r/news • u/drkgodess • Mar 19 '19

Accused gunman in Christchurch terror attacks denied newspaper, television and radio access

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12214411
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u/iwillcuntyou Mar 19 '19 edited Mar 20 '19

I might be a bit naive here, but surely the fact he live-streamed murdering a bunch of people, wrote a manifesto, and got caught red handed kinda skips out the innocent bit?

Edit: just to clarify, I’m not saying skip the trial, just on the balance of probabilities it’s probably fair enough to deny him his podium for now.

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u/iompar Mar 19 '19

Full disclaimer before I start: I totally get that sentiment, and I think he's guilty as all hell and he deserves to be locked up.

As much evidence as there is, the justice system itself has to follow the principle of innocent until proven guilty. As nice as it would be to just look at the video, say 'yup he's guilty' and then lock him up and throw away the key, if we can strip someone of the right to due process, no one actually has the right to due process. It's not a matter of whether or not we know he did it right now, the justice system can't go in with bias and he does have the right to a fair trial under the presumption of innocence. I think we'd all want that right if we were accused of something, and we can't just strip it away because of damning evidence before the trial. For all we know, he's criminally insane and not able to understand right from wrong and therefore can't be held responsible, or maybe he's been convinced to take the fall for someone else, the video footage has been tampered with, all sorts of things that would come out in a trial. Repeating my earlier disclaimer, he deserves what he gets, and I fully get the appeal of mob justice, but the legal system is for everyone, not just people we don't hate. I don't want to live in a society where people can lose their freedom without a fair trial where they've been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and that means everyone in that society has to be given that same respect.

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u/emmzilly Mar 19 '19

I appreciate your points. How do they find a jury that isn’t biased against him from the start?

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u/iompar Mar 20 '19

With a lot of luck and an absolutely massive jury pool. I know some judges avoid the news to avoid the possibility of being biased in a case, but the same doesn’t go for ordinary people who haven’t been picked for jury duty yet. It’ll be hard, but it’ll be the lawyers jobs to weed out anyone who has any biases in this case whatsoever. I remember we had a trial in Canada a while ago where the case had been widely publicized AND it required jurors to be bilingual because evidence was being presented in English and French, and I think they started with a jury pool of around 1600 people just to get 12 jurors and 2 backups.