Speaker 1: Silence all stand please and remain standing.
Speaker 1: I suppose in the courtroom I'm called Your Honor.
Speaker 1: All persons having business before this honorable court are commanded
Speaker 1: to give their attendance and they shall be heard.
Speaker 1: In normal life, I'm usually called Simon.
Speaker 3: Gertie is one of the three watching women of the court.
Speaker 3: She's not blindfolded because Justice Redmond Barry thought it'd be a
Speaker 3: good idea if she could see everybody that comes through the door.
Speaker 3: In the workplace... it varies the associates like they tend
Speaker 3: to call us Judge I think.
Speaker 3: Our legal system has always been premised in modern times
Speaker 3: on the assumption that it's better that 10 guilty men
Speaker 3: or women go free than that one innocent man or
Speaker 3: woman is wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 3: You can't go wrong with Judge if you go with
Speaker 3: judge nobody's going to get offended nobody's gonna tell you off.
Speaker 3: And they shall be heard. And they shall be heard.
Speaker 3: The whole truth. And nothing but the truth. Nothing but
Speaker 3: the truth.
Speaker 6: I'm Greg Müller. I'm Evan Martin. This is Gertie's Law
Speaker 6: a podcast series from the Supreme Court of Victoria. We'll
Speaker 6: hear from the judges, explore the labyrinth of corridors and
Speaker 6: even the underground dungeons. Meet the people behind the difficult
Speaker 6: decisions made here every day.
Speaker 6: The pressure to get things right is enormous and so
Speaker 6: it should be.
Speaker 6: And get to know the system from the inside.
Speaker 7: I'm Anne Ferguson, Chief Justice of Victoria. What we do
Speaker 7: here every day directly affects people's lives. It's complex, it
Speaker 7: matters to our democracy and it's fascinating. You might think
Speaker 7: you know this court many criminals who've appeared here are household
Speaker 7: names and it's on the news most nights. But how
Speaker 7: well do you really know it?
Speaker 7: Well I was kind of freaked out to be frank
Speaker 7: so I just came off the street and next minute
Speaker 7: I'm sitting like two or three meters from a serial killer.
Speaker 7: I think I've seen too much violent death apart from
Speaker 7: anything else I've sentenced a significant number of people to
Speaker 7: usually very long sentences.
Speaker 8: Punishment's a tricky concept because we don't live in a
Speaker 8: lawless society in which vengeance or lynch mobs rule.
Speaker 2: This is 21st century justice in a 19th century building.
Speaker 2: These courtrooms look pretty much the same as they did
Speaker 2: 130 years ago except for the laptops on the bar
Speaker 2: table and the female judges.
Speaker 2: The judge must come to an instinctive synthesis to arrive
Speaker 2: at the final sentence.
Speaker 2: When I first heard the term instinctive synthesis I thought
Speaker 2: it was an 80s rock band.
Speaker 8: You get a very, very detailed look at areas of
Speaker 8: life that you wouldn't ordinarily go into I recently heard
Speaker 8: a case about spring onion farming.
Speaker 8: For entertainment, people would come to the courts and they
Speaker 8: would watch the cases and they would watch the leading
Speaker 8: barristers perform and they would watch the salacious murder trials
Speaker 8: in the public galleries of the courts were full. That
Speaker 8: is mostly not the case any more.
Speaker 8: How has this justice system evolved since the eighteen eighties?
Speaker 8: What happens here after the news cameras and the microphones
Speaker 8: are turned off? And just how the judges come to
Speaker 8: their decisions?
Speaker 6: Gertie's Law raises the curtain on the Supreme Court of Victoria.
Speaker 6: Each episode will explore a different aspect of the court
Speaker 6: such as sentencing, juries suppression orders and parole. Listen to
Speaker 6: gird his law wherever you get your podcasts. First episode
Speaker 6: March 25th.
Speaker 6: This honorable court stands adjourned.