The legal fraternity has voiced concerns about the government's push to allow lighter sentences for criminals who help the courts speed up their trials.
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The ACT government introduced a bill into the Legislative Assembly on Thursday aimed at improving efficiency in the court system's backlog.
The reforms would allow the courts to show leniency to criminals who made disclosures or admissions that helped narrow the issues in dispute before or during a trial.
Attorney-General Simon Corbell said the measures - already in place in NSW - would not make the reduction in sentence ''unreasonably disproportionate'' to the seriousness of the offence.
''Fundamentally, these changes are about giving an incentive to the accused and their representation to narrow the range of matters that are introduced,'' Mr Corbell said.
''It's designed to discourage arguments on every factual matter, even though perhaps three-quarters of those will not be in dispute between the accused and the prosecution.'' The ACT Law Society said the reforms, while beneficial in some situations, could reverse the onus of proof back onto the accused.
The society's criminal law committee chairman, Michael Kukulies-Smith, said the amendments could water down ''fundamental safeguards'', including the accused's right to silence, and the prosecution's responsibility to bear the burden of proof.
"The amendment effectively casts that responsibility back upon the accused, by failing to grant a benefit if the accused does not assist the prosecution," he said.
"This concern is more acute because often the issue of co-operation or assistance involves a decision of whether to assert a defendant's right to silence, from which in principle no adverse inference should ever be drawn."
He said most accused criminals had little choice but to trust their lawyer's judgment on which pieces of evidence were likely to be at issue or dispute in a trial. "It is therefore problematic giving a discount, or not … It may become a mark or grading of the lawyer rather than any action/inaction of an accused."