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Australian Law Reform Commission - Reform Journal |
Reform Issue 77 Spring 2000
This article appeared on pages 29 – 32 of the original journal.
A day in a city Local Court
By Mary S Jerram*
I have been on the New South Wales Local Court bench for about six and a half years. After a year boundary-riding in the Sydney metropolitan area, I became a children’s magistrate for a year, then went to Goulburn for the next two and a half years, presiding on that country circuit. On return to Sydney, I spent six months in the Industrial Local Court and another year as a general magistrate.
I was appointed a Deputy Chief Magistrate early this year and am based at the Downing Centre, our ‘head office’ in the centre of Sydney. Here we have 14 courts operating so, unlike country and smaller courthouses, we have ‘specialist’ charge and summons and sentencing courtrooms, while defended matters – some running for several days – are allocated to the remaining courts.
I am rostered on the charge court for the day. In one sense, this court is the engine room of the complex, where matters listed for hearing but not yet before a particular magistrate are allocated according to priority and readiness. Arguments between parties about subpoenaed material, adjournments or orders sought are heard and determined, and pleas of guilty dealt with in various ways. It’s a stressful but interesting court – never static, full of people, with a most volatile mix of legal matters, so that one might start the day with a plea of guilty to owning an unrestrained dog, and finish it by sentencing someone to jail for a bad assault – from ‘Babe to Braveheart’, as we used to call it in the country!
8.45am: Arrive at the Downing Centre, the multi-court complex in the heart of the city. There are emails to read and answer, phone calls to make and take, a new magistrate wanting advice on a procedural problem in his allotted case for the day. The court officer brings the papers for the day, and we have a few minutes discussion of special needs and problems, missing reports, and the availability of magistrates compared to the number of defended matters.
9.30am: The court officer tells me there are some lawyers in court ready to ‘mention’ matters prior to the 10am callover of defended matters. A sharp knock on the courtroom door by the officer, a call of ‘all rise’. I enter the courtroom, bow and am bowed to in return – the mutual mark of respect for the law – take my seat behind the long beech bench and the day really begins.
Mentions of future cases, arguments about orders, two quick guilty pleas – one for a .09 drink-driving offence (automatic six months off the road and a $500 fine) and the other for shoplifting (it’s her fifth in three years – she is sent to the probation service so that a full report on her background, drug usage, and family situation can be provided to the court in five weeks time, when she will have to return for sentence).
10am: The courtroom is packed with lawyers, defendants, police and civilian witnesses all hoping that their hearings of two or three hours, or a whole day will be called, so they won’t have to come back to the court on another day. I allocate matters to my colleagues in other courtrooms when they are ready to take them. Three or four matters will have to wait outside the courtroom to be called during the day. Back to general matters; more guilty pleas to matters ranging from traffic offences to break and enters and frauds. These decisions constantly affect people’s lives, involving fines, loss of licence, bonds and community service orders, even a nine-month sentence to weekend jail, for a man who is before me for supplying drugs.
No full jail sentences today, thank goodness. They usually come in the special Friday sentence court. No one enjoys it, me included. It’s a last resort, for the utterly recalcitrant, or where the crime is too serious for any alternative and the community either needs protecting, or the warning. In the latter categories, for example, I have recently jailed several young men for unprovoked serious assaults on strangers resulting in real injury, and (weekend jail only) a solicitor who fraudulently used trust funds of clients. One is constantly weighing up the factors involved in the crime, against the circumstances of the defendant, the effect on families and the community.
11.30am: Another callover for shorter hearings, which have been listed as beginning ‘not before 11.30’. Just as the courtroom crowd has dwindled, it has filled up again with those involved, again hoping to have their matters over and done with today. Again, some are sent out to wait, several have changed to pleas of guilty so that all witnesses can be sent home, two are marked as ‘not reached’ because it has become obvious after consultation with the list clerk that no magistrate is going to become free to hear them.
I take a 20-minute break and grab my caffeine fix. A colleague wants to talk to me over the break about an idea for the next education seminar. We’re both on the Education Committee, which I chair, and it’s never easy finding time to discuss our goals.
11.50am: Back into the charge court. Fewer people now, but many of them are those who want to plead guilty without a lawyer, often to less serious matters, but still needing to be listened to. Sometimes they are sent for advice to the overworked legal aid solicitors – if they can be found with a spare minute – and sometimes so obviously needing an interpreter’s help that I must adjourn the matter to order an interpreter. The solicitor from the Director of Public Prosecutions, and a barrister who is very able but can be difficult, arrive with a man on very strict bail for a robbery who intends to plead not guilty, and whose brief I must therefore read in order to ensure that he should be committed for trial, even though both lawyers agree that its a ‘paper committal’, that is, not one in which the prosecution evidence is to be tested first. The brief is thicker than my arm – it’s going to have to wait until after the lunch adjournment.
1.10pm: Everyone dealt with today, other than the paper committal. I ask them to return at 2pm and rise to adjourn, when I am told by the court officer that there are two prisoners who have just been brought into the cells below the complex on warrants issued from this court. The police prosecutor agrees that their lawyers need time to see them, so these matters will be dealt with at 2pm. I escape to chambers and read the robbery brief in between a coffee and a banana, answering the phone three times during the break, and speaking to the Chief Magistrate about a meeting he has with the Department of Health about court requests for psychiatric reports, scheduled for 4pm. As Deputy, I have particular duties and responsibilities to be met. In the Downing Centre in particular, however, many of the more experienced magistrates sit on committees, help with law students and bar course students, and advise newer magistrates – all in their own time.
2pm: Back into court. The defendant is late, although his counsel is there, looking worried. As I am about to go off the bench to avoid silently looking at each other, the defendant comes sauntering in, looking unworried! Having decided both on the statements in the brief and the concession by his lawyer that there is evidence capable of satisfying a jury that he has committed the indictable offence of robbery as charged, and that there is a reasonable prospect of a reasonably instructed jury convicting him, I formally commit him for trial at the Sydney District Court. It’s a wordy process of, I am sure, total gibberish to most who hear it, with a date in two weeks time for him to appear. Whatever that sounds like, it will only be the next step in a long process, which may see him come to trial in a year or so. No argument about his bail but a warning from me about his obligation to be at the court by a certain time, and by 2.30pm he’s gone.
In the meantime, two people have been brought in through the cells door into the dock. One, a 20-year-old female – skinny and white-faced – keeps falling asleep. She is clearly under the influence of some drug – probably heroin – and ill. Arrested early this morning for selling drugs, she has been found to have warrants for not appearing at the Downing Centre twice in the past month for stealing and break and enters, which is why she has been brought here. The legal aid solicitor says he has had trouble taking instructions (she isn’t talking much sense), and is not asking for bail. I refuse bail, based on her obvious physical state, and adjourn all matters, including those on the warrants, to Central Local Court, which deals almost exclusively with prisoners, until tomorrow. I hope by that time she will have had a sleep and a meal, thrown off the worst of the effects of the drug, and be able to tell whoever represents her at Central enough for a considered bail application to be made.
The other prisoner is a 22-year-old Aboriginal man, arrested on his warrant for not appearing here the week before. Because the local police knew where he lived, they simply went to his house this morning with the warrant. He had been charged with some relatively minor matters, an offensive behaviour and entering enclosed lands (or trespassing). I would have dealt with them in his absence by way of small fines rather than issue warrants. Apart from another offensive behaviour and some 15-year-old matters committed when he was a juvenile, he has no record, I am told by the police prosecutor. His wife is in the courtroom. I ask him if he wants the matters dealt with today, but he says he wants to talk to a lawyer from the Aboriginal Legal Service. His wife agrees to acknowledge him on bail, and he is allowed to go home on condition he returns next Wednesday.
3.30pm: It looks as if we are finished for the day. Relieved, we all relax, and I start to pack up glasses, pens, and my law books, when an office staff member comes in with some papers. At the same time, two policewomen, one of them carrying a toddler, come in the court door with a weeping young woman. She has just made, with the assistance of the police, an application for an urgent interim Apprehended Violence Order. Although her partner, against whom she has made the complaint, doesn’t know about this yet and is not here, she is entitled to be heard on such an application and the court will have to decide whether to make an order, inherently unfair on the word of one party only, which prohibits the partner from coming near his own home until the whole matter has either been agreed to or, if contested, decided on evidence. The other courts still sitting are all in the midst of hearings, and I am the only magistrate available and still in court.
The young woman is led to the witness box and takes an oath to tell the truth. It’s a horrible story, of continuing bashings and drunkenness, which she has not told previously. It has now got too much for her because he has hit the child as well as her. Her black eye tells a story. So too does one of the police officers, as to what was seen at the house after a call from the complainant. I make the order, explaining that it is temporary only, that her partner will have to be found and served with it and that she will need to return in three weeks time. I also explain who she should speak to and what to do if he does return, against the order. The police officers take her to the office, to be given a copy.
4pm: I am back in chambers and have had time to look briefly at the mail and email, find a case on the Internet, which I want for a hearing allocated to me tomorrow, and print it off before joining six colleagues in the conference room to chair a meeting of the Education Committee. Two country magistrates join in by teleconferencing. The teleconference facility is distracting but the only way to share their experience and enthusiasm. We are finalising the agenda for the three-day Annual Conference 2001. This year’s conference was particularly good, and included a session with the Aboriginal actress/singer Leah Purcell, which was intensely moving and delighted the 130 delegates. It’s a hard act to follow, and we throw around ideas for half an hour. We are trying to respond to the clear message from the majority of colleagues that they want topical, hands on workshops and sessions, best of all working with each other. Not easy to organise with such a large number, but fun.
5.15pm: Most people need to get away. Some have quite long drives or public transport trips; everyone is tired. The Judicial Commission officer will draw up the minutes and attend to a lot of the details we have just agreed on.
On my chambers desk I find two phone messages, which must be returned before I go, and by 5.30pm I am ready to head for home myself, after a final email check.
Fortunately, no written work for home tonight, no judgments waiting, no speeches, no decisions – the beauty sometimes of sitting in the charge court is that it is over when it’s over – although the two day committal hearing I begin tomorrow on an attempted murder charge is likely to require a written decision.
The journey home is the time to listen to the news, think about the all too quick decisions made during the day, worry about some of them, resolve to research something tomorrow.
All too often, even serious concerns simply have to make way for the next day, the next wave of matters, the next people’s lives. I hope I sleep tonight.
*Mary S Jerram is a Deputy Chief Magistrate of NSW, based at the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney.
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