Editorial | Are juries worth it?

It is unfortunate that the life of the current parliament will end without the question of whether juries should be abolished and criminal cases tried by judges only being seriously addressed by the legislature.

The outgoing justice minister, Delroy Chuck, dithered on the question for over four years, notwithstanding the campaign by Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, who favours bench trials, for the matter to be discussed. He believes that Jamaica’s jury system is badly broken, and probably beyond repair.

In the circumstances, whoever holds the justice portfolio in the new Parliament after the general election, constitutionally due by September, should quickly fulfil Mr Chuck’s outstanding promise to take the issue to a parliamentary committee for review and public hearings. If Mr Chuck is still in the job, he should feel compelled to complete the mission.

This issue has gained renewed attention given that Jamaica isn’t the only common-law jurisdiction wrestling with the merits of maintaining jury trials, in the context of a need to deliver justice in a timely manner, even as cases become increasingly complex and time-consuming. Add to that the fact of, in Jamaica’s case, the sheer difficulty of empanelling juries.

SWEEPING RECOMMENDATIONS

Last week in Britain, Sir Brian Leveson, a former judge who was asked to look at ways to enhance the efficiency of courts in England and Wales, made sweeping recommendations for the rollback of juries.

The UK’s Crown Court, the jurisdiction’s senior first instance court, which is roughly equivalent to Jamaica’s Supreme Court, has a backlog of over 75,000 cases. This is projected to reach past 105,000 by the first quarter of 2029, despite ongoing efforts to add resources to the system.

Leveson’s proposals for dealing with the problem include:

• Doubling to £10,000 the threshold of criminal damages handled by magistrates as summary offences;

• The creation of a new division of the Crown Court where a judge, sitting with two magistrates, would handle less serious offences, such as lower-level fraud and some burglary and theft matters, where defendants have a choice to be tried by a magistrate or in the Crown Court;

• For offences where the maximum sentence is two years’ imprisonment, defendants’ right to determine where cases are heard would be removed by classifying some offences as ‘summary only’, thus bringing to magistrates’ courts; and

• There would be bench trials only for the serious and complex cases of fraud.

Said Leveson in his report: “It is clear that trial by jury does not always represent the most sensible approach to the resolution of the most difficult and complex cases. The increasing length of jury trials is contributing to the open caseload and poor timeliness in the system: across the range of trials, jury trials now take more than twice as long as they did in 2000.

“Although there are a number of contributing factors, one of the reasons is the increased complexity of the factual matrix of the cases, the expert evidence deployed to establish them, and the increased efforts made to provide support and guidance to jurors. Furthermore, the personal and financial burden placed on jurors, particularly those involved in lengthy trials, is significant.”

CLEAR RESISTANCE

These arguments echo, substantially, Chief Justice Sykes’ case for bench trials in Jamaica. Except that the Jamaican situation has an added layer of a clear resistance to jury duty, exemplified by the fact that cases, and even the opening of court terms, are often stalled because of the insufficiency of jurors.

For example, in April 2023, the Easter session of the St Catherine Circuit Court couldn’t start on time because, despite hundreds of summons being dispatched for jurors, there were not enough empanelled for a single case. The same thing happened three months earlier at the court’s Hilary session.

For the Michaelmas session of the Supreme Court in Kingston in 2022, only 127, or 2.8 per cent, of the 4,500 jurors called attended. Last year, Justice Bertram Morrison, presiding over the Mario Deane case, was frustrated by the fact that of the 300 summonses given by the police for jurors in that matter, none was delivered. He sent the case to another parish.,

Chief Justice Sykes has also complained that middle class professionals, often by their employers, managers and other middle class professionals, such as doctors, generally escape jury duty. This heavily skews the jury pool in favour of other tiers of workers – a problem exacerbated by a wide range of people who are, by law, exempt from jury duty.

In Jamaica’s high crime environment, people fear being targeted, thus contributing to these attitudes.

Of course, the philosophical ideal of the right to be judged by one’s peers still resonates in Jamaica, notwithstanding the fact the Constitution doesn’t call for trial by jury, but for fair hearings by competent courts.

Three years ago, Justice Sykes said: “... There is nothing to suggest that jury trial is inherently a better quality of justice than a bench trial. There is no evidence to suggest that.”

This newspaper is sympathetic to Chief Justice Sykes’ position. However, his argument should be debated and stress-tested.

The courts may have improved in disposing cases, but the justice system isn’t sustainable if part of its foundation is unsound.