The magistrate and Mr Moore: story-telling, narrative forensics and a judge’s experience of sentencing

Abstract

This article tells the story of 'The magistrate and Mr Moore', a true account of an Australian magistrate's experience of sentencing a man for drink driving, and then considers the significance of this story to the fields of socio-legal studies and narrative inquiry. Firstly, it explores how an ethnographic research approach -a sort of immersion journalism -is a productive methodology to access the under-researched area of judges' experiences of sentencing people. Secondly, based on interviews with judges and magistrates in the criminal justice system in New South Wales, as well as, in some cases, observations of their working lives, the article explores the ways in which the judicial act of sentencing in part involves a curious (and vexed) approach to legal narrative.

Gestalt contexture and contested motives: Understanding video evidence in the murder trial of Officer Michael Slager

“…Moore and Singh (2018) attend to how the KGB video data double disempowers and discredits a witness. Sandhu and Haggerty (2017) produce ideal-typical categories for police officers’ experiences and perceptions of video evidence and themselves being video recorded (see also Sandhu, 2019 ). Stalcup and Hahn (2016) are likely most aligned with this article in their endorsement of video pragmatism over video optimism or pessimism.…”

“…Indeed, the use of KGB statements is limited to occasions where witnesses do change their testimony, as the video statements would be redundant if testimony were consistent. In arriving at a verdict, triers of fact are therefore inevitably tied to, and empowered to weigh, any evidence against the case or narrative (Jenkings, 1997;Rossmath, 2013;Scheffer, 2010;Suresh, 2018) that produces the sense and meaning of evidence. Video evidence does not stand apart from all other evidence as a unique and incontrovertible truth, but rather in a self-same circumstance, gains status as truth when weighed in reflection of all accompanying evidence and the narratives counsel overlay to furnish their arguments.…”