The Greatest Miscarriage of Justice - Judicial Bias

The law in New South Wales is that a judge or a magistrate should not hear and determine a case against someone if they are affected by bias. This is worked out quite easily and quickly in most cases by the judge or magistrate themselves, as where they know or admit to a bias (legitimate or otherwise) they simply disqualify themselves from hearing the case. But the law goes further than this, in that even in the absence of any suggestion of actual bias, and where there is a question as to the independence or impartiality of a judge or magistrate (or even a juror, who is actually a judge of the facts), the test is whether “a fair-minded lay observer might reasonably apprehend that the judge might not bring an impartial mind to the resolution of the question that is to be decided”. (If you’re really interested see two High Court cases by the names of Ebner v Official Trustee in Bankruptcy or Webb and Hay v The Queen.

Some cases are obvious, such as where a judge has previously represented a client and knows more than they should, but other cases are not so obvious such as a juror who wears a t-shirt that suggests they are a communist-naturist-fascist-gun lobbyist-vegetarian-anarchist and the case involves a gun-toting vegetarian who murdered a communist naturist. I am not sure you could properly conclude that a fair-minded lay observer might reasonably apprehend the absence of an impartial mind in that case, but it certainly would be an interesting trial.

But what about a case of a political and spiritual revolutionary being tried by group of religious conservatives, where the former had allegedly said he would destroy their temple and the latter had plotted and planned for the former’s death. (see Matthew 26:1-4). I am of course talking about the trial of Jesus before the High Priest, Caiaphas, and the Sanhedrin (Matthew 26:57-68), which quite obviously fails the NSW laws on the subject of judicial bias, also represented a rather large infringement of first century Judaic law as well. Judaic law (as far as my extensive internet research has led me to conclude) similarly required that the judicial bench be neither a friend nor foe of the accused, and that under no circumstance was a person who was at enmity with an accused person allowed to occupy a position among the judges.

Well this happened and surprise surprise they found him guilty of blasphemy and worthy of death. Apart from the many other things about Jesus’ religious trial that constituted further irregularities in criminal procedure, such as the requirement to be tried during the day and in public as opposed to at night and in private, the bias of the court in the case against Jesus is the second in my list of departures from proper criminal procedure.