Calgarians summoned from mall for immediate jury selection | Hacker News Reader

Calgarians summoned from mall for immediate jury selection

cbc.ca

35 pointswglb19 comments

Seems like a great way to introduce bias and thus create a useless jury pool. Every summoned juror was selected by sight and was in a mall in the middle of a traditional workday. Bravo.

Bias against what - exactly ?

They might represent a perfectly random selection for bias on many issues.

Moreover, bias is probably overstated. Nobody is unbiased, we probably just don't want rabid people on juries.

I don't have that much faith in random plebes, but after seeing some of the information come out of random juries for big cases, it's actually impressive how reasonable and thoughtful most of these people are in the end.

I do wonder about 'unanimity' though, I think unanimous minus one' ought to be valid.

You know what's 'great' so long as it's fair: quick justice.

Trials take years. We need to get away from our bureaucracies and find smart ways to move the ball forward.

Is there something in how Canadian or English courts work that would make it impossible to just delay jury selection for the pending trials, for a week or a month, or however long it takes to mail out the next round of jury summonses?

Because the way this story is telling it, I'm getting the impression that the court is simply prioritizing its own convenience over the needs of the people getting summonsed at the shopping mall, and then compelled to appear. Which seems like the dumbest possible way to implement a jury system, because it completely ignores the legitimate needs of the citizenry to attend to their own lives.

I don't particularly want to conclude that this particular court is poorly run, to the point of incompetence... So I'm really hoping there's more to this story.

The procedure described in the article would not be legal in modern English courts. A court (probably) cannot hand out summons to people on the street. At least in England, the talesmen would have to voluntarily accept to serve on the jury, it is by invitation rather than compulsion. While courts historically did have the power to compel bystanders to serve against their will, that power has almost certainly lapsed.

Is there a legal basis for the jury duty selection process?

It is it just custom and the court can decide any procedure for selecting a jury pool from the population? And if so, random selection from the mall would be one such method...

Can't speak for Canada, but in the US, the jury process is a mix of black-letter law (explicit legislative acts) and administrative law (rules made by the court system under broad powers granted to it by legislation).

Tradition and precedent were the inspiration for a lot of modern law, but we explicitly re-implemented most of it via legislative and/or administrative law.

  > would have to voluntarily accept to serve on the jury, it is by invitation rather than compulsion

Jury service is compulsory in the UK.

"most people would decline a jury summons if it was voluntary, mainly for the inconvenience. Avoiding it, however, is ill advised: you cannot simply refuse and it is a criminal offence to not answer a jury summons without reasonable cause."

- https://www.law.ac.uk/resources/blog/everything-you-need-to-...

> the talesmen would have to voluntarily accept to serve on the jury, it is by invitation rather than compulsion

Of course you've remove an important qualification. Legally-speaking, you couldn't decline, but in practice since most judges recognise that a talesman is more inconvenienced than a regularly-summoned juror, it's effectively voluntary (and indeed you can decline, see this case in 2016: http://archive.today/2021.07.03-080147/https://www.thetimes....). If you were summoned normally, you haven't much of a choice.

Could be worse. The British used 'impressment' which was kidnapping random civilians at seaports and making them serve on Navy ships for indeterminate amounts of time. They even raided other ships at sea for men, including American ships! Part of the cause of the war of 1812.

“Impressment is something that most people interested in history have heard of. The usual version involves roving press gangs of sailors and Marines, grabbing unsuspecting men off the street, beating them up, and taking them to sea. One minute, you’re a farmer, in town for a day. The next, you’re a sailor, headed for the East Indies. As you probably suspect, this isn’t really true. British law restricted the pressing of men for naval service to seamen, and while mistakes happened frequently, it was easy for men taken by mistake to secure their release. Captains wanted seamen, whose skills took years to develop, and not landsmen who didn’t “know the ropes”.”

https://www.navalgazing.net/Impressment

I understood anyone who got their living from the sea. Pretty much any man in a port town.

I can’t imagine being accused of a crime and having my fate determined by a group of people who clearly did not want to be there.

Why not charter a bus from the retirement home or unemployment office instead?

You don't think the jurors might take an unfavorable view of the criminal justice system? They could be just what the defense attorneys want.

Few people want to be there, regardless of how they were selected.

It’s a summons, not an invitation.

depends on the definition of want.. if I am on my way to surgery to remove a tumor, I probably really do not want this.. if i get a letter saying to appear in two weeks, where I have plenty of time to schedule it, I might not want to have to do it, but at the same time want to do it to help justice.

I'd be more concerned about having my fate determined by a group of people who actively seek out and desire jury duty. Kind of reminds me of what Douglas Adams said about elected officials:

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.

To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Years ago, I read of a sheriff simply collecting people in a courthouse elevator and leading them to the clerk. I think the state was southern. This would have been about forty years ago.

In the 80s?

Yes, early 1980s.

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