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The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

The au pair ruling

The recent ruling in the au pair trial has sparked discussion about the balance of power in the courtroom. Questions have been raised as to who is the dominant party in the never-ending search for justice – the judge or the jury. While the former is the interpreter of the law, the latter is a collection of the accused’s peers. Though some apprehension is warranted by a judge’s unilateral power to revoke a jury’s decision, in this case, the judge made the correct decision and justice was served.

Judge Hiller B. Zobel reduced the jury’s second-degree murder conviction of Louise Woodward to involuntary manslaughter. Instead of being incarcerated for up to five years, Woodward was sentenced for the time she had already served in prison while waiting for the start of the trial.

Woodward’s attorneys had upped the ante on the jury’s deliberation – instructing jurors either to find Woodward altogether not guilty, or guilty of second-degree murder. The attorneys had gambled her future on a risky move. They felt the jury would not convict the 19-year-old of murder; they were very wrong.

The judge ruled that, although she agreed to her attorney’s plan, justice would not be served by consigning Woodward to a hefty sentence because of a legal miscalculation. Zobel then used his legal authority to reduce the jury’s conviction.

The televised trial garnered tremendous media attention – and a barrage of public opinion polls offered respondents’ views on Woodward’s “obvious” guilt, the soundness of the legal counsels’ arguments and a host of other legal and judicial questions. The trial was a made-for-CNN event. At times, the usually respectable news channel had to interrupt its televising of the proceedings to update viewers on the latest developments in the “Showdown with Iraq.”

The pressures of being in the glare of the public spotlight was immense on both the judge and the jury. It seems that many people tuned into the trial for a few minutes, then considered themselves expert enough to offer decisions on what should become of the young nanny.

But justice is not about determining a person’s guilt or innocence through a popular “plebiscite,” Zobel pointed out. Justice, as the clich? goes, is blind to everything but the truth. It is the responsibility and obligation of a judge to preside over his or her courtroom in a manner that will serve justice. It is not the pollsters, pundits, talk show hosts and TV commentators we entrust with maintaining the legal foundations of our nation; it is the judges.

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