New SBS Jury Show Rehashes Infamous Gay Sydney Couple True Crime Case

Based on a true story, a new part-reality show, part true-crime show The Jury: Death on the Staircase from SBS follows a real-life jury as they rehash a real Australian manslaughter case that involved a gay Sydney couple.

“Do juries always get it right?” That’s the question the series is attempting to answer. Taking a jury of 12 real people, the series follows acted-out word-for-word court transcripts and court documents of the case and attempts to see what the verdict would be based on a new set of jurors.

The trial follows the case of a couple living in Sydney’s Inner West, one of whom is found dead at the bottom of a staircase after an alleged argument occurred. “Carlo,” as he is called in the series, was the victim, and “Shaun,” his partner, was charged over his death. 

The couples’ neighbours said they were a fiery, argument-prone pair, “but the dead man’s surviving partner is bereft, and swears he had nothing to do with his death.”

The alleged Sydney crime in The Jury: Death on the Staircase

The year was 2007. It was a regular Easter Saturday, but everything changed in just an instant. The defendant’s case was up for debate. The jury found him guilty of manslaughter after his third trial and sentenced to a minimum of four-and-a-half years in jail. 

But after three years in prison, three days before Christmas Day in 2014, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal overturned the defendant’s conviction and he was acquitted.

Jury expert explains process in The Jury: Death on the Staircase

Throughout the duration of five episodes, the “real” jurors will examine the real case and attempt to come up with a decisive verdict and sentence. The show poses some thought-provoking yet uncomfortable questions: Is the Australian jury system actually fair? And is it efficient? 

“Any serious case that we have in Australia is trial by jury, and that’s a jury of 12,” said Dr. Jacqui Horan, a lawyer and jury expert. “In criminal cases in Victoria, but nowhere else in Australia, we have civil juries, which is a jury of six, but the juries in serious criminal cases are randomly selected from the electoral commission.” 

“And there’s a very limited number of ways that barristers in Australia can challenge people going on to a jury, and that differs a lot from America.” 

In Australia, the judge or barrister does not have much right to question the jury’s decision. But in Victoria, Dr. Horan said, jurors who are teachers and nurses are often challenged more so than anyone else. 

“The idea is that nurses might be too sympathetic and teachers might be too bossy, but the bottom line is most of those professions are female, and so it works out that it plays as a sexist component to a justice system that just shouldn’t happen,” said Dr. Horan. 

Despite knowing that the trial isn’t real, the jurors very quickly get invested in the game. 

“It looks exactly like a real courtroom, and there’s hidden cameras in the deliberation room, so even though the 12 jurors are aware it’s not a real trial, it’s amazing how within minutes, they are completely ensconced and in the moment, feeling like this is a real trial, that there’s this real person who might go to jail depending upon their decision,” Dr. Horan said.

There are, of course, problems with implicit and explicit biases that occur within trials and deliberations. One of the jurors said that due to the fact that the men were in a same-sex relationship, she was less inclined to believe that it was truly a case of domestic violence. 

After the defendant’s police questioning, the officer who was in charge made microaggressive and casually racist remarks about the man. The jury caught on very quickly to the nature of the remarks and commented upon them, bringing attention to the situation amongst each other. 

LGBT issues jury faces in The Jury: Death on the Staircase

Another issue that the jury quickly caught onto was that the prosecutor opens the case and says that this is a case where the defendant is guilty of manslaughter, and explicitly states that the defendant and victim were in a homosexual domestic relationship. 

“And in saying that statement, one of the jurors picked up and rightly so, it was completely unnecessary to highlight in one of the first sentences that this was a homosexual relationship, all they had to say was the defendant and the victim were in a domestic relationship,” Dr. Horan noted. 

One of the jurors, who is gay himself, was offended. “And rightly so,” said Dr. Horan. 

The series uncovers the issues within the jury system and the Australian criminal justice system in a poignant way that may make more people aware of the changes that need to occur in order to truly ensure the system is fair and fit for purpose. 

“Judges really like the jury system, because they feel that they can learn and improve, and both judges and jurors are very earnest and very committed to doing the right thing,” said Dr. Horan. 

The Jury: Death on the Staircase premiered November 6, and will continue to be released one episode at a time for the next four weeks on SBS  Wednesdays at 8:30 and and on SBS on Demand.