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6.5 Access by the jury to computerised material


The use in trials of various types of computerised information, including
images of exhibits, computerised text of transcript, and computer-generated
summaries and charts, all raise questions of the extent to which these
computerised resources may or should be able to be used by the jury after they
retire. It is convenient to deal with the first two of these matters in this
Chapter, leaving charts and summaries to the next Chapter.


Jury access to exhibit images


The practice of the last 200 years that all exhibits should go with the jury
when they retire (Kozul v R (1981) 55 ALJR 377, per Stephen J at 383) presents
considerable difficulties when one is considering a complex criminal trial
involving 30,000 or more exhibits. How can the jury possibly find the exhibits
it needs to refer to? The conventional approach is for the prosecution to
provide copies of selected exhibits in bundles dealing with particular
allegations. Another innovation of the pending Rothwells trial in Western
Australia is to allow the jury to access the image database of exhibits from
the jury room. It is open to the judge to

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