Claire Baylis

Grappling with delivering justice

The novel’s narrative plays out through their eyes and minds – inside and outside the court and jury room.

The question posed on the Dice coverline is “Can they deliver justice?”  

It is what Baylis’s jurors ask themselves, each conscious their task is to deliver verdicts that are  beyond reasonable doubt.

Her characterisation of these disparate individuals is a facsimile of juries across centuries.

 They are people whose names have been drawn at random from a barrel in a lottery few are thrilled to win. 

Among Baylis’ fictional 12 are a child care worker, a dishwasher in a cafe, a retired Scion scientist, a competitive swimmer on the cusp of national selection and a forestry worker with a sideline in fighting fires overseas.

Then there’s the self-important businessman who jostled others aside to become foreman.

Readers swear blind they know at least one of them, maybe more, but the author is resolute they are, like In Profile’s BSDA, figments of imagination.

Would they be less convinced if Dice came with a disclaimer that reads: “No real people were used in the writing of this book.”?

Probably not, they are so realistically drawn.

Dice’s author makes no apology that its subject matter is confrontational.

She did not write it as a book to be enjoyed. Her aim has been for it to be thought provoking. 

Much of the legal focus is on the crucial question of consent in trails of the kind Dice is centred on.     

What has given Claire Baylis the inside running empathising with jurors’ experiences is that she has spent time as a researcher for a trans-Tasman jury study.

This gave her rare access to jurors. 

She was subsequently commissioned to undertake the first level of analysis of the results of the 45 New Zealand trials studied.

“How the jurors reached their decisions in different ways was fascinating to me . . .  the ways people expressed themselves.”

It sowed the seed in her mind that germinated into Dice.    

Writing in the blood

That Claire was to become a writer was genetically programmed.

Her parents were journalists in the UK where she was born.

Her father Geoff Baylis’s career covered papers across the country from the North East to Fleet Street where he worked on the mass circulating Daily Mail. 

It was a nomadic life for his wife Linda, Claire and her brother Nick Baylis.

In 1982 Geoff Baylis came to this country to edit Wellington’s Dominion. From there he moved on to The Listener.  

Her mother’s time in the trade at both ends of the globe was punctuated by some years as a teacher.

Claire began writing early. She has a vague memory that a poem she wrote as a five-year-old gained attention.

“I guess it must have won a prize.”  

Throughout her school years she started novels she didn’t complete. She kept a journal and lived with the conviction she’d be a writer. 

“I always thought I was good at English but didn’t do as well as I expected. I was never the top student.”

That she was also a sporty child was another inherited trait. 

Her dad was an ace swimmer who trialled for the British team to compete at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. His daughter followed him into the pool, specialising in breaststroke but gave it away at 13 after a bout of glandular fever left her prone to tonsilitis. Swimming aggravated it.

She substituted it with badminton and horse riding.

“Dad coached badminton so I used to go along with him and play. I loved horses and got a Sunday job in the local stables.”  By then the Baylis family was living in a village near Newcastle upon Tyne.

“We had lived there before and by one of life’s strange quirks when we went back Dad and Mum bought the house we’d lived in previously. 

“I had come back from being in the south speaking with a different accent and got terribly teased for it.”

Coming to New Zealand - reluctantly

She was 16 when her father was appointed to The Dominion.

It was not a good time for an adolescent developing a mind of her own to switch countries. Claire came reluctantly.

She didn’t immediately start school in her new homeland.

“Because we arrived in the middle of the New Zealand school year I got a job as a waitress at the Eastbourne Tavern.”

Differing accents were again a problem.

“I had terrible trouble understanding what people were asking for and they couldn’t understand me.”

When the 1984 school year began Claire enrolled in Wellington Girls’ College’s 6th form.

“I found it hard to fit in, also I had met a boy.”

Creative writing became her salve. 

“I did love English at Wellington Girls’, did some creative writing there. We had an inspirational teacher.”      

Despite this incentive, Claire didn’t hang around for the 7th form, heading to Victoria University at 17.

Academia, travel

She launched into academic life with the intention of completing papers in psychology, English and law. Her aim was to major in psychology.

“I soon found it wasn’t what I expected. English didn’t grab me, the law did. I switched to it after the first year.”

In her third year she was asked to be an assistant lecturer “teaching torts and first year students how to interpret case law. I found I liked teaching.”

She remained at Victoria after acquiring her LLB with Honours, working towards her Masters. Her thesis was on environmental mediation. At the time it was a very new topic.

With that done and dusted she took time out to travel with Henry Weston, the man who’s been her partner for the past 34 years. Claire says they’ve never felt the need to marry.

Weston, who also has a law degree, is presently DOC’s deputy director general of regional operations. He commutes around the country from their Okareka home.

They have two adult sons Jack Baylis Weston and Paddy Weston Baylis. Daughter Stella Baylis Weston is in her final year at Lakes High. They’ve all swum competitively, the boys for New Zealand.     

The Baylis-Weston combo’s early travelling days weren’t of five-star status.

“We started by relocating cars from LA to New York then to El Paso. It was a great way to see the country. 

“Then it was down through Mexico to Central America for seven months of travelling on local buses and staying in rooms infested with bats, rats and scorpions.”

Travel wasn’t new to Claire.

Still homesick for the UK and missing her friends, she returned there after her first university year.

“I found my friends had moved on, they were doing different things.

“I started to realise New Zealand was a pretty amazing place to live and came back with a different attitude. 

“I did things like biking around the Coromandel Peninsula and a student ski trip to Ruapehu.”

In long Varsity holidays she visited Indonesia and worked as a waitress on the Great Barrier Reef’s Hamilton Island.

Creative Writing - PhD  

After Central America the plan had been to go to Morocco.

“But I decided I wanted to come back and focus on writing.”

To keep body and soul together she returned to the law faculty and lecturing.

“. . . Legal systems, law in society. I did papers on gender in the law, feminist legal theory, disputes resolution.”

Several years were spent as deputy director of the New Zealand Institute of Dispute Resolution.

For someone who went on to write what’s shaping up to be a blockbuster of a book with crime at its core, she stayed away from criminal law.

“I had done a paper on criminal justice in my third or fourth year, went out in a cop car at night [for research] which was enlightening but crime didn’t interest me then.”

She continued to write during her lecturing years “But to say I was a great writer is a big fat lie.”

In 1984 she took the year-long Bill Manhire original composition course.

 It was the foundation for her PhD in creative writing at the Victoria University-based International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML).

 Her doctorate was awarded in 2021.  

It won her a place on the Doctoral Dean’s List. That formally acknowledges theses of exceptional quality and those whose work makes an outstanding contribution to their field of research.

Heady stuff for any doctoral aspirant.  

“The original composition course made me take myself seriously as a writer. I wrote a novel and had some work published.”

A publisher was encouraging about the novel but suggested she turn it into short stories.

“I didn’t really want to do that. I wanted to be a novelist.”

She bucked up when her stories won competitions. By then she was living in Rotorua.

“I entered a national one run by the Tauranga Writers Association that was judged by Dame Fiona Kidman and came first and third in it.” 

Dame Fiona also awarded her the top placing in a similar Rotorua competition. “That was really affirming.”

Her stories were read on Radio New Zealand and published in literary journals.

She began work on another novel.

Nia Glassie trial, jury research 

It drew her to the Rotorua High Court where the trial of those accused of murdering three-year-old Nia Glassie was underway.

“That started me thinking about the big task jurors were faced with dealing with multiple defendants and multiple charges. There I was with law degrees yet there were issues I had difficulty with.

“There was also traumatic evidence about child abuse. For a while the dryer Nia had been put in was in the court room. It seemed to be a big burden to put on members of the public [jurors].”

Shortly after the trial Claire met up with former colleagues Professor Yvette Tinsley and Dr Warren Young who were about to launch their second trans-Tasman jury research project. 

The pair invited her to be the interviewer for Rotorua trials.

“While the jury were out deliberating, I interviewed the trial judge. After the verdict the judge and I would go into the jury room and ask if the jurors were willing to talk to me for the jury study.”

Some were, some weren’t.

“Different jurors would explain how they made their decisions in different ways. That was quite fascinating for me. It is a very strange thing to ask 12 people to make the same decision. 

“When I applied to do my PhD I said I wanted to write a novel from the perspective of each juror’s different narrative.”

 How was it that Claire chose a subject as confrontational as sexual assault to base Dice on ahead of other serious charges such as murder, drugs or arson?      

The answer stems from her law lecturing days teaching feminist legal theory and the awareness that gave her of disadvantaged women.

“Also I had seen how hard these types of trials were for jurors.  

Writing Dice

Dice was not a quick write; all up seven years from researching it then typing the opening words to it hitting the shelves.

  “I wrote Dice here at home in my study.  I didn’t have fixed writing hours, I am disorganised.    

“I think my characters came as I started writing them. They developed and became a person.

“I wanted the jurors to have different characters, ages and backgrounds, someone who had grown up in the Maori world. I wanted someone who would appreciate the evidence, I decided a retired scientist would do that.

“I wanted someone confirmed as the foreperson who was not necessarily the best person for the job.”

The competitive swimmer was a cinch for her to write. Claire’s sons began competitive swimming at eight and 10.  

“We were sucked into this vortex, became more and more involved in the swim club. I have done quite a bit of coaching at the aquatic centre and school pools. I’m out of that now.”

She is co-founder of the Making the Difference – Kia Tu Whakarereke water safety programme, working with local schools.

With such an intimate knowledge of juries does Claire consider they remain relevant?

“Juries can work well – most jurors take their task seriously and are committed. For me though juries are problematic for trials where there are a lot of prejudicial misunderstandings about a type of crime. 

“Sexual assaults are one of those areas, so I believe this is a type of crime where we need to look at alternatives to jury trials.” 

Dice may be her first book but Claire’s  committed to ensuring it won’t languish as a one hit wonder. 

She’s at work on another manuscript but is tight lipped about the subject matter saying only that it’s not a replay of Dice.    

“I definitely want to keep having a career as a novelist. 

“As a writer I want to create fiction that reflects social reality and provokes discussion.”

• Dame Fiona Kidman featured in In Profile in 2021. Duff and Pomare were subjects of In Profile’s predecessor, Our People, published by the Rotorua Daily Post.