Ambushed in Mall for Jury Duty

[Temjin]

Saw this in the local paper today. Found it hilarious.

Ambushed in mall for jury duty
Dozen Cityplace shoppers served summons, hurry to court

By: Bruce Owen and Alexandra Paul

Posted: 03/19/2013 1:00 AM | Comments: 143
The lives of 12 Manitobans came to a screeching halt during the noon hour Monday when sheriff's officers essentially shanghaied them to sit as potential jurors at a nine-day sexual-assault trial.

Drop what you're doing. Don't worry about work. It's your civic duty.

Justice Gerald Chartier issued the rare order for court staff to hit the streets to round up jurors because the original 12-person jury came up one juror short.

Earlier Monday, Chartier had to dismiss that person along with two alternates for personal reasons, leaving only 11 jurors.

"For various reasons, we've found ourselves short of one juror," Chartier told the 12 new faces, who were marched into courtroom 117 just before 2 p.m. A short time earlier, each had been walking in the Cityplace mall when presented with a summons to appear in court for jury selection.

Chartier told them they would need a good excuse to decline serving on the jury, such as an illness or impending prepaid vacation.

None offered any.

"It's like a form of conscription," Chartier added.

Within a few minutes, one man had been selected to fill the empty seat in the jury box and the remaining 11 were allowed to go back to whatever they were doing before being summoned.

A couple of them left the courtroom smiling, but most were expressionless.

Court officials said they could only remember three instances in the past 25 years in which jurors had to be rounded up in such a fashion.

University of Manitoba law Prof. David Asper called it "odd."

"That's where you get the court to issue a summons and you send sheriffs out to round up jurors... people who have to drop whatever they're doing and sit on a jury," Asper said.

It's almost unheard of, he added.

"Imagine you're standing in (Cityplace) and then all of a sudden you're on a jury. You have to understand once you are summoned, you are obligated (to comply)," added Asper.

"I would call it very unusual."

Legal experts say as strange as it is, it's perfectly legal.

A provincial statute called the Manitoba Jury Act normally gives the courts the authority to convene juries, but it could be used in a pinch for a scenario such as this, said Anne McGillivray, a U of M law professor.

She called the mall scenario "extremely rare."

Asper said the Criminal Code also gives the courts the authority to get jurors when every other effort has failed.

Section 642 of the code contains a statute that states courts can issue summons like this, "by word of mouth" if the courts have exhausted all the normal procedures to convene a jury, he said.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

[Simon_Jester]

I believe the Athenians would do much the same thing if they couldn't get enough citizens to form a quorum for the Assembly: send out guys with paint-covered lassoes and literally haul in citizens to show up. Getting that stripe of paint on your robes was a mark of shame- or rather of being an original-definition 'idiot,' because a public-minded citizen would have already been there.

[Stark]

Citizens discussing policy a bit different from broken-by-design jury selection systems.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Chartier told them they would need a good excuse to decline serving on the jury, such as an illness or impending prepaid vacation.

Getting yanked out of the street while going about their lives because the judge is a bit of a cunt wasn't a good excuse apparently. It is funny though, in a Marx Brothers sort of way.

[Simon_Jester]

Citizens discussing policy a bit different from broken-by-design jury selection systems.

Really? No, it couldn't be. That's just ridiculous.

Chartier told them they would need a good excuse to decline serving on the jury, such as an illness or impending prepaid vacation.

Getting yanked out of the street while going about their lives because the judge is a bit of a cunt wasn't a good excuse apparently. It is funny though, in a Marx Brothers sort of way.

You normally do need a good excuse to decline serving on a jury, though.

What I'm thinking is: what were the judge's alternatives? He had a jury of 12 plus two alternates. For whatever reason he had dismissed three people- we don't know why. If those reasons were bad, then sure, it's the judge's fault. If it was just bad luck (three jurors come down with Exploding Flu on the same day), what's he supposed to do? He can declare a mistrial, "game called off on account of no jury," in which case everyone has to go through all the same bullshit over again. New jury selection, the defendant and plaintiff and lawyers and witnesses have to come back to court and tell the story again. Another nine day trial extravaganza.

It's that, or find more jurors somewhere.

Informally, there was a case like that in my county once where a sexual assault case got mistried twice in a row because of problems with the jury. After the second mistrial, the rape victim decided to stop pressing the charges; she didn't want to go through with the trial a third time. Not a good alternative.

Citizens discussing policy a bit different from broken-by-design jury selection systems.

No, it couldn't be.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I know it's a hassle to redo the thing. I don't know, perhaps it should have more replacement jurors, say two more. But how many mistrials happen because of lack of jurors anyway? It's just that it looks like an absurdist comedy.

[Simon_Jester]

It's very rare, really.

Since the law requires that jurors continue to serve, with very rare exceptions, one or two alternates for a 6-12 person jury is almost always enough if the trial runs for a reasonable length of time.

But if, say, one juror gets ill, another one has a death in the family, and a third one does something stupid and winds up in contempt of court... that's very unlikely, but it can happen.

Suppose that in any given case, there is a 10% chance of one of the jurors having to leave before the end of the trial and the deliberations. If you have one alternate, you're covered. But in 1 in 100 cases, the random 'lose a juror' event happens twice. So you pick a second alternate to cover that too.

Now, you'll only lose enough jurors to disrupt the course of the trial one time in 1000. Is it worth always needing 15 jurors per case instead of 14, to ensure that the 0.1% of cases in question don't run into problems? Arguably not. It almost certainly isn't worth the cost and hassle and wasted time of having 16 jurors instead of 15 just to handle the 0.09% probability that four jurors (but only four) will drop from the case.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

That's the thing, it's truly rare and not worth changing anything. So... we just point and laugh?

[Simon_Jester]

I say "yes."

If there's a 99.9% chance of two alternates being enough, it's probably not worth tacking on yet another alternate juror, and increasing the number of people inconvenienced by jury duty by several percent, just to put another 9 on the end of that decimal.

Although normally I'd think that the court would take any replacement jurors it needs out of an existing pool summoned to serve jury duty. Presumably they couldn't do that this time.

[Zwinmar]

Nevermind the whole selection process in itself is designed for emotion based decisions, not logical ones...

[Stark]

Really? No, it couldn't be. That's just ridiculous.

?

I believe the Athenians would do much the same thing if they couldn't get enough citizens to form a quorum for the Assembly

The joke is that if the US legal system didn't have such a bizarre approach to juries, jury requirements and jury selections, such obviously sub-optimal methods for 'choosing' 'appropriate' juries probably wouldn't be necessary. No inappropriate examples required.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Nice dig at the US, Stark. Too bad this story takes place in Canada, unless we annexed Manitoba recently and nobody noticed.

[Lord Relvenous]

Nice dig at the US, Stark. Too bad this story takes place in Canada, unless we annexed Manitoba recently and nobody noticed.

Shh, don't tell him now. He's fighting the good fight against the 'MURICA!ns.

[Block]

Nice dig at the US, Stark. Too bad this story takes place in Canada, unless we annexed Manitoba recently and nobody noticed.

I thought we'd claimed Canada under the Aumf last year for their strategic maple syrup reserves.