Judge In Pirate Bay Trial Biased

maglo writes "The judge who handed down the harsh sentence to the four accused in the The Pirate Bay trial was biased, writes Sveriges Radio (Sweden Public Radio): sr.se (swedish). Google translation. The judge is member of two copyright lobby organizations, something he shares with several of the prosecutor attorneys (Monique Wadsted, Henrik Pontén and Peter Danowsky). The organizations in question are Svenska Föreningen för Upphovsrätt (SFU) and Svenska föreningen för industriellt rättsskydd (SFIR)."

Comments

English Language Article.

[telchine]

If Swedish isn't your native language, this article might prove more useful:

Pirate Bay Judge Accused of Bias

Re:English Language Article.

[reachinmark]

Alternatively, from The Local, an English language Swedish paper:

Pirate Bay Lawyer calls for retrial

Though it might be worth pointing out that the "call" for a retrial isn't actually official yet, just what the lawyer has said to journalists.

Re:English Language Article.

[aliquis]

One of the jurymen had to leave to since he was a composer, but I guess a judge who are part of the council in an organisation working to improve the interest and knowledge of the industrial protection rights of patents, brands, designs, plant engineering, name and company rights and protection against inappropriate competition and member of the other organization which goals is to discuss copyright is just fine.

Re:English Language Article.

[MikeBabcock]

A judge shouldn't be a member of any group promoting any specific type of justice, imho, as they're to be an impartial judge of the facts given them in court and not to be out for personal vendettas of any kind.

In practise this doesn't happen of course.

Re:suck it up

[rbarreira]

Not just a group that lobbies, a group that lobbies together with the prosecution!

Re:Shouldn't Judges remove themselves?

[bumby]

Yes, yes they should, and the article mentioned this. The judge did however not consider himself biased. Go figure...

Re:suck it up

[sjames]

lawyers/judges are often memebers of many many organisations, it doesn't mean they have the same rabid bias of an apple fanboy of /.

Membership is one thing. The judge is on the board of directors! That's just a wee bit stronger connection than fanboy.

That would be like allowing Steve Jobs preside over MS's trial.

Re:suck it up

[Burkin]

Occam's Razor is that the simplest answer is true,

Sorry, but no. Occam's Razor says that the explanation of a phenomena should make as few assumptions as possible. In no way does this translate to "the simplest answer is true" because in many cases the simplest answer isn't true.

Re:Can you say conflict of interest?

[miffo.swe]

Its fairly common in sweden that the first instance of the court system (Tingsrätten) is viewed upon as a bunch of clowns you have to pass to get to the real court. They consists of local politicians and if your local ones are anything like ours you know they suck on a professional level in every way possible when it comes to just about anything they do.

Im fairly sure the TPB lawyers has been set for going to the highest level court from the beginning and planned accordingly. This little gem with a clearly biased judge doesnt really help the TPB guys other than for PR since whatever a retrial will result in the trial will be taken higher up in the court system.

Its just a huge PR win for us in the PirateParty and the public opinion. It paints a very clear and vivid picture of us small ones against greedy, corrupt, self-loving, elite and above-the-law politicians.

US rules do not apply

[Ibn al-Hazardous]

But since Sweden is not a part of the same judicial tradition as the US, this has no bearing on the TPB trial. In Sweden, you are pretty much guaranteed a second trial at a higher level, unless it is a question of a small-time crime (or the case is very simple). This being a high profile trial, making an appeal to the second level was a given, even before the trial started.

If the second level court decides the judge was biased, they will order a re-trial at the first level - which will then be followed be an appeals process. The reason the lawyers may not go through with a re-trial, is that it will only mean another trial that won't add anything of interest. Since this is a very special trial, the Supreme Court may take the case too - or order a re-trial at the second level. So a re-trial at the first level may not be worth it, we were probably looking at 3 or 4 trials anyway.

IANAL, but my cousin is a judge here in Sweden.