Poor dominate jury
April 26, 2007
A former prosecutor said it was his observation that most educated Jamaicans do not serve as jurors. He said many jurors often submit medical certificates from accommodating doctors to excuse them this duty.
I have a friend, a doctor, who once told me, "When Circuit comes around I have a quota of medicals that I prepare ... no more than 20 juror excuses!'
"I was appalled, to say the least, so I reminded him about Dr. Benjamin who was murdered and the Chinese businessman and his wife who were killed in St. Mary. No Jamaican is safe from these criminals. It is just a matter of time before crime enters our homes.
"I asked him if he would want 12 illiterate Jamaicans who lack reasoning skills and who are in court fretting about bus fares to go home when court ends, to try his case should he or his family become a victim of crime. He said he never thought about it that way. But the truth is, with the exception of Kingston, (in my four years at the office of the DPP) I have never gone out of town on Circuit and have a bank manager attend court as a juror. The result is that it is semi-literates who make up the majority of the jury pool."
No choice
"Poor people have no choice but to attend court or pay the fines imposed by some judges. These people have no money for transportation. The Government does not pay unless they sit on a panel to try a case.
"Many times the victim is the one who suffers as a result of the annoyance or distraction of poor jurors because, when they are so annoyed they decide to spite the system - which usually means the victim. So they don't listen to the evidence. They decide from the outset they are not participating, resulting in things like hung juries in murder trials, and so on."
Added to that, the ex-prosecutor said, is the response of business people to the police who serve juror-summonses.
One police officer told me he went to serve a businessman once and the businessman just looked at him and said, "Come, come officer, you know better than that." He did not serve the businessman because he was afraid his superior officer would have taken him to task over it.
He said: "I have told officers time and again, it makes no sense for them to investigate cases, risk their lives trying to apprehend criminals and then turn around and serve the most illiterate people on the jury list while they deliberately refrain from serving the educated people."
Author: Barbara Gayle
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
