Judge Reviewing Pirate Bay Trial Bias Is Removed

oh-my-god sends word that the Swedish judge assigned to review whether the trial judge in the Pirate Bay trial was biased has now been removed — for bias. Here's a local news account in Swedish, which Google fails to translate. We've discussed the convolutions of this case on more than one occasion.

Comments

Great Summary

[Sagara Sozou]

This doesn't even tell us how the judge was biased.

If anyone's wondering, both the original judge and the reviewing judge were part of the same copyright-supporting organizations.

Translation

[nmb3000]

Google fails to automatically translate the page, but not the content. Translation follows:

The Court of Appeal replace the newly appointed judge in Pirate Bay case. The question of the district court was biased now determined by three judges from another department.

The information can be mentioned that none of these are or have been members of any of the compounds are present in the case, write the court of appeal in a press release.

Following reports that the newly appointed Court of Appeal judge in Pirate Baymålet previously been a member of the same compound as the copyright jävsanklagade District Court judge, asked the Court of Appeal president yesterday to hear unless another law departments should determine jävsfrågan.

Today came the decision: Designated hovrätt Council Ulrika Ihrfelt, who works for the department which has a special focus on copyright and intellectual property goals, may not adjudicate the issue of the district court was biased.

Instead, jävsfrågan be moved to another court of appeal of the departments and review by the department head, hovrätt lagmannen Anders Eka together with the Court of Appeal councils Christina Jacobsson and Ulrika Beer Grehn.

"The reasons for this is to jävsfrågan to be reviewed by other judges than those which may subsequently come to try the case and that, having regard to the contents of jävs-opposition, deemed appropriate to jävsfrågan be determined on a department that has not specialized on copyright, "writes the court of appeal in the press release.

Jävsfrågan should be treated with priority. Court of Appeal president Fredrik Wersäll expect that decision may come "in a maximum of a few weeks", states the TT.

The Court of Appeal will not go ahead with the Pirate Bay case until jävsfrågan settlement. If Norström would be judged as biased, the goal can be sent back to district court and the ruling reopened.

Several of the condemned pirates defense lawyers argue that Norström been biased, particularly because he is a member of several compounds related to copyright. The four sentenced to one year's imprisonment and to pay damages of 30 million.

Re:Translation

[saforrest]

Google fails to automatically translate the page, but not the content. Translation follows:

I don't know any Swedish, but it seems like a pretty good translation. The main thing left untranslated is the word "jävsfrågan" which recurs repeatedly throughout the text.

While I don't know Swedish, I know enough Germanic languages to guess (correctly as it turns out) that "frågan" is 'question'. And "jäv" appears to be 'bias' with 'jävs' the genitive form, thus "jävsfrågan" appears to be 'question of bias'. Similarly, "anklagade" is 'accused', so "jävsanklagade" is 'accused of bias'.

With that in mind the modified translation is:

The Court of Appeal replace the newly appointed judge in Pirate Bay case. The question of the district court was biased now determined by three judges from another department.

The information can be mentioned that none of these are or have been members of any of the compounds are present in the case, write the court of appeal in a press release.

Following reports that the newly appointed Court of Appeal judge in Pirate Baymålet previously been a member of the same compound as the District Court judge accused of copyright bias, asked the Court of Appeal president yesterday to hear unless another law department should determine the question of bias.

Today came the decision: Designated Court of Appeal Council Ulrika Ihrfelt, who works for the department which has a special focus on copyright and intellectual property goals, may not adjudicate the issue of the district court was biased.

Instead, questions of bias will be moved to another court of appeal of the departments and review by the department head, Court of Appeal lagmannen Anders Eka together with the Court of Appeal councils Christina Jacobsson and Ulrika Beer Grehn.

"The reasons for this is for the question of bias to be reviewed by other judges than those which may subsequently come to try the case and that, having regard to the contents of the allegations of bias, deemed appropriate that questions of bias be determined by a department that has not specialized on copyright," writes the court of appeal in the press release.

Questions of bias should be treated with priority. Court of Appeal president Fredrik Wersäll expects that decision may come "in a maximum of a few weeks", states the TT.

The Court of Appeal will not go ahead with the Pirate Bay case until the question of bias is settled. If Norström would be judged as biased, the goal can be sent back to district court and the ruling reopened.

Several of the condemned pirates defense lawyers argue that Norström been biased, particularly because he is a member of several compounds related to copyright. The four sentenced to one year's imprisonment and to pay damages of 30 million.

Google translation here

[Optic7]

New judge in Pirate Bay case

Published: May 20, 2009, 10.11. Last changed: May 20, 2009, 17.04

The Court of Appeal replace the newly appointed judge in Pirate Bay case. The question of the district court was biased now determined by three judges from another department.

- The information may be mentioned that none of these are or have been members of any of the compounds are present in the case, write the court of appeal in a press release.

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Following reports that the newly appointed Court of Appeal judge in Pirate BaymÃ¥let previously been a member of the same compound as the copyright jÃvsanklagade District Court judge, asked the Court of Appeal president yesterday to hear unless another law departments should determine jÃvsfrÃ¥gan.

Today came the decision: Designated hovrÃtt Council Ulrika Ihrfelt, who works for the department which has a special focus on copyright and intellectual property goals, may not adjudicate the issue of the district court was biased.

Instead, jÃvsfrÃ¥gan be moved to another court of appeal of the departments and review by the department head, hovrÃtt lagmannen Anders Eka together with the Court of Appeal councils Christina Jacobsson and Ulrika Beer Grehn.

"The reasons for this is to jÃvsfrÃ¥gan to be reviewed by other judges than those which may subsequently come to try the case and that, having regard to the contents of jÃvs-opposition, deemed appropriate to jÃvsfrÃ¥gan be determined on a department that has not specialized on copyright, "writes the court of appeal in the press release.

JÃvsfrÃ¥gan should be treated with priority. Court of Appeal president Fredrik WersÃll expect that decision may come "in a maximum of a few weeks", states the TT.

The Court of Appeal will not go ahead with the Pirate Bay case until jÃvsfrÃ¥gan settlement. If NorstrÃm would be judged as biased, the goal can be sent back to district court and the ruling reopened.

Several of the condemned pirates defense lawyers argue that NorstrÃm been biased, particularly because he is a member of several compounds related to copyright. The four were sentenced to one year's imprisonment and to pay damages of 30 million.

Translated: New judges in the Pirate Bay case

[ebohman]

The Court of Appeals is replacing the newly appointed appelate court judge in the Pirate Bay-case. The issue of whether the local court Tingsrätten had a inappropriate bias will now be decided by three judges from a different department.

  - It can be noted that none of these three are, or have been, members of any of the groups that are relevant in this case, the Court of Appeals write in a press release.

  After learning that the newly appointed Court of Appeals judge in the Pirate Bay case has been a member of the same Intellectual property industry group as the local judge accused of bias, the president of the Court of Appeals was asked yesterday to try whether another department should rule on the issue of bias.

Today the decision was made: The appointed "Hovrättsrådet" Ulrika Ihrfelt, who works in the department specialized in cases on copyright/creators' rights and intangible assets, is not allowed to judge whether the local court had inappropriate bias when judging the case -"varit jävig".

Instead, the issue of bias will be moved to another department of the Appelate Court and be tried by the manager of that department, Anders Eka, and judges Christina Jacobsson and Ulrika Beergrehn.

"The reasons for this is partly that the issue of bias ought to be tried by other judges than those who could be asked to later judge in the actual case, and partly in consideration of the objection to the bias, it has been deemed appropriate that the issue of bias is decided by another department not specialized in copyright", the court writes in the press release.

Then issue will be decided with priority. The president of the Court of Appeals, Fredrik Wersäll, is counting on the decision coming "within some weeks at most", according to the news agency TT.

The Court of Appeals will not start handling the Pirate bay-case until the issue of bias has been decided. If Norström is considered biased the case can be sent back to the local court and the verdict will be torn up.

The defense lawyers of several of the convicted pirates claim that Norström had a bias, i.e through being a member of several industry groups connected to copyright. The four were sentenced to one year in prison and damages of 30 million SEK (ca $4 million).

(end of article)

Note that in Swedish, having had bias is almost the same as having been a dickhead. "varit jävig" vs. "varit jävlig".

Re:Wow.

[Z00L00K]

A summary here:

The prejudice question will now be tried by three other judges from another department that doesn't have intellectual property rights as a specialty.

The question will have priority and will take a few weeks to process. If it is decided that Norström had a prejudice the case will have to be retried. But if it's decided that there was no prejudice then the case can be appealed at a higher instance.

So the case was originally handled by a department specialized in immaterial rights. Obviously many members of that department are members in organizations handling the immaterial rights or have connections with such organizations.

It may be interesting to see where this ends. What's at stake here is the trust in the legal system. And if it's decided that there was a prejudice then the whole department handling immaterial rights are essentially disqualified from the action.

The Swedish judicial system...

[oh2]

...is not like the American one.

TingsrÃtten is the lowest court, all cases go before a judge and three lay assistants that judge the case on the evidence.

HovrÃtten is the next level, its the district appeals courts of Sweden. A large number of cases end up here and are judged by three judges. Pirate Bay was always going to end up there since its such a difficult case.

HÃgsta Domstolen is the Supreme Court of Sweden, it only handles very sticky cases and those that set precedents.

What has happened is that the lawyers for the Pirate Bay people have appealed to HovrÃtten and also put forward a claim that the original judge in TingsrÃtten is biased due to his membership in an association for copyright interests. The HovrÃtts-judge that was going to assess this claim has previously been a member of such an association and has because of this been recused. A panel of three senior judges in the HovrÃtt is now going to first assess the TingsrÃtten judges possible bias and then make a determination if the trial needs to be remade in TingsrÃtten with a new judge, or if it should be redone in HovrÃtten. These three have no affiliations with special interest groups on copyright and do not practice that kind of law.

Im quite pleased actually that our Judicial system is so carefully dealing with the whole Pirate Bay mess.