Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator Ward's amendment. This unnecessary provision to start giving juries prosecution or defence counsel speeches undermines their oath, which is to consider the evidence rather than the arguments that are put before them and to confine themselves to their judgment of the evidence.

The other thing I am slightly worried about, and which I raised on the last occasion on which this Bill was before the House, is that jury trials are becoming immensely lengthy. The implication here is that transcripts of speeches and the judge's charge will be prepared for the jury before it retires. Think about that. If a judge stops proceedings at noon, is a transcript to be prepared of what he said to the jury and handed to its members before they start considering the case? That would be another day gone. I am opposed to section 12(2)(b) in its entirety. It is a mistake and will lengthen cases rather than shorten them. The whole purpose of this Bill is to shorten trials but it will considerably lengthen them if these kinds of transcripts are to be prepared.

There is another issue, with which Senator Ward did not deal, in that there will be arguments about whether people actually said what the transcript shows, if they misspoke or uttered the word "not" when they did not intend to do so, and so on. There would then have to be a hearing on the transcript and the lawyers on both sides would have to go through it and decide if that is what they think the judge, prosecution counsel or defence counsel actually said. If the defence counsel made a remark in the course of his or her speech to the jury and the judge's eyebrows went through the roof, would that be included in the transcript that goes to the jury? This is a mistake and section 12(2)(b) should be scrapped completely.