Is courtroom architecture unfairly biased?

A NSW legal researcher is questioning whether Australian courtroom architecture is unfairly biased against the accused in criminal trials. In 2011, Professor David Tait wrote an article for the Chicago-Kent Law Review called Glass Cages in the Dock? Presenting the Defendant to the Jury, in which he considered the history of the dock—the area where the accused sits during a trial. In the US, the dock has been regarded by courts as inappropriate, in part because it may prejudice the jury by making the accused look guilty or even dangerous. In Australia, the dock has been maintained as a tradition inherited from England, but in 2007 a judge ruled that a perspex screen around the dock “materially diminish[ed] their right to the presumption of innocence” and ordered it be removed. However, in his article Tait observed there was “a lack of empirical evidence” to guide judges about how jurors would react to different dock arrangements. To solve this problem, Tait and his team at the University of Western Sydney set up an experiment—they ran the same mock trial before 100 juries: “The only difference in the cases, performed by actors, will be that he accused is either behind glass, in a traditional dock or at the bar table next to their lawyers.” The results of the experiment showed the accused’s seating arrangement may have a significant impact on the outcome of the case: “When the glass dock was used, 60 per cent of jurors delivered a ‘guilty’ verdict, compared to 47 per cent for the open dock and 36 per cent for the bar table.”