Well considering the jury selection is made up of a "jury of your peers", the fact the general population is ready to hang everyone without knowing the facts is very unsettling. MOO
Well, there's certainly some truth to that. But reading the comments section of the
Toronto Star or
Sun for any period of time is enough to make one's confidence in democracy a bit shaky (until you realize, as per Churchill, paraphrasing an earlier anonymous maxim, "
democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried "). Individuals can certainly be very opinionated, prejudiced and repulsed by details of particularly unsavoury, despicable crimes. In addition, a great many criminal defendants are unlikable "scumbags" to normal citizens.
The question is, can opinionated individuals consciously set aside their biases or preconceptions when called upon to serve on a jury and collectively come to a decision based on the facts presented? I believe that evidence shows that for the most part, they can. I had opportunity to communicate with two who served on the jury in well-known, separate highly publicized and brutal cases. Neither, of course, shared any details of their deliberations (which would have been illegal), but each said, in his own words, that he took
very seriously the judge's charge to disregard any opinions formed during the trial, personal revulsion at the accused or their character, and to carefully consider the evidence, as a group and with discussion, to arrive at a just verdict. This may be difficult to do, but I am confident that most jurors do exactly that.
In this trial, the jurors had four months to get to know each other. They couldn't discuss the case or evidence with each other during their lunch or "legal arguments" breaks. They could talk about their families, interests, passions, share memories and experiences, and so on, so that by the time they came to deliberate, they had a working relationship with each other. This undoubtedly facilitated their being able to go over the evidence carefully and deliberately. I know from various work experiences that arriving at decisions is much more readily accomplished when the group has a working relationship among the individuals concerned, as opposed to a group of complete strangers.
The time they took (4-5 days) is not IMO indicative of any dissension, holdouts or whatever; it is an average length of time for a complex case where the evidence is very strong in one direction but where there are possible interpretations that need hashing out, and the jurors feel an obligation to go over all the evidence.
The jury selection process in Canada apparently has a feature that I only learned about recently (and I can't find the news item from the
Star, though someone else may know), but a judge in Toronto was recently censured (or something) for overruling the usual process (that I never heard of) whereby the first two jurors selected for a panel sit in on the selection of the third and can overrule that selection if for some reason they feel the juror is unsuitable. Then THOSE two most recently selected sit in on the selection of the next one, and so on down the line. The judge in the media report was rebuked for not allowing this process in a particular trial and this objection was upheld. I wish I had saved the article and don't have the right search terms to locate it. But, it would be a further safeguard against a person being selected who would be too much of a "lone ranger" type and be an obstacle to arriving at a unanimous verdict. I'd be interested find out more about how this works.
