David Bain and the class divide

The Trial of the Century: David Bain's acquittal has provoked a storm of middle-class outrage.

HAVE YOU NOTICED that most of those who’ve come out against David Bain’s acquittal are middle class?

Quite why there should be such a glaring class divide over the verdict is puzzling. Is it simply a case of those with something to lose naturally reposing more faith in the institutional guardians of private property – the police and the courts?

Or perhaps the middle class is reacting to a rare New Zealand example of épater les bourgeoisie – skewering the middle class. Taking umbrage at the one-fingered proletarian salute from all those on the receiving end of bourgeois "justice", as they witnessed the spectacle of this strange, gangly jailbird finally making it over the cuckoo’s nest.

On the other hand, the explanation could come down to something as banal as journalistic jealousy. Unlike Arthur Allan Thomas and David Doughety, David Bain wasn’t freed by the professional skills of a tenacious and courageous journalist, but by the dogged determination of the surly ex-All-Black businessman, Joe Karam.

Openly scornful of what he regarded as the news media’s inexcusable failure to recognise a blatant miscarriage of justice, Bain’s swarthy champion made few friends on the press bench. It is in the nature of journalists to simplify and dramatise. If Karam was in David’s corner – they would be in the Crown’s.

But to blame in on the journalists doesn’t get rid of the class issue, it merely pushes it back a few steps. Journalism is very much a bourgeois trade – especially in its upper reaches. Only someone with the gift for translating the subtle, and not-so-subtle, nuances of class interaction can write a truly great tabloid headline.

Never forgetting, of course, the New Zealand journalist’s infatuation with authority and "official sources". When the Court of Appeal rejected Bain’s bid for a re-trial, few – if any – of this country’s editors were willing to second-guess the judges. Karam’s persistence in the face of the Court’s rejection was interpreted as the behaviour of a crank; someone who didn’t know when to quit.

We can only imagine their consternation when the Privy Council ordered a re-trial of the Bain case. Implicity, the British Law Lords were criticising the entire New Zealand Establishment; telling them in no uncertain terms that they were a bunch of provincial buffoons who couldn’t recognise the most rank injustice (and police incompetence) even when a layman like Karam had made sure it was staring them in the face.

No wonder they wanted Bain to be found guilty a second time. An acquittal could only be seen as vindication of every accusation Karam had ever levelled at the New Zealand Police and the New Zealand legal system – as well as a serious indictment of its news media.

So, when, last Friday, that Christchurch jury found David Bain "Not Guilty" of murdering all five members of his family, it turned out to be much more than a victory for the Defendant, Karam and their supporters. It was also a victory for the potent democratic impulse our Anglo-Saxon ancestors enshrined in the practice of judging an accused person by a jury of his or her peers. Not by the Police; not by lawyers and judges; and certainly not by editors and journalists: but by twelve ordinary men and women.

The almost obscene delight the news media has taken in revealing the highly prejudicial "secret evidence" which had been, quite rightly, suppressed by the courts prior to Bain’s trial, speaks volumes about the vigilante temperament of so many of our editors and journalists. And, it only gets worse. Because, not content with helping to defame Bain, these same middle-class journalists are now calling into question the whole institution of trial by jury.

The vindictiveness and fury of the middle-class, when robbed of its prey, is truly terrifying to behold.

So, God bless that Christchurch jury! Because, in freeing David Bain, they were, in effect, freeing us all. Not, as far too many of my journalistic colleagues seem to think, from the responsibility we all have to uphold the law, but from the oppressive power of a wayward State which, having failed in its duty to administer the law without fear or favour, persisted in that failure regardless of contradictory evidence, and heedless of the fact that it had imprisoned an innocent man for 13 years.

Ruling classes do not enjoy being told they got it wrong. But just as the Tree of Liberty must occasionally be watered by the blood of patriots, so must the keenness of Justice’s blade every now-and-again be tested on the bone-hard prejudices of the bourgeoisie.