly relevant. The ML example factors into this. Banks would not be unwise to lock the doors when a person with 9 bank robbery convictions walks past.
In fact, I would suspect that even if the jurors should base it just on the facts, the person is more likely to end up in front of the court because the police would run through the list of convicted bank robbers in the area.
The risk of an incorrect conviction for this person must go up.
The facts standing on their own is important because it's not just about risk prevention, ML learning is a (potentially highly accurate) guess, but still a guess. Admitting prior convictions is basically the same for humans, it fires up the predictive nature of our brains.
Because its prejudicial nature outweighs its evidence. If someone robbed a bank, their character shouldn't be necessary to figure out if they did or didn't. If the prosecutor wants to put him on trial for all the banks at once, then he can do that.
The problem with all of this is that we aren't trying to predict whether the guy will ever rob a bank again or assess the odds of him doing this one, which is where your logic works best-- we are trying to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that he did, in fact, rob this one.
That he robbed banks before is a fact, yes, but not one that puts him at the scene of this crime. Statistical likelihood is not a relevant fact in a criminal trial (but might be acceptable in a civil matter, where the standards are lower).
It certainly seems relevant when character witnesses are used to portray the accused as incapable of committing a crime.
A criminal history is the antithesis of this. It is useful to the same degree.
Does anyone really put much faith in character witnesses though? One possible point: someone who can’t produce anyone to say something positive about them is clearly guilty.
Yet in judge-only trials the judge is allowed to know the defendants criminal history. How are they able to overcome this bias?
The whole reason for the need of this rule is we actively select the dullest of our communities to sit on juries. As the saying goes if you are guilty you want a jury trial and if innocent a judge-only trial.
Whether there is a prior conviction or not has no impact on the truth of this instance. Prior convictions are taken into consideration during sentencing
The prosecutor has the burden to prove guilt based on the evidence. Prior convictions isn’t “evidence”.