Yes, I’m an Australian citizen, so from time to time jury duty beckons. I’m not one of these people who just automatically objects to jury duty or tries to get out of it. Indeed, if you try to defer jury duty all that will happen is that you’ll be required to do it in a month or so. However I am finding out the down side.
The way it works here is you receive a summons letting you know you have to report on day X and will be on call for 3 weeks. On the first day, you arrive and are directed to a stuffy room full of people who have also been summoned. You sit in uncomfortable chairs and wait for further instruction. Eventually the jury coordinator calls roll and refers you to information on how to be compensated. After taking roll, the jury coordinator then double checks which jurors are there and puts the corresponding numbers into a wooden box.Â
When empanelling a jury, this wooden box goes into the court room and the judge’s associate selects a number from the box. He or she then looks up the name of the juror which corresponds to the juror number and says the name into a microphone. In the juror waiting room, we can hear names being called and, obviously, if your name is called in you go. When 12 names have been called, the prosecutor and the defence have a chance to say if they would like any of the jurors replaced. If your name is called, you leave the juror area and sit in the back of the court until later. They do not ask you questions, they just say your number. The selection process continues until there are 12 jurors the prosecutor and defence do not object to. The judge then addresses the jury and explains the nature of the charges and the names of the accused and witnesses. If any juror has a reason they may be disqualified, for example knowing someone involved in the trial, they must mention this and the judge determines if the juror should be dismissed. If anyone is dismissed, obviously the selection process is gone through again. Once there are 12 jurors, each juror must either swear an oath or affirmation. At this point the jurors who were dismissed can return to the waiting room. There are two courts at the Supreme Court, so you may have to go through this process twice in a day.
In theory juror selection is random, but strangely enough the same names are called again and again. I’ve been on call for 2 weeks now, and people are beginning to know and have nicknames for each other – the hat guy, the counting guy, etc. And there are a few names the room knows as they always get called in. Yes, it’s odd that in a ‘random’ process, several people have been called in and been on more than
If you are not selected for a jury, the jury coordinator will let you know you are dismissed for that day. You then have to phone a juror information line, after 5 pm, to find out when you are due in next. Which leads me to some of the negatives around jury duty.
Firstly, it’s really hard to know what’s happening day-to-day. You are on call for 3 weeks and cannot plan anything during that time with an assurance that you will actually be able to carry out your plans. For example, weeks ago I planned an all day meeting with a reference group to knock over a lot of work for the 30th. So of course, the 30th was one of the days I had to sit in the Supreme Court in case my name was called to be on the jury.
You spend a lot of time waiting. If the jury coordinator comes in to tell the room it will be another 5 minutes before the court is in session, you can bet it will be more like half an hour. So even if your name is not called, just attending blows your entire morning.
I’m fortunate that as a State employee I am paid while on dury duty. However for others it i s areal pain. For example, at least 2 of the other potential jurors are chefs. They can’t be rostered onto their shifts at all, so proving what income they missed out on isn’t easy. Likewise for contractors or others who work for themselves.
However this inconvenience is the price we pay for a criminal justice system where our peers judge us rather than a panel of judges or some other means. Not that I’d call everyone waiting in the jury selection room my peer. You should hear some of the whack opinions of what we should do with the Royal Hobart Hospital, but that’s another story. . .