Dice

Claire Baylis

Allen & Unwin

Otago Daily Times, July 29th 2023

In Dice, Rotorua writer and legal expert Claire Baylis inducts the reader into the inner sanctum of our judicial system, the jury room. The trial around which the plot revolves involves a sex game in which a group of teenage boys roll a die to select a girl and what ‘stuff’ to do with her. Now they face a range of charges from indecent assault to rape, but whether justice will be served is as much a matter of chance as the initial game, depending as it does on the make-up of the jury who will decide their guilt or innocence. 

Baylis takes us inside the heads of the individual jurors, each with their own beliefs, prejudices, life experiences, strengths, and limitations, as they struggle to make sense of the complexities of the case and the legal niceties involved: Does lack of resistance imply consent and can the accused be ‘reasonably expected’ to recognise the absence thereof? How ‘should’ somebody act after they have been assaulted? How do you weigh one person’s testimony over another? Where is the line between teenage experimentation and their vulnerability to social pressure and expectation?

The jury members are initially introduced through physical appearance alone. With no names or background attached, they are as much strangers to the reader as they are to each other. They gain form and substance as the story progresses and we see them both externally through one other’s eyes and are given access to the internal thoughts and feelings of each in turn. Some are certainly more sympathetic than others, but there are no simple ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters, regardless of their opinions on the evidence presented at trial. They each bring their own perspectives to deliberations, and therein lies the central strength and weakness of the jury system: hearing about the thoughts and experiences of others can lead people to reconsider their views, but reaching a consensus can necessitate compromises that lead to further hurt and injustice.

Drawing on real jurors’ voices, Baylis does an excellent job portraying the complex social interactions and tensions of the jury room, from the power struggles around who will be foreman and how to examine the evidence, to the alliances that form between individuals who at first glance appear to have little in common. She also explores the effects of the trial on the jurors themselves, some of which will follow them beyond the courthouse. But her concerns are broader than the confines of the jury room, and Dice also confronts the struggle that women face to be believed in a society where “she asked for it” is still regarded as a legitimate excuse, and within a legal structure that all too easily revictimises them. It is a nuanced and thought-provoking portrayal of a justice system we would like to believe is, to appropriate Churchill’s memorable phrase, “the least worst of all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” I can’t help wondering whether there is a better way.