If the banning in Victoria of Underbelly -- Channel Nine serries about the gangland murders – was dubious in the first place it has now become a joke.

Bootleg copies of the whole series, of broadcast quality, are being sold all over town for between $50 and $100. And the morning after the ban a colleague saw five people on the tram reading copies of the book ‘Underbelly’ on which  the series was based.

Couldn’t those illicit viewers and readers be potential jurors in an upcoming case? After all  part of Judge Betty King’s reasons for banning the screening of the program was that it would go into virtually every living room in the state and could influence potential jurors.

I said at the time: In my opinion there is a weakness in that argument. This is fiction. It is a dramatisation. Nothing portrayed in Underbelly  could remotely be used in court.

And I also believe it insults the intelligence of possible jurors. They are told when they enter the jury box they must come to a verdict based on the evidence before them and exclude anything else.

 If you believe Justice King’s argument then you should be urging  Justice Philip Cummins to ban the latest, graphic, emotional TAC anti-speeding commercials on TV.

He’s in the middle of a case right now trying a man over the accident that killed six teenagers in Mildura. And surely those commercials are more  damning than Underbelly because they show real people, showing real suffering, grieving over the real loss of real loved ones. Underbelly is fiction.

To my mind Justice Cummins did exactly the right thing in addressing jurors in his court yesterday. He warned them not to let the emotive TAC campaign affect their judgement.

He told them they had to deal with the evidence before them fairly and calmly.

‘Some of the advertising is quite emotional… but you the jurors, don’t decide this case on emotion, you decide it on the evidence and analysis. So don’t be affected by any outside considerations.’

That’s what any other judge could and should do over things like Underbelly. After all, it is hardly a trailblazer when it comes to stories about the gangland war that mesmerised and repulsed Melburnians for years. On that basis recent newspaper articles would be in contempt and books like the one the series is based on would have been banned.

Bad call, Betty.

Friday, February 22, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008