I came across a new website last week that allows couples to settle their private disputes in public. After both sides to the row have posted their point of view on the SideTaker website, the public submits its comments and casts its vote. The couple thus have their dispute determined by a jury of their peers — people who have too much time on their hands and think that the definition of morality is whatever most people raise their hands for.

The site contains such insuperable moral dilemmas as whether having a lap dance is cheating, and whether your wife having sex with a waiter while you’re on holiday means that she no longer loves you. Thank goodness the internet is there to provide a moral compass to couples who so clearly lack one.

Unfortunately the site arrived too late to assist the estranged Cambodian couple who sawed their house in half last week to avoid the country’s convoluted divorce laws (question: does the fact that my husband has sawed off the left side of our house and moved it to another village mean that he no longer loves me?)

The motto of the SideTaker website is “let the world decide who’s at fault” and I could not help reflecting on it as I read the hysterical coverage of the trial in Spain of Dermot McArdle on charges of killing his wife. It appears that criminal law is increasingly being treated by the media as a public show of hands in which we are invited to view the process as a battle between the family of the victim and the accused. The trial in Malaga suggests that permitting victims to have their own legal teams in criminal cases causes more problems than it solves.

A public prosecutor was running the McArdle case side by side with a private prosecution brought by the victim’s family. Strange enough until you learn that the family was running a murder prosecution, but the public prosecutor had dropped a murder charge against McArdle on the basis that the appropriate indictment was manslaughter of his wife, Kelly-Anne. It was a situation guaranteed to both prejudice and confuse the jury.

Next you had the bizarre spectacle of the judge asking all three legal teams what they thought McArdle’s sentence should be. The maximum sentence for manslaughter in Spain is four years. The victim’s lawyers said it should be the maximum of four, the defence suggested that one year would suffice, and the prosecution plumped for three. The judge has now gone off for a week to decide whose bid should win the sentencing auction.

The reason why all prosecutions in Ireland bear the title “The People at the suit of the director of public prosecutions” is to emphasize that they are brought by an independent prosecutor on behalf of the public rather than on behalf of the victim. Only the DPP is permitted to prosecute someone before a jury. In presenting the case, he is obliged to have regard to not only the need to vindicate the victim’s rights but also the right of the accused to a fair trial. Thus the aim of the DPP is to ensure that a just verdict is reached and not to strive for a conviction at all costs. The DPP never asks the trial judge to impose a particular sentence.

There are compelling reasons for our way of doing things. The fact that only the DPP can bring a prosecution means that suspects are brought before a court only when there is a realistic chance of convicting them after a fair trial. The fact that the prosecution cannot nominate a sentence means that we do not have US-style plea-bargaining — a system that allows suspects to plead guilty after the prosecutor warns them that if they chose to fight the case then he will demand the maximum prison sentence.

Unfortunately our traditional approach is under increasing threat. The media are encouraging the public to view criminal trials, not as a dispassionate calling of evidence by an independent prosecutor, but as a pitched battle between the accused and the victim. Thus last Wednesday the Daily Mirror in Ireland carried a picture of Dermot McArdle face to face with a picture of his deceased wife above the headline “Beauty and the Beast”. Having branded him “Evil Dermot McArdle” and railed against the fact that sentences can sometimes be suspended in Spain, the Mirror then expressed surprise that the accused left the court “by a back door so he could avoid the media and his dead wife’s family”. Presumably the newspaper was hoping he would conduct a rival press conference on the steps of the court.

This idea of confrontation is filtering down from the media to family members who attend court. In some cases prosecutors have come under pressure to allow numerous members of a family to address the court during the sentence hearing, even though there is no legal basis for such an exercise. In other cases victim-impact statements have been used to refer to evidence that the prosecution deemed too unreliable to call.

We should reflect on the differences between the SideTaker website and the rule of law. One of them panders to our prejudices; the other underpins our democracy. It is up to us to decide which one we want in our court rooms.

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