• "There is also the spectre of public disquiet, even outrage, when someone is acquitted of the most serious crime and new evidence, such as a confession, points strongly to guilt. These cases undermine public confidence in the administration of justice -- and may do so in a damaging way."
   Sir Anthony Mason, former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, 1987-1995,   The Sunday Telegraph, December 2002
   
• "I think we've got to be prepared to review principles like this in a contemporary setting...There is a feature of modern life that distinguishes us from the situation 800 years ago, and that is, as we all know, DNA evidence, which can prove guilt with almost scientific exactitude, other matters being equal."
   Queensland Chief Justice Paul de Jersey, The Courier Mail, (Brisbane), April 27  2007.
   
• "People argued about the medieval right not to be tried twice, as though fraudulently getting off was some sort of game..."     
   The then UK Home Secretary David Blunkett, cited in 'Justice at last: killer pleads  guilty  in Britain's first double jeopardy trial', The Guardian, (London) 12th Sep  2006
   
• "Where compelling new evidence comes to light to solve a serious crime, criminals shouldn't be able to hide behind what is a legal technicality. It's just common sense."
   New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma,  The World Today, ABC radio, 7th Sep, 2006
   
• "It makes no sense to me that if someone gets off a particular case and then fresh evidence becomes available, DNA or otherwise, that they should ... literally get away with murder."
  South Australian Premier Mike Rann    ABC News, 7th August, 2007
   
• "I think, not unreasonably, the public says if there is compelling evidence that a person who's been found innocent may have committed the offence for which they were found innocent, and that compelling evidence is clear cut DNA evidence, then there is strong argument for retrying that person again." 
  Bond University Criminologist Professor Paul Wilson speaking on ABC radio, The World Today - Friday, 27 January , 2006.
   
• "There is an old saying that convicting one innocent person is more serious than allowing 10 guilty people to go free.  That is an unbalanced approach to justice, which assumes that there is no injured party when there is a wrongful acquittal.  A rape victim who knows the person who committed the rape, but is unable to convince a jury, will live the rest of their life in fear because the person remains at liberty and may repeat the crime.  When new evidence becomes available -- if we are not to take an extraordinarily cavalier attitude to the rights of victims -- it is just as much a question of justice that such a person ... should be dealt with as it is that a person who was wrongfully convicted ... should be allowed to go free when the case against them is demolished. ... If we pursue the logical precept that the legal system must be seen as clearly from the victim's point of view as from that of the accused, we must surely conclude that a wrongful acquittal is as bad as a wrongful conviction.  The double jeopardy rule gets in the way of exposing wrongful acquittals, and it should be relaxed."
  UK MP Martin Linton in the British House of Commons debating the 2002 Justice Bill.
   
• "I feel it's an affront to society to know that there are people walking around who just because there was insufficient evidence at a particular time have been found not guilty and allowed to go unpunished for a crime which they clearly committed."  
  Melvyn Barnett, Melbourne lawyer and victims' rights campaigner speaking on ABC radio, The World Today - Friday, 27 January , 2006 
   
• "My personal view is that the risk of real injustice to victims of the most serious crimes such as murder and rape must outweigh virtually all other considerations." 
  then W.A. Attorney-General Jim McGinty, ministerial media statement, April 2003
   
• "If there is compelling evidence, say in the form of DNA or other scientific analysis or of an unguarded admission that an acquitted person is after all guilty of a serious offence, then, subject to stringent safeguards….what basis in logic or justice can there be for preventing proof of that criminality?"
  The Right Honourable Lord Justice Auld, A Review of the Criminal Courts of England and Wales September 2001, Chap 12, para 51

• "I'm very much in favour of changing things that don't work and this rule [double jeopardy] doesn't work...
  ..the demented, dogmatic adherence to something because it's been around for a long time..."  
   then Prime Minister John Howard at the Queensland Press Forum Luncheon,  9th April 2003

• "if...the constitutional prohibition [of double jeopardy] should be extended to misdemeanors we shall have fastened upon the country a doctrine covering the whole criminal law, which, it seems to me, will have serious and evil consequences. At the present time in this country there is more danger that criminals will escape justice than that they will be subjected to tyranny."
  Oliver Wendell Holmes (Kepner v U.S., 195 U.S. 100, at 134 [1904])

• "The common law says wrong guilty verdicts can be wrong, but wrong not guilty verdicts cannot be wrong."       
   Evan Whitton, five times winner of the Walkley Award for National Journalism and author  of The Cartel: Lawyers and their Nine Magic Tricks. 

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