Review: Trials without Truth: Why Our System of Criminal Trials Has Become an Expensive Failure and What We Need to Do to Rebuild it
| Author | Sean Doran |
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/136571270100500207 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEW
William T. Pizzi
TRWS
WITHOUT TRUTH: WHY OUR SYSTEM OF CRIMINAL TRIALS
HAS
BECOME
AN
EXPENSIVE FAILURE AND WHAT
WE
NEED TO DO TO REBUILD
IT
New York: New York University Press
(1999)
x
+
257
pp,
hb,
€22.50
The recent American presidential election has exposed to the eyes of the world
the failings of an electoral system that many would have previously regarded as
synonymous with the notion of constitutional democracy. The reduction of an
idealised vision of democracy to a legal debate about ‘chads’ (the tiny rectangles
of card removed by the punching of a ballot paper) was an unedifying episode
indeed
for
the non-American observer to behold. The undignified airing of dirty
linen that the United States electoral system has since been forced to undergo
has a precedent in the experience
of
another formerly idealised public institution,
the
US
system of criminal trial. The last decade has produced a series of high
profile cases-from the trial of the police officers seen on video beating Rodney
King, to the
0.
J.
Simpson proceedings and the trial of the English nanny Louise
Woodward-that have exposed apparent failings in the American trial system to
the scrutiny of the world to a hitherto unprecedented degree. Technological
developments have enabled a global audience to feast on the minutiae of legal
and procedural debates to which such cases gave rise.
As
its title suggests, William Pizzi’s book is an overtly critical examination of the
American system of criminal trial. More particularly, the author regards the goal
of truth finding as having been relegated to
an
unacceptably low position in the
existing scale of priorities. If there is one positive benefit of the electoral deibacle,
it is that those working in and around the field of American politics have been
prepared to look abroad
for
ways in which the system might be ameliorated-
some influential newspapers have. for example, floated proportional
representation as a possible reform. Likewise, in Pizzi’s view, there are important
lessons from abroad that the American trial system should seek to employ to its
advantage. Pizzi is an ardent comparativist and it is an undoubted strength of
the present book that he seeks to draw upon the experiences of a range of
jurisdictions within and beyond the adversarial tradition. His considerable
knowledge of other systems is demonstrated to good effect throughout the book
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF
EVIDENCE
&
PROOF
137
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