Thursday, November 6th, 2008...8:48 pm

Sleeping judge = miscarriage of justice

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Sleep­ing judge Ian Dodd ‘mis­car­riage of justice’: High Court

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PAIR of accused drug traf­fick­ers could not have received a fair trial because a judge fell asleep for up to 20 minutes at a time dur­ing their trial, the High Court has ruled.

Evid­ence from a hear­ing of the NSW Crim­inal Appeal Court indic­ated Judge Dodd appeared to sleep for peri­ods of up to 20 minutes at a time, some­times accom­pan­ied by snoring. 

His sleep peri­ods became longer as the trial pro­ceeded with mem­bers of the jury vis­ibly dis­trac­ted and, at times, amused. Court offi­cials some­times loudly dropped doc­u­ments in a bid to wake the snor­ing judge. 

Cesan, in his appeal evid­ence, said the judge’s snor­ing was dis­rupt­ive when he was being cross-examined. 

Crown pro­sec­utor Geof­frey Bellew swore an affi­davit refer­ring to occa­sions on which the judge appeared to be asleep. 

The High Court unan­im­ously ruled Judge Dodd did not exer­cise super­vi­sion of the trial as required by law and, as a res­ult, the jury was distracted. 

Chief Justice Robert French said a judge must be seen to be uphold­ing this duty. 

Where the judge is notice­ably and repeatedly asleep or inat­tent­ive dur­ing the trial, there can be a mis­car­riage of justice,” he said.

The trial in this case was so flawed. There was a mis­car­riage of justice. It could not be said that the mis­car­riage was not substantial.”

The court ruled the men should be retried. 

Hil­ari­ous. It seems you can get a chance at a do over even if your law­yer is incom­pet­ent, as long as he’s boring. 

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3 Comments

  • I’m sur­prised they didn’t make more dir­ect effects at wak­ing the judge up — like pok­ing him like we poke Chiqui in class.

  • Pok­ing is proven to be not an effect­ive method of wak­ing people up; it may cre­ate for the judge a sense of shock and anxi­ety on the event of wak­ing up and may impede on his judging abil­it­ies. You should let him drift in and out peace­fully so that the bor­ing­ness of law can be best managed.

    Wait a sec, isn’t that like assault or some­thing, can you appre­ci­ate imme­di­ate phys­ical harm when your asleep?

  • It wouldn’t be bat­tery (in tort) if pok­ing fell within “a gen­eral excep­tion embra­cing all phys­ical con­tact which is gen­er­ally accept­able in the ordin­ary con­duct of every­day life” (Collins v Wil­cock). There can’t pos­sibly be assault (in the tor­tious sense) if he’s asleep? :P

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