Editorial | Fix the jury dilemma

Lamenting the unwillingness of Jamaicans to sit on juries, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes highlighted the socially skewed complexion of those who agree to serve. In Montego Bay, at least, they are mostly the poor and working class.

In other words, the middle-class professionals and the wealthy readily opt out of jury duty. This is not merely a Montego Bay problem, but a national one. The law provides loopholes and facilitates the attitude.

What Justice Sykes did not do in his latest bit of hand-wringing over how the shortage of jurors negatively impacts the justice system was to suggest a specific fix, which would include an overhaul of the Jury Act and, as the chief justice proposed in the past, making it easier for judges to conduct bench trials.

In his speech on Saturday at a dinner of the Montego Bay Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Justice Sykes found it “intriguing” that in that northwestern city, the hub of Jamaica’s tourism industry – as well elsewhere along the island’s north coast, where there is a concentration of hotels – industry professionals could not be found to serve on juries. But neither are people who work in financial services, or other professionals and managers.

“The only persons we find – and I’m not saying anything is wrong with them – but they turn up: fishermen, domestic helpers, practical nurses, and so on,” Justice Sykes said. “And so, the burden of jury service falls disproportionately on these persons.” Others bolt through the loopholes, often with the support of their employers.

SOCIALLY LOPSIDED

Explained the chief justice: “So when the police happen to find someone from middle management, from the hotel, financial sector and other sectors to serve, you know what happens? A letter comes in to say, ‘Mr John Brown is desirous of serving and he takes his civic responsibility very seriously. However, our company is engaged in whatever the critical exercise is and so he won’t be available’.”

The obvious upshot: a socially lopsided face of justice, uncertainty in trial dates, and inefficiency in the justice system – a situation that ultimately favours criminals.

While encouraging business leaders and professionals to offer to serve as jurors–as Justice Sykes did–may be part of the solution, it is not an adequate fix. Either people are made to face real consequences for failing to meet their jury obligation, the jury system is abandoned all together, a hybrid put in place that allows judges greater powers in deciding to sit without juries when there are sufficient people to empanel, or the jury system is abandoned all together.

There is no immediately available data on the overall number of people summoned annually as jurors and the number that turns up. The anecdotal evidence suggests that only a small fraction does.

In April, Justice Bertram Morrison was forced to delay the beginning of the Easter session of the St Catherine Circuit Court because of insufficient jurors to hear cases. The same thing happened at the start of the Hilary session three months earlier when a single juror was present.

At last year’s Michaelmas session of the Supreme Court in Kingston, the authorities, it was reported, dispatched 4,500 summonses to jurors. Only 127, 2.8 per cent, attended court.

NARROW THE RANGE

The various reasons, if any, offered for not obeying the summonses were not disclosed. And it is not known if the authorities sought to enforce the law against those who stayed away without explanations or credible reasons for doing so. It is not this newspaper’s sense, though, that there are efforts, robust or otherwise, by the authorities to enforce the law requiring summoned jurors to attend court, or to verify that those who seek exemptions are actually engaged in the “critical exercises” claimed by their bosses. Which can be accomplished by simple random testing. If it were done, it would serve as a partial deterrent against attempts at circumventing the system.

More importantly, the law should narrow the range of people who are ineligible to serve as jurors. It makes little sense for someone of 70 or older to be automatically exempt if that person is in full control of his faculties. If a judge can preside at age 75, why not a juror of the same age, unless that juror is specifically, and reasonably, challenged by a party to the case?

Raising the age limit would immediately add 180,000 people to the potential jury pool. Moreover, it is a demographic that will become increasingly important, given the greying of Jamaica’s population.

It is also beyond logic that the law exempts ministers of religion, medical doctors, dentists, veterinary surgeons, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, public servants, schoolteachers and university and college lecturers, and people in the direct employ of the government from serving as jurors. It means, for example, that 40,000 civil servants and 25,000 teachers are immediately out of the loop – as well as many other people who work for the government. This illogic must be abandoned.

While we appreciate the philosophy of jury trials, the system cannot work if people do not participate. And justice should not be delayed. The courts have held that there is no constitutional right to trial by juries. Indeed, the Gun Court sits without them, as with cases under the anti-gang law.

But in other courts, bench trials generally are by agreement between the parties. Judges, in the absence of jurors, and after a series of designated tests, including the interest of justice, should have the right to decide how to proceed.