Apr 30, 2008
I can understand the reluctance of the legal profession to tinker with Magna Carta. After all it is a significant document. But after 782 years it could be time to take a fresh look at it. Technology at least has moved forward. Is it, for example, necessary to have all the potential jurors gathered together as the barons and King John did at Runnymede in 1215, in order to select the twelve good men and true? Is twelve always the optimum number? If it is, what is the best way of choosing them? Why is it that less then 20% of those summoned bother to turn up?
It is easy to see why no one who has been through the rigmarole of jury selection once, would want to go through it again. Several months ago I got a summons to attend for jury service, and since I had waited 78 years for such an invitation I was keen to go. I happened to know where the high court building is, and of a bus that happened to run near it. It meant leaving home more than an hour beforehand, but that seemed preferable to trying to find a carpark anywhere near the courthouse. When I got there I had to walk right round the building to find the cleverly concealed entrance, but I still managed to be a few minutes early. I was directed to a room where about 140 people were already seated. A few more wandered in over the next twenty minutes or so.
Presently a court official came in with a list of names, and proceeded to call the roll. Some folk with foreign names had difficulty recognising themselves from the official’s pronunciation, and failed to respond. It occurred to me that I could have answered for several of them if I had cared to, for the official didn’t know any of us, and we had not been asked for any means of identification when we came in. Of course passports and drivers’ licences were perhaps not common in King John’s day. Neither were PINs or other such devices for personal identification, but one might have expected us to have moved on since then.
At the end of the roll call the official called for those whose names had not been called, to come up to the front, and of course they included some of those with foreign names, as well as some who had been summoned for some other day, but whose credentials were apparently not appropriate for today’s trials. They were sent away.
Next we were shown a video of a jury being selected, and asked if we could understand it. Those who understood the question and admitted to having difficulty in comprehending the English of the video were brought forward and likewise dismissed.
All this took something over an hour, and we were then ready to start the process for the selection of the twelve jurors who would attend the first of the three trials set down for that day. The procedure is most impressive. The official took a stack of little cards, which I presume had our names written on them, and put them into a beautifully crafted little octagonal wooden drum, from which, after spinning it several times he withdrew about twenty cards, and read out the names on them. I wonder how effective this device is at randomising names, and whether a computer could not be programmed to do it better, but the little drum made a delightful spectacle and lent an air of other worldliness to the proceedings. The chosen names were then led away upstairs to undergo further selection from which a few of them straggled back after twenty minutes or so.
The rest of us went through this pantomime twice more before we got to the courtroom. There our names were called one by one, and each in turn was required to parade up into the jury box, to try to be seated there before one of the legal counsel had time to object to his inclusion. Since no one knew anyone else, the objections appeared to be based on some sort of prejudice against the appearance of the juror in question. I was not one of those chosen so was allowed to return home, arriving there only six hours after I had left.
Are juries the best way of achieving justice anyhow? In our polyglot society a dozen Joe Blows brought in at random off an Auckland street have little enough in common with one another, let alone with the English barons of 1215. The accused today is not being tried by his “peers”. He may have nothing whatsoever in common with the jurors who decide his fate. Further, in our culturally diverse society there are many who regard it as very ill-mannered to volunteer an opinion in front of strangers, particularly if a contrary opinion has already been put forward. How then is a jury to arrive at a meaningful consensus?
If we must continue with the jury system, there are a number of ways it could be improved. The summons could include a PIN so that the recipient could communicate with the court officials by telephone, and discuss such matters as English language competence or familiarity with other people likely to be involved in the trial. If the prospective jurors must be gathered in one place, let it be at a shopping mall or some similar place where there is good access and an abundance of parking, rather than at a courthouse which, whatever its convenience for lawyers and officials, is a “pole of inaccessibility” for the general public. Chosen jurors could be transported to the courthouse by bus. Furthermore, on arrival at the place of selection, jurors could be asked to provide ID just as they are at airports. Selection could then be done instantaneously by computer.
Since jurors are required to put aside any prejudices they may have with respect to the accused, it is difficult to see the justification for allowing counsel to arbitrarily object to particular jurors without stating any grounds for their objection.
King John was renowned mainly as a tyrant, but do we need to retain his tactics after all these years. No wonder less than 20% of jurors summoned bother to turn up for duty.