Description

The Full Court of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory can agitate and ventilate issues in the Northern Territory. With particular reference to two well covered media cases – one involving the stabbing of a prominent non-Indigenous sporting identity by two young Aboriginal men, and charges laid against five non-Aboriginal men for the murder of an Aboriginal man – this article explores issues of jury representation in the cases, where those with criminal records are disqualified from service. In particular, in the case of Woods and Wilson, appeals regarding the jury were unusual but not unprecedented, and raised discussions about how juries were selected, and the influence of race on jury-led convictions. Due to the lack of transparency in jury decisions this article considers the difficulties of measuring the significance of the ‘white elephant in the room’ in regards to jury representation, race and conviction.