Jury system flawed

Among the things touted as our responsibilities and duties is serving on a jury.

However, most people who get notice that they have been selected as a prospective juror shudder at the thought of having their lives disrupted to play a role in the court system.

A role for which they are woefully under compensated ($40 a day) and for which most people have no interest.

A couple weeks back in neighbouring New Brunswick there was such a dirth of prospective jurors that the judge ordered sheriff’s deputies to take to the streets and round up more people to fill two spots on the jury.

This is a process that fulfilled the court’s mandate but certainly wasn’t warmly greeted by the people going about their everyday business who found themselves rounded up, put on a bus and driven to the courthouse to take part in a trial where five men faced charges in a case that saw shots fired and a suspected crack house burned down.

It’s safe to say that most people don’t want to be connected to things like midnight melees, shootings and the burning down of buildings. And being picked up off the street to become part of that case is not anyone’s dream idea of how to spend their time.

One of the prospective jurors stormed past a sheriff’s deputy angrily saying she was not happy about it “not one bit.�

Reporters at the scene when the bus was being unloaded said many people looked angry and bewildered as if they couldn’t believe what was happening. Some of those chosen for the task were dressed in their store’s work clothes having been picked up at a grocery store.

The judge in the case said 2000 letters had been sent out to prospective jurors and hundreds responded complaining about the hardship it would bring them if they were on a jury.

That’s not surprising. Jury duty is touted as one of the things that makes our justice system fair—the old “jury of one’s peers� line, whatever that means these days--and it is seen in legal circles as something the average citizen should welcome as part of exercising the freedoms and all that we enjoy in a democracy. They’d likely enjoy it more if they were getting what lawyers and judges get per hour. Like so many such things jury duty is anything but a welcome addition to one’s life. It is, in fact, for most people a major inconvenience and a hardship. Something to be avoided. Does that make them bad citizens? No. These are fast times and busy times and people of every walk of life have things to do. Those things don’t normally include tossing aside their lives to sit in a courtroom for 40 bucks a day while the wheels of justice turn ever so slowly.

Does that mean we should never have jury trials?

No.

But what it should mean is that the rights and liberties of the average citizen should not be pushed aside as officers of the court scour the streets of this nation nabbing people and driving them to court. The irony is that if they set out to round up criminals they’d need warrants to do that. But law-abiding Canadian citizens walking down the street have no choice.

Jury duty ought to be something people want to do and there may indeed be people in this country who take that role seriously enough to volunteer to have their name on a jurors’ list. Some of those people might even like the idea of making $40 a day.

Changing the system and making it work with people who relish the idea of being part of the legal system would be justice. Otherwise it’s just a punishment.