"This is one of the most important books I have ever read on the common law legal system. Over the years, I have reluctantly come to believe that there are many legal academics and lawyers who believe that the system is there for them, rather than the “clients” they purport to serve. I have been critical of the work of Oxford law professors and others who have produced a good many published articles in books and prestigious law journals which, quite frankly, were shallow, wrong and disrespectful to the work of others. At the time I thought I was being “bold” by stating clearly that these people had not only made serious errors, but that the errors were so fundamental that they should have known at the time that what they were doing was fundamentally flawed. It was not until I became involved in work on miscarriages of justice, nearly ten years ago, that I began to realise just how bad the system was. It was around this time that I came across the work of Evan Whitton. I must admit I liked the boldness of his approach, which, by comparison, made my own previous efforts look distinctly timid. I also appreciated the scholarship involved with his work. He left nothing to be taken for granted, or to be accepted just because he said it was so. Unlike the Oxford professors, Whitton provided footnotes for all of his propositions, so if there was to be any doubt, any one of us could go forth and check it out for ourselves. There is much in what Whitton says, which seems self-evident when clearly stated. I have always thought it odd that lawyers, who have spent a good many years advocating for one side or the other, can upon appointment to the Bench become impartial arbiters of disputes. They haven't been trained for it and they have had no practice at it. Whitton reckons if we were to train them as judges (as they do in Europe), then they might just become good at it. How can juries possibly understand what expert witnesses have to say when everything has to be tediously extracted from them by question and answer with frequent interruptions and objections? Why is it, that most of what we need to know to place the knowledge in context in trials is ruled to be inadmissible? If this were all part of a game with no real consequences, then one might allow the intellectual challenge to outweigh the pointlessness of the task. However, when Whitton points out that, “the result of the system’s emphasis on winning is that as many as 50 prisoners in every 1,000 are innocent”, then that is truly shocking. One only has to have contact with a single case of a serious miscarriage of justice to appreciate the devastation which is wrought upon the family, friends and those who just live up the street from someone falsely convicted. The answer of course is to have a system which not only cares about the truth, but which actively seeks to find it. When Britain introduced a “truth- seeking” component to their adversarial system, the results were remarkable. The Criminal Cases Review Commission, in the first ten years of its work, has led to the overturning of some 250 convictions, which otherwise had exhausted all avenues of appeal. Some 50 of those convictions were for murder. In four of the cases, the people convicted had been hanged. Australia still continues to pretend that things do not go wrong with the legal system, and that if they do, then the appellate system can fix that up – when that is self-evidently not so. When Australia used a truth-seeking method (a Royal Commission) in the case of Lindy Chamberlain it found out that virtually all of the scientific evidence which has been given at the trial was wrong. When it used that same method (a Royal Commission) in the case of Edward Splatt, it found out again that of the numerous pieces of scientific evidence given at the trial, not one of them was without error. The Chamberlain and Splatt Royal Commission made recommendations, but they were not properly implemented. Since then, the official response to alleged miscarriages of justice has been to ignore them. In one case from South Australia (R. v. Keogh), the chief prosecution (expert) witness has given sworn evidence in formal proceedings in 2004 and 2009 (the trial took place in 1995) in which he has contradicted the evidence which he gave at the trial in a number of important respects. There have been numerous legal proceedings in this case over those years, and in none of them has the court actually considered the “merits” of the arguments to be put forward. The Court of Appeal says that once an appeal has been heard, thereafter, the Court cannot re-open the appeal. The High Court of Australia has said that the contradictions of the trial evidence constitute “fresh” evidence, and that cannot be heard in the High Court. As Justice Kirby has stated: The rule [prohibiting the High Court from receiving fresh evidence] means that where new evidence turns up after a trial and hearing before the Court of Criminal Appeal are concluded, whatever the reason and however justifiable the delay, the High Court, even in a regular appeal to it still underway, can do nothing. Justice in such cases, is truly blind. The only relief available is from the executive Government or the media -- not from the Australian judiciary." Dr Bob Moles in Forewords to the book "Our Corrupt Legal System Why Everyone is a Victim (Except Rich Criminals)" by Evan Whitton Link: ( http://netk.net.au/Whitton/OCLS.pdf )