I heard a Melbourne QC on Radio National this morning say that in Australia, 90% of people charged with an offence plead guilty, and of the 10% that go to trial, about half of those are found not guilty. Still, pretty surprising to me that around 95% of those "charged" are found guilty here, one way or another. I have no idea how broadly based these figures are: I presume it covers everything from minor driving offences to murder.
Further on my skepticism on the Australian system, it is amusing to hear some QC's saying that the defence case was quite weak and may well have not worked here either, and some other barrister saying the opposite (that is, she would have been acquitted here.)
And tonight on Lateline, they seemed to want to try to embarrass John Howard (being interviewed) by running a story that in 2002 he made a stopover in the Maldives, apparently mainly to ask for a pardon for a convicted druggie there. Can't see why Tony Jones would want to raise that now; Howard has made it clear before tonight that it is too early to be talking about that sort of thing when there is an appeal process to go through in Indonesia.
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