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Abstract:
The complexity/comprehension nexus as it impacts on juror decision-making is addressed in the particular context of prosecution-led DNA evidence. Such evidence is for jurors the subject of pre-trial preconceptions, and is notoriously difficult to present and argue before a jury. The article looks at the comprehension of forensic evidence by jurors, a task qualified by the opinion of legal professionals whose responsibility it is to present and interpret such evidence in adversarial contexts.

Jurors were surveyed post-verdict in trials where forensic evidence featured in circumstantial cases. These insights into comprehension were qualified by contesting views of legal professionals, and critical reflections from independent observation teams regarding the manner in which this evidence was used and its intended impact on the jury. What results is both declared and implicit indicators of comprehension, not so much against broad measures of complexity (Findlay, 2001), but rather the particular place of popularly endowed forensic evidence within the circumstantial case.

The article explores the utility of a multi-methodological study of comprehension from the perspectives of the proponents, commentators, recipients and observers of the adversarial contest. To this is employed a interactive analysis of important decision-sites and relationships of influence in the trial as they may impact on comprehension and be measured as 'complex'.

Juries, Juror comprehension, Complexity, Forensic evidence

Abstract:
The development of victim-centered and restorative international criminal trial justice is contingent on the introduction of innovative conceptualizations and unique methods to assess collective liability and responsibility. Presently, an inability to escape the confines of individual liability at the expense of embracing more collective concepts of responsibility obstructs the transformation expected of international criminal justice trial to advance the conflict resolution and peacemaking aims of the International Criminal Court among victim communities in practice. The ICC needs to embrace truth-telling as it does fact-finding in resolving collective perpetration and communitarian victimization. This requires a fundamental re-conceptualization of victimization as the appropriate international justice constituency. The transformed international criminal trial will consequentially engage with truth and responsibility, within a due process rights framework. Other models for ensuring the regulation of collective perpetration and satisfying victim community interests are critiqued. As the exemplar of international criminal trial justice the ICC (actually or symbolically) provides the institutional context for critically analyzing the future intersection between collective liability and communitarian responsibility.

Collective and individual Liability, Victim Communities, International Criminal Justice, Trial Transformation, International Criminal Court, Communitarian Justice, Truth, Responsibility

Abstract:
Those who would like to see the international criminal trial remain a retributive endeavor reflecting the conventional features and characteristics of domestic trials are concerned that enhancing victim constituency for the international trial process will endanger its limited potential success. Despite legalist assertions the ICC, and its prosecutor, have claimed more universalist justifications in the form of the court's potential to assisting in state reconstruction and peacemaking. Further, the ICC, and the international tribunals which precede it, have within their authorizing legislation growing recognition of victim interests, even if this remains largely outside the processes of trial decision making.

Today in many domestic criminal jurisdictions, the position and voice of the victim is receiving increasing attention and recognition, if only in terms or very selective participation. The imperative for victim inclusion has progressed into the procedures governing institutional international criminal justice.

This being said, the reality of global crime victimization and its terrible collective dimensions has found little practical trial recognition beyond the fragmentary and selective prosecution of genocide. Victim communities, and the prosecution of collective perpetration are not driving the unique jurisprudence of international criminal; law or trial procedure.

This paper argues that the nature of global crime, and the purposes of international criminal justice require a more victim-centered transformed trial process. Te nature of international criminal justice and the global crimes it confronts, presents a uniquely persuasive position for a victim constituency despite the challenging partiality of victim interests.

Such a transformation of justice constituency must be measured against the crucial importance of accountability as a indicator of trial fairness, and the protections of the accused which these require. Despite active efforts by the international criminal courts and tribunals to better balance victim interests at trial and pre-trial phases, the constrictions of adversarial justice relegate the victim voice to the witness role, and compensation considerations post sentence.

Along with accountability to a victim constituency, follows the pragmatic persuasion that with a heightened victim purchase over international criminal justice will flow greater legitimacy for this process across a wider range of communities which it is said to serve. The legitimacy that the satisfaction of victim interests offers should not be underestimated, or over calculated. The nature and direction of victim legitimation will be examined specifically in this paper against a range of challenges which might tend to compromise that legitimating process.

Our concluding discussion of 'communities of justice' argues rationalization above balance. In any criminal justice resolution there may be several victims or victim communities with different victim stories exercising different interests and values. A distillation of legitimate victim interests in such a contested environment will be a challenge for the transformed criminal trial. The identification and harmonization of legitimate victim interests is much more than uncritical concession to the self-interested expectations, beyond retributive justice and vengeance that victims enunciate.

The paper begins by confronting prevailing circumspection about why victims should be prioritized as the constituency for international criminal justice. The argument moves from the demands of legitimacy, on to the anticipation that through communities of justice a sharper victim focus will require that international criminal justice be more accountable. This is a theme that prevails throughout and will link our case for transformed criminal trial process to a new age of global governance. But first it is necessary to locate the paper's theoretical mission, against the perennial struggle between subjective and universalized analysis.

victim communities, international criminal justice, accountability, global governance, international criminal trial

Abstract:
This article lays out why in the context of global crime, crime control and the legitimacy of global governance, a victim constituency makes sense in terms of the stated aims of international criminal justice and of a wider ‘new morality’ on which it should be grounded. The incapacity to confront appropriately the consequences to victims of global crime has tended to mean that international criminal justice and the governance that flows from it are unsatisfactorily entwined with sectarian international relations and narrow cultural inclusion. Therefore, in governance terms alone, the conceptualization of global crime victims should be expanded and emancipated from their current more procedurally restricted standing. As a consequence, the citizenship and standing necessary to enjoy international criminal justice would be more fairly realized. This article begins by making the case for why victims should be positioned in a place of priority as the constituency for international criminal justice. It then moves to demonstrate how, through ‘communities of justice,’ a sharper victim focus could make international criminal justice more accountable. This theme runs through the article and links the case for a transformed criminal trial process to a new age of global governance.