Kristen Gyles | Jury duty no-shows

Jamaicans really don’t like jury duty. They prefer to go to the same jobs they gripe about at home and among their friends every day than show up to court when summoned for jury service. There is also no one busier and more critically needed at work than a Jamaican called for jury service. The typical course of action, when summoned, is to find every possible reason to be unavailable. For one sitting of the court in recent times, of the 1,500 Jamaicans for whom summons were issued, only 33 turned up to court. Why the chronic levels of disinterest?

Within recent years the focus has been on increasing the $2,000 daily stipend paid to jurors and providing suitable accommodations for those jurors who would otherwise have to travel far distances to get to court every day. That is important, no doubt. While employees summoned to jury service are entitled to time away from work without loss of pay, many persons who are summoned are self-employed and rely on the jury stipend to replace the income they forgo by being at court.

However, it’s not very convincing that simply increasing the stipend will suddenly engender interest and zeal among the average Jamaican for performing such a sensitive role within the justice system. It’s also not very convincing that the court will be able to successfully apply harsher penalties to those who abscond from jury service. Ignoring the few persons who may have been excused, in the case of the court sitting mentioned above, punitive action could hardly have been taken against the 1,467 of those summoned who did not show.

If there is an administrative difficulty with maintaining the official list of electors from which jurors may be selected, it is nothing but wishful thinking to expect that the court will be able to punish the vast majority of no-shows without hurting itself in the process.

A better approach to solving the low juror-turnout issue is to first examine the cause.

SCARED

The issue is that Jamaicans are scared. We don’t trust the justice system and we don’t trust each other. Sadly, the perception held by many Jamaicans is that stepping through the front doors of a courthouse as a juror may put their safety in jeopardy. Imagine doing the ‘honourable’ thing and showing up to perform the jury service you were summoned to do, only for one of your fellow jurors to offer you a tidy sum in exchange for your cooperation in influencing the rest of the jury to return a ‘not guilty’ verdict. What happens if you politely decline? How many would politely decline?

In the 2014 high-profile trial of a popular dancehall entertainer, this is exactly what happened to the foreman of the jury. Sadly, if the bribery attempt was successful, the course of justice would have quietly been perverted and we would all be none the wiser.

Although this is the most public case in recent times, of bribery among jurors, it is certainly not the only. Another stirring case many years ago involved two jurors approaching the mother of the accused with a request for $100,000 in exchange for a ‘not guilty’ decision. Again, were it not for the woman reporting the matter, a silent exchange could have easily been made and the tale would have never been told. Sadly, in cases such as these, the weakhearted may cave in to a corrupt request, not necessarily for monetary gain but out of fear that a failure to comply may put them in harm’s way.

We don’t know how many other bribery attempts have been made among jurors. We only hear about the unsuccessful attempts, and perhaps not even all of them. Corruption is also only one side of the die. No one wants to know they have become the target of an illegitimately freed criminal. Furthermore, with more and more contrabands popping up in our prisons, even convicted criminals are considered a serious threat from behind the prison walls.

How do we solve such a far-reaching problem? If the problem stems from a fear of being targeted, or a fear of corruption, the solution has to address the cause of that fear.

At present, jury trials are characterised by face-to-face interaction among jurors who likely feel the need to try to convince each other such that a unanimous or near-unanimous verdict can be reached. Once this is the case, there’s always the potential for a conspirator in the midst to influence their peers to act contrary to the evidence before them and contrary to their conscience. Such influence, as we know, may be verbal and may also be financial. This is just one of the risks we undertake in a system characterised by jury trials.

The solution, however, is not necessarily to do away with jury trials. An opportunity to be tried by people who can relate to you, your circumstances and the culture that has birthed you, while still bringing a diverse scope of perspectives to the table is important.

The current system, characterised by jury involvement, is a good model for ensuring fair and just trials. However, the problem is that jurors are not turning up. We won’t solve that problem in its entirety either through the use of monetary incentives or through the use of penalties. We can focus more of our efforts on making greater provisions for the safety of jurors and building greater levels of trust towards the justice system and its actors.

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com