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1.3. Related matters


Evidentiary and procedural reforms


Professor Mark Aronson has delivered a Report to the Australian Institute of
Judicial Administration on reform of the rules of evidence and procedure
(Aronson (1992)). This Report is intended to be complementary to the Aronson
Report. We therefore proceed on the assumption that various general reforms to
evidence and procedure such as he and others have recommended will be made. We
have made recommendations concerning evidence and procedure relating
specifically to information technology where we consider that they are needed
in addition to, or as a gloss on, those general recommendations. We also take
into account Aronson's recommendations as a given context for our own
recommendations. For example, we assume that jury trials will continue in
complex criminal matters.


Evidence produced using information technologies


We do not deal with the rules of evidence concerning computer produced
documentary evidence, video evidence (such as obtained by surveillance in
insurance cases or bank robberies, or evidence in cases concerning infants),
or evidence received by satellite. These matters are only relevant to our
Report because of the need to provide equipment in Courts which is capable of
displaying evidence received in these forms as well as displaying information
in the forms with which we are principally concerned (see Chapter 2).


Use of computers for investigation and case preparation


As mentioned, we focus on the conduct of the trial, not the investigation
preceding it, but the two cannot, of course, be so easily separated. A court
equipped with sophisticated display and presentation devices will achieve
little unless prosecution and defence have computerised material to present,
and have had sufficient access to document control technologies in order to
bring the case to court in the first place. If the prosecution cannot be sure
that there are no exculpatory documents in the mountain of paper in its
possession, how can it bring the prosecution forward? Furthermore, what is
prepared in computerised form during investigation and case preparation must
be compatible with the equipment used by the court and the other side if the
maximum benefits are to be obtained.


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