May Jeffrey Archer rest in peace. His novels are not my cup of tea but they have their devotees.

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But his death reminds me that judges aren't infallible. In a debate over whether juries get it right or not, I'd usually go with the views of those 12 ordinary people before that of a single judge sitting alone.

I say this because Archer was a convicted liar, and the judge in a case he brought helped him get away with his dishonesty for 14 years.

In 1987, Archer sued the Daily Star newspaper in Britain after it reported, correctly as it turned out, that he, the then deputy chairman of the Conservative Party (which was very strong on "family values"), had paid a sex worker for her services.

The jury agreed after a mere four hours that Archer had been defamed, but the judge had tilted the decision: in his summing up, Justice Bernard Caulfield doubted whether a man with such a "fragrant" wife would pay money for sex. Lady Archer as she became and still is was described by Justice Caulfield as a vision of "elegance, fragrance and radiance".

"Remember Mrs Archer in the witness box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear," the judge suggested to the jury. "Has she elegance? Has she fragrance?"

Getting into his stride, he wondered how a man with such a beautiful wife would ever be "in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel".

Not only was Jeffrey Archer's wife beautiful but she was also, as a University of Cambridge scientist, highly intelligent - but the idea that these undoubted pluses would deter a husband from infidelity would, I think, be met with more incredulity in the Bunnings car park than in the judge's chambers.

Call me a cynic, but I put great faith in the common sense of ordinary people - and the embodiment of that good sense is the jury (and the electorate in a strong, well-functioning democracy).

I suppose it should........

© Canberra Times