The spectacle of a Norwegian jury failing to reach a verdict in a hitman trial is precisely the sort of continental farce that would make a Victorian barrister choke on his claret. The British legal observers, no doubt clutching their copies of Blackstone, are ‘disappointed’. Disappointed?
One should be livid. Here we have a case that should have been a straightforward matter of evidence and justice, yet it devolves into a squalid stalemate. It reeks of a legal system so paralysed by procedural niceties and a fear of assertiveness that it cannot perform its primary duty: to declare guilt or innocence.
The trial, involving an alleged contract killer, had all the elements of a gripping morality play. Instead, we get a hung jury, a debacle that would have been unimaginable in the days when British justice meant something. This is what happens when a society loses its nerve.
You can trace the decline from the moment continental jurisprudence began to prioritise the rights of the accused over the rights of the victim. The Norwegian system, with its emphasis on rehabilitation over punishment, has produced a generation of legal professionals who are more adept at hand-wringing than delivering justice. The British observers’ disappointment is a polite mask for a deeper truth: we are witnessing the intellectual decadence of a legal tradition that has lost its will.
The Fall of Rome was preceded by a gradual erosion of legal certainty. Are we now seeing the same? The hitman trial is not an isolated incident.
It is a symptom of a broader malaise. When juries cannot decide, when judges hesitate, when the state’s monopoly on violence is questioned even in the face of overwhelming evidence, then the social contract is fraying. One can almost hear the ghost of Lord Denning weeping.
The solution? A return to clarity. Certainty.
The kind of resolute justice that once made the British legal system the envy of the world. Until then, we shall have more such verdicts of ineptitude.
