Jury shortage

Amid preparations for the resumption of jury trials in Jamaica after a two-year break, court officials dispatched 4,500 summonses for prospective jurors.

Circuit courts for Kingston & St Andrew, St Catherine, Clarendon and St James had been selected to hold jury trials and the Court Administration Division (CAD) wanted to ensure that sufficient jurors were available.

But figures obtained by The Sunday Gleaner show that only 127 prospective jurors, or less than three per cent of those summoned, reported for duty last Wednesday when jury trials were set to resume.

Insiders say this is the worst response rate in recent years for Jamaica’s judicial system, which has struggled for decades to find citizens willing to take on one of the most critical roles in criminal trials.

It also raised questions among stakeholders about the process by which potential jurors are summoned to attend court and whether there should be a review of the list of persons exempted from jury duty.

A jury comprises seven persons agreed on by prosecutors and defence attorneys, down from 12 when the Jury Act was amended in 2015 largely because of the low citizen turnout.

DISMAL NUMBERS

Twenty-eight people showed up for jury duty at the St James Circuit Court on Wednesday, though 1,500 summonses had been issued, according to the figures compiled by CAD.

In the Home Circuit Court, which has five courtrooms that serve Kingston and St Andrew, the number was equally dismal, as only 34 of the 1,500 people summoned showed up.

Seven hundred summonses were issued for the Clarendon Circuit Court, but only 13 people showed up, while 52 people reported for duty at the St Catherine Circuit from the 800 summonses that were dispatched.

A critical question for Alexander Williams, president of the Jamaican Bar Association (JamBar), is how many of the 4,500 summonses issued by CAD “have actually been served on potential jurors is another matter”.

“There is a step between sending out [summonses] and those who turn up,” said Williams, referring to the use of police personnel to serve the notices.

“Maybe of the 4,500, all that got sent out are a small fraction of those that were actually served on persons who turned up. I don’t know, but that is something that you have to look into,” told The Sunday Gleaner during an interview on Friday.

The Sunday Gleaner submitted questions to Senior Superintendent Stephanie Lindsay, head of the police communications unit, on Tuesday, requesting figures for the number of summonses collected from CAD and served on potential jurors, but there was no response up to late yesterday.

However, Superintendent Steven Moodie, who heads the Detention and Courts Division, said the men and women under his command have “stopped doing other processes” issued by the courts to focus on juror notices.

The division enforces orders and requests – commonly referred to as processes – issued by the lower level petty session, parish, coroners’ and family courts as well as the high courts across the Corporate Area.

It also has responsibility for the operation of the courts, including the monitoring and transportation of prisoners who are in custody.

“They [juror notices] came upon us and we have to serve them to the detriment of the other processes,” he insisted.

“So, it’s the same staff that we have to say ‘hey, don’t deal with those, let’s concentrate on these notices to get them back to the Home Circuit Court or into the other circuit courts’.”

Moodie declined to disclose the number of cops assigned to the unit, but conceded that there are significant equipment and human resource constraints.

Other issues compounding the problem of juror availability, according to some stakeholders, include the wide number of people who are exempted, the absence of street address for a large number of eligible individuals and a “misperception” of the judicial process.

TOO MANY EXEMPTIONS

Under the Jury Act, lawmakers, judges, municipal officials, police, soldiers, lawyers, doctors, registered nurses and pharmacists as well as teachers are among the categories of persons exempted from serving as jurors.

“There are too many exemptions in the law,” one top defence attorney argued, noting that former United States President Barack was famously summoned for jury duty in his home state of Chicago in 2017.

Obama turned up in court, but was excused by a judge.

“How many people do you think work in a factory or the private sector in Jamaica? A majority of them work as civil servants or police or doctors. Get rid of all the exemptions and you get more people to serve as jurors,” said the attorney, who did not want to be named.

Insiders disclosed, too, that cops fanning out across the country with summonses “most times” are not able to find the addresses of eligible jurors.

“How many houses are at 100 Red Hills Road? How many houses are at 2 Cedar Valley Road?” the attorney questioned, noting that this problem is more prevalent in rural communities.

Ideally, each court should have a pool of between 20 and 25 prospective jurors, noted Paula Llewellyn, Jamaica’s chief prosecutor.

Court rules allow prosecutors and defence attorneys, during the jury selection process, to challenge or disqualify as many as eight prospective jurors for various reasons, underscoring the need for a wide pool of candidates.

“If you have a case with multiple accused persons, for example, where both the prosecution and defence would have a number of challenges, it can cause a situation where you are not able to start the case because you run out of jurors,” said Llewellyn, the director of public prosecutions (DPP).

But court administrators have been using creative methods to ensure that the low turnout of potential jurors does not disrupt court sittings.

“What they do is where there is a matter [case] that is to start, for example, in court number three, they use all the jurors who have turned up. When they are finished empanelling [a jury], they go to another court,” Llewellyn explained.

“They have been doing that for a long time.”

Llewellyn believes a “misperception” of what happens inside a courtroom is one of the major issues that are keeping citizens away from jury duty.

“The fear of the unknown,” she said.

Kadiesh Jarrett, director of client services, communication and information at CAD, disclosed that the agency has embarked on a public education campaign to educate and inform the public about the importance of jury duty.

Jamaica halted jury trials in March 2020 after the first case of the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) disease was confirmed locally.

Seating arrangements for jurors do not allow for social distancing, court administrators explained.

HYBRID APPROACH

Williams said the low turnout was “not terribly surprising”, given the challenges presented to the population by the COVID-19 outbreak, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives and afflicted over 129,000 people on the island.

But the JamBar president, like other stakeholders in the justice system, believes the low turnout of potential jurors should not be the sole motivation for Jamaica to move exclusively to bench or judge-alone trials, as suggested by Chief Justice Bryan Sykes.

The association, he said, remains convinced that Jamaica should continue to separate the arbiter of fact or the jury from judges, who are the arbiter of the law.

“I don’t think that a far-reaching decision like that to dispense with jury trials ought to be taken during a period of pandemic,” he said, while conceding that there may be more criminal offences that can be dealt with by bench trials.

Llewellyn, too, believes that “for the time being”, the hybrid approach is better.

“It is my considered opinion that there are some matters that are best left with the jury to assess credibility,” she told The Sunday Gleaner.

The DPP argued that there are some criminal cases that touch and concern communities in such a way that the public interest would be best served by allowing members of the public to be there as the final arbiter of fact.

“I have seen where a legalistic approach, which sometimes transcends the man-in-the-street assessment of credibility, may not necessarily serve the public interest in some very high public-interest matters,” she said.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com