The second tenet of faith in the holy trinity of woke dogma is:
“B-E-L-I-E-V-E ALL Woman that ALL Men are rapists”.
It’s an important tenet of faith, it derives from a gender critical certainty that women are so moral and better they would never lie about sexual assault, where as males are innately evil and by jere fact of owning a heteronormative penis, they are toxic and would ALWAYS lie about sexual assault.
This dogma was front and centre of Stuff’s coverage of Jury trials in NZ…
Survivor demands to know who sits on juries
The right to trial by jury has been enshrined in the law for hundreds of years but when registrars select names at random from the electoral roll, who answers the call and are they representative of the community? A survivor is calling for research to be carried out.
…in the Stuff reality, To Kill a Mockingbird is a heteronormative white cis male hate crime.
Allegations of sexual assault need to be taken seriously, not ‘believed’.
I found three things to be fascinating in Stuff’s journalism regarding Juries.
Firstly, rather than research who the Jury are and what they think, the focus should be on better pay for Jury service so as to allow the working poor to appear on Jury trials.
Secondly, it’s astounding that for a news story on Jury trials not once and no where does Stuff even cover the fact that Goldsmith is looking to reduce the use of Jury trials and the enormous impact that will have on justice in New Zealand.
Thirdly, there is zero reflection on the changes to jury trials that the Greens rammed through while in Government last that are set up so as to find any person accused of rape guilty by removing any defence. This on top of all the other defences given to those giving testimony in sexual assault cases.
Sexual assault is a disgraceful crime and as far as I am concerned, the worst kind of crime, but a legal system requires entrenched legal defences, and throwing those out under the belief that anyone accusing someone of sexual assault is telling the truth is not a justice system, it’s a process of guilt.
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Well said Martyn. I don’t understand Goldsmith’s interest in fewer trials by jury – is this really a cost-cutting measure? Trying to do justice on the cheap would be a terrible idea.
As for the so-called “Greens”: their core ideology now seems to be “straight white man bad”.
Pope Punctilious 11. Forget about the shouty-shouty Greens. Consider justice being meted out by Una Jagose clones, and and whether Goldsmith, himself not always a close acquaintance of established facts, is anything more than the self-satisfied charlatan he looks like and view any idea of his with the utmost suspicion. The guy’s meant to be an historian but has the effrontery to try and wipe out a system of justice nearly as old as civilisation itself, and permeating cultures all over the world, because he thinks that one Kiwi can do it all on their own. Dodgy as, IMO, and nothing to do with justice.
100% Snowie.
The goldplop initiative has nothing to do with cost savings in my opinion. It has something to do with distancing us from our responsibilities built and maintain our sacred democratic actions and directions.
By ridding ourselves from jury trials we rid ourselves of the notions of the responsibilities to engage generally. After all, that’s what MMP was all about. Just ask whiny the peters.
The green party. The Green Party was an MMP idea. The Green Party was designed to generate hate within our primary industry to divide and dominate a controlling narrative generated by politicians towards farmers to make sure the enduring money flow never stopped sloshing around in Remuera. Aye Jonky?
“…maintain our sacred democratic actions and directions.”
Lol… they’re not mine and they aren’t sacred.
Well think again about whether removing power from a large chunk of the populace, ie the persons who constitute juries, and placing that power into the hands of one person, a judge, is nudging us towards a fascist state.
what a crock of hatefull shit
I’ve been selected for jury service in the past. My observations about those get selected:
>Lots of retirees who have the free time to attend.
>Lots of unemployed, some of whom are barely literate and struggle to understand the judge’s instructions.
>Civil service people because the government encourages it and won’t write letters of deferment.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad: Just my observations.
Spot on Andrew add the slowness of the process which is unfair to both parties.
that is the opposite of what I saw on the three trials I was on .One was a sexual assault case and the women were first to dismiss the complaint as a case of (hell has no fury like a woman scorned ) the woman seeking to destroy a mans life because he would not do as she wanted .
Speaking of juries.
The system ostensibly does its best to ensure that the jury is impartial, rational as possible and bases its judgments on evidence rather than fantasy or prejudice.
For this, assurance is offered to all concerned by form of an oath, or but less frequently, by an affirmation, undertaken by each jury member.
The oath upon which assurance of rational consideration of fact and sorting between fact and fiction in the trial is based, is in its turn centred on an oath to a fantasy book that involves talking snakes, talking donkeys, zombies rising from graves, horrific tales/promises of genocide and sexual deviancy, etc etc etc.
I personally regard with horror and think it an abuse of the right to fair trial to allow any process involving ability to determine fact to proceed under persons prepared to offer such an assurance.
A jury trial is seen as being “fair” because the accused are judged by their “peers” – ordinary people who collectively and in concert have a common sense approach and a well grounded intuition on such matters as credibility of witnesses.
That “common sense” approach has led to to the acquittal of persons charged with crimes of political nature in New Zealand over recent years. These cases include those of Dr W B Sutch (charged with espionage) and the Waihopai three (charged with burglary and wilful damage). These “not guilty” verdicts might have tempted the state to do away with jury trials except for one thing: they indicate to the state that it is out of step with the mood of the people and they serve as a warning to the political establishment that to continue on its course is to invite widespread civil resistance.
The same is true for alleged crimes of a sexual nature. The state holds to a particular liberal ideology, based on assumptions that are not necessarily shared by the population as a whole, regardless of class, gender or ethnicity. It has to know when its own preconceptions and prejudices conflict with the sense of the community, and it has to know when to pull back.
Jury trials do not necessarily deliver a more perfect form of justice. However they do have the effect of keeping the state more or less in step with the public, which is what they are all about. For that reason a wise state will persist with jury trials even if they are expensive and occasionally deliver “not guilty” verdicts.
Geoff Fischer. 100%. This likely a cost-cutting measure, IMO, but the Nats are so slippery, it could be “ other.”
About two years ago I went to a public lecture where two female academics from Auckland University told us about the research they had carried out into sexual violence against women.
One conclusion they had reached was that not enough young men are convicted of rape and this was because of sympathetic juries.
At question time I queried this and was sharply smacked down with the reply that they had exhaustive evidence( though I am not sure how they gathered it).
Anyhow one plainly said ‘ There need to be more rape convictions’
Instantly a conversation with my Chinese father-in-law flashed into my mind.
During the Cultural Revolution he was head engineer in his department. Party Officials told him that there must be counterrevolutionary elements in his workforce and he should find them.
When he protested that he could not identify any such people the response was that he must himself be an enemy or the people.
Three years in a Labour Camp followed but Father-in-law is still proud he did not personally cause anyone to suffer an unjust punishment.
Jury trials – the Wisdom of Crowds writ small.
Another famous New Zealand political trial by jury was that of Rua Kenana charged with “sedition, resisting police, counselling persons to murder, counselling persons to discharge arms with intent to resist lawful apprehension, counselling persons to wound, counselling persons to assault police and counselling persons to do bodily harm” in 1916. A Pakeha jury found Kenana guilty only of “morally resisting” the police, and recommended leniency on that charge. However the Judge, Judge Fredrick Chapman, sentenced Kenana to one year’s hard labour followed by 18 months’ imprisonment. Eight of the jurors protested in a petition to Parliament at what they regarded as an unreasonably harsh sentence.
This case shows first that even as early as 1916, and in the torrid atmosphere of a world war, ordinary Pakeha were not unsympathetic to the rights and aspirations of Maori. It also shows that Pakeha goodwill was insufficient to obtain justice for Maori when coupled with submission to the colonialist regime.
Half way steps, however well-intended, are not enough. The colonialist regime should not be tolerated by either Maori or Pakeha.
There are two tracks in life, truthfulness and what you can get away with. How does our righteous, just, vitally necessary, cause benefit from the latter, Martyn?
I’m under intense pressure myself.