Jury Duty, The Final Round(s)...

I'm free.

They dismissed me.

The Canadian justice system is finished with me for at least the next three years.

Now that I'm no longer officially tied to the proceedings, I can confirm that I was part of the pool undergoing jury selection for the first trial in the 2005 Jane Creba Boxing Day Shooting case.

I know some of you'd already guessed it. Have a cookie. You must feel so smart. Though, since there aren't exactly a lot of high-profile, two-month-long trials floating around, don't get too full of yourselves.

When we found out that the twelve jurors had been picked, I have to admit that I joined in with the sense of relief pervading around the room. I didn't have to worry further about a two-month disruption to my regular routines, or what that absence would mean to my co-workers. I can also count on getting some real time off before the year is out -- I'm still sitting on fifteen vacation days that I wouldn't have utilised had I been sitting on a jury for the next two months. Yet I was also pretty disappointed. I wanted this trial. If I had to spend time serving on a jury, this was exactly the type of case I wanted (the length of time notwithstanding). High profile. Complicated. Murder.

Alas.

But what irked me more was that I missed out on the final part of the selection process. I never made it back to the court room to get sworn in. I didn't get to spend time being quizzed by the attorneys, to ascertain whether or not I was an acceptable juror. I was number ninety-six on the list. They got their twelve jurors after screening through the first eighty or so people called.

Saved by the luck of the draw, I guess.

Frankly, I was a little shocked that I didn't get called in. I knew that they had seen the first sixty-three people and only picked seven jurors. (All of us gathered for the second round of selection yesterday afternoon knew this, not because anybody at the courthouse told us, but because we'd all read this article in the newspaper that morning.) They'd picked one in nine people from the first group. I'd felt sure that they'd have to go through at least another thirty-three of us to get to the requisite twelve jurors.

I was wrong.

After we had all checked into the jury room yesterday afternoon, they called the first sixteen people up to the courtroom. After about a half-hour, they called the next sixteen. Ten minutes later, most of that latter sixteen marched back into the jury room. This did not strike us as unusual. If there's anything I've learned from five days of jury duty is that the court system isn't exactly the most efficient bureaucracy known to man. There's a lot of waiting around. There are a lot of false starts -- a lot of: 'The court is ready for you. No... wait... it's not.' Because of this, nobody dared hoped that the reappearance of our fellow pool members meant anything other than the court was taking another break.

Five minutes later, a court clerk walked into the jury room and called for our attention. The court had indeed picked its twelve jurors. We were no longer on the hook.

But wait! We weren't done yet. As it turned out, we couldn't be officially dismissed until the defendant could be arraigned in front of the full jury. The full jury wasn't available. The jurors had sent home as soon as they were picked. We all had to report back the next morning and sit around until the defendant was arraigned in court. The clerk told us to report back at 9:15am, and that we would only be there for ten to fifteen minutes.

Apparently, ten-to-fifteen minutes in 'court' time means an-hour-and-a-half.

It's a hell of a system we have.

Jury Duty, Round II...

Whoever first came up with the phrase, "The Wheels of Justice turn slowly..." really wasn't kidding around.

I understand that the jury selection for a criminal trial expected to last multiple months would, by nature, be more complicated and take more time than an open-and-shut, two-day-long corker. But I didn't expect it would take this long.

My jury panel was first called into court over eight days ago. Eight days later, and a total of ten hours of courtroom time, I still don't know whether I'll be serving on the jury or not.

The first part of the jury selection was merely weeding all those people that had a valid excuse as to why they wouldn't be able to sit on a jury for two months. We started off with approximately four-hundred and twenty potential jurors. It took two days to whittle that group down to about one-hundred and sixty of us -- people who weren't able to come up with an excuse good enough to get out of it.

This morning, we reconvened at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. We reported at 9:30am and sat around in a jury lounge for a good hour-and-a-half, when we were called back into the courtroom. Having cleansed the jury panels of people that have better things to do for two months, we moved onto cleansing the panels of people who had obvious conflicts -- people who were had personal relationships with the victim, the defendant, the judge, the Crown Attorneys, the Defense Counsel or anybody on the list of potential witnesses. It took a good half-hour just to go through all of the names. Twenty people were excused for these reasons. This left about one-hundred and forty of us.

The next step was to divide us into panels of twenty, panels that would be brought back into the courtroom one by one to face questions from the judge, the Crown Attorneys and the Defense Counsel, and find out whether they would be accepted to serve on the jury. It was a random draw. It took a further two hours just to divide the group into seven groups.

I was placed in the fifth of seven groups. The first four groups were allowed to go to lunch, to be called back into court when after the break. The final three groups were dismissed until the next day.

My current instructions are to report back to court at 2:00pm tomorrow. From what I've read in the news, seven jurors were chosen today, out of sixty-three panelists. That would leave at least five more jurors, plus alternates, to come out of the remaining seventy-odd panelists.

I'm not out of the woods yet.

A Surfeit of Civic Responsibility...

Today, is sponsored by the words, "civic" and "responsibility".

Today, I report back to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for Round Two. I get to sit in service; I get to find out (hopefully sooner rather than later) whether I will have to spend an estimated two months of my life deciding on the fate of a man accused of multiple, heinous crimes.

After a lot of thought this week, I made a decision. I want to serve. I made my case last week regarding being excused from such a lengthy trial -- something I felt I had to do to avoid a difficult work situation -- but the judge rejected my reasoning. If I get called up today to sit on the jury panel, I'll be honest with any questions from the lawyers and judge, and let the chips fall where they may. None of this trying to get out of it with any "I hate all blacks, Jews and homos" bullshit.

That's not the only civic duty I'll get to undertake today.

Today, I also get to exercise my right to vote. I'll be stopping off on my way home, to cast my ballot in the 2008 Canadian Federal Election. This is not a particularly onerous task, since my polling station is right on the ground-floor of my building. I can vote between picking up my mail and getting on the elevator up to my apartment.

Yep.

Today, I'll be doing my part for Queen and country.

Thank God we don't have the draft going too.

Jury Duty...

Three weeks ago, I received my first ever summons for jury duty.

While some would have seen this as an inconvenience -- an unwelcome intrusion on ones normal routines -- I was actually looking forward to it. I haven't had any significant time off work since last Christmas, so jury duty sounded like a great excuse to get out of the office -- and, thanks to my benefits package, time off with full pay.

I arrived at the entrance to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice at 8:30am on Monday morning. By the time I made my way into the jury lounge, it was already full to bursting. Finding a comfortable place standing against the back wall, I settled in to watch a video extolling the whole jury duty process. I missed the start of the video and didn't catch the name, but it really should have been titled, "Why Jury Duty is the Most Fulfilling Thing You'll EVER Do!!!"

It was ridiculous. Testimonial after testimonial after testimonial from people of all walks of life, cheerfully talking up their glorious jury experiences. Talking about how spending time on jury duty was of the utmost importance. Talking about how, since our justice system hinges on juries, this was what separated our beautiful, democratic system from those women-bashing, freedom-hating darkies in them less civilised countries. Talking about how they'd been happy to participate, in some cases even giving up employment income just for the chance to serve.

There were times I was literally shaking from the effort it took to prevent myself from laughing out loud. I was afraid I was going to be charged with contempt of court or something. The only thing that could have made it worse (or better, depending on your point-of-view) was if the actors on the video had burst into song.

If you live in Ontario, and haven't yet had the pleasure of being called up, it might be worth the inconvenience of jury duty just to watch this video. It's that bad.

My problem with the video was that it was the exact wrong way to convince me that what I was doing was worthwhile. You really don't have to go too far to convince me to do my civic duty. Just don't blow sunshine up my ass and tell me that doing ones duty is like attending the teddy-bears' fucking picnic. Because duty and responsibility aren't supposed to be a big bowl of peaches and cream. Duty and responsibility are the price grown-ups pay, the sacrifices we make, for maintaining societal, family and personal relationships. Otherwise, we could dispense with the whole "duty" and "responsibility" thing, and just call it "fun".

After the video, and the further twenty-minute orientation speech from Phil (our jury camp counselor for the week), I spent some time chatting with some of my fellow potential jurors. A popular topic was the discussion of our imagined jury-duty best-case and worst-case scenarios. The general consensus was that a short, interesting criminal trial would be the great. It was also agreed that a long, drawn-out civil case -- two companies suing and counter-suing for breach of contract, with reams and reams of paperwork to go through -- would be... less so.

As the time went by, we started to get antsy, and were a little shocked that things seemed to be moving so slowly. We'd heard rumblings that the court schedule for the week was heavy, but it was already 11:00am and not a single jury panel had been called.

As it turned out, we didn't have much longer to wait.

At 11:15am, the loudspeakers in the jury lounge barked to life.

"Jury panel required in court."

The tension was palpable, and all of us sat waiting for the panel number to be announced. Even after all the sandbaggers wanting deferrals were weeded out, there were still three-hundred-odd of us left in the lounge. All of us were assigned to one of four jury panels, any one of which were subject to be called into court when a jury was required. Now it was just a question of which panel was going first.

Ten seconds later, the loudspeakers barked again.

"All panels are required in court."

The court clerks jumped into action, calling out all four of the panel numbers and reiterating that every single one of us was required in court. Three-hundred-odd of us gathered our things and filed out of the lounge, heading to the escalators that would take us up to the courtrooms. I thought it was pretty unusual (admittedly with absolutely no frame of reference) that all panels were called up once. I figured that there might be multiple trials requiring juries and we would be shunted into differing courtrooms.

Nope.

All of us were directed to the sixth floor. And into the largest courtroom in Ontario. I didn't know what was going on, but I could already feel that it was something big.

Once we were all gathered into the courtroom -- a process that took a good half-hour (apparently, herding jury panels is like herding cats) -- the judge entered the courtroom and addressed the assembled crowd. He revealed the nature of the trial, listed the charges and briefly described the details of the crime.

I could feel the unspoken "Woah!" that went through the crowd of assembled potential-jurors.

When the technicalities of the case were explained to us, it became perfectly clear why all of us were called in. We were undertaking in the jury selection for a big, high-profile criminal case -- a case that the residents of Toronto (hell, most of Ontario) couldn't possibly fail to be aware of short of being domiciled under a rock for the past three years.

I definitely got the interesting part of my best-case scenario.

Then the judge told us the estimated length of the trial. Two months.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it:

Two months.

Oy.

It wasn't anywhere near the length of the Robert Pickton trial, but it was bad enough.

After all the explanation, the judge proceeded to address the assembled panels and let us know how important it was that people serve, especially on cases like this. While he understood that serving was a disruption on our normal lives, especially on a trial of such length, the basic fact was that a jury trial could not proceed without a jury. His stern, simple and reasoned appeal moved me -- exactly the opposite reaction I had to the video in the jury lounge.

Obviously, with a trial of this magnitude, there are difficulties with choosing a jury, not least of which is finding jurors that can serve for a two month span. Also, when you factor in the publicity the crime in question has garnered, I have to imagine that the pool of potential jurors has to be exceptionally large, just to find twelve jurors, plus alternates, who would pass through the challenges of both the Crown Attorneys, and Defense Counsel.

It quickly became clear that we were only gathered for the first part of the jury selection -- weeding out those people that had a valid reason why they couldn't serve for two months. People were called up in front of the judge, one-by-one, and asked if they were able to serve. I was actually surprised when the first five or so didn't even try to make an excuse. They just said, "Yes." and were asked to return a week Tuesday for the actual jury selection.

People were being called up sequentially by panel. I was on the third of four panels, so I got to spend hour after hour listening to the excuses people were coming up with not to serve on a trial of this length. I quickly established a pattern. People with young kids, or a pre-planned trip, or serious family responsibilities (e.g., sick parents, wife, kids, etc.,), or were self-employed or not paid for work absences were excused without much fuss. Other work excuses -- that their companies would be put in difficult situations with such a long absence -- were rejected out of hand. Some teachers argued that two months would be a long period to be away from their kids. The judge told them that was what substitute teachers were for.

I knew my employer would be in a difficult position were I to be absent for two months. While the trial intrigued me, and the idea of sacrificing my time to perform my civic duty on such a high-profile case greatly appealed to me, I felt my loyalties to the people I worked with dictated that I had to try to get out of it.

When I was finally called up before the judge, I explained the situation my company was in, having just had a change of ownership and thus in a state of flux, and my vital role on the management team. The judge was fair, giving me a good minute or two to make my case. It wasn't good enough.

So I report back next Tuesday.

Stay tuned...

Edit:

I haven't mentioned any of the details of the crime or the charges involved. This is by choice. We weren't given any instruction as to whether or not we could talk about the fact that we were in the pool of potential jurors for the case, but until I get come clarification, I'd rather play it safe. So don't bother asking.