Bravo Northern Piper. That is what GQ should be.
I think this makes a huge difference. At least half of the time I’ve been called for jury service, it was for a civil trial.
I’ve been called for jury duty once, for a coroner’s inquest into a death in a federal Corrections facility. Didn’t get picked. Guy sitting beside me did. I was a bit jealous.
I did get selected for a coroner’s jury, back in the 1980s. It was quite an experience–it involved a woman who attempted suicide, then changed her mind; and the efforts that were made to save her.
Northern Piper, I’ll add my thanks to those of the others. Excellent work!
To address the original question a little more directly, and expand on Northern Piper’s excellent ellucidation on the governing Canadian legislation, there are two factors that are most directly responsible for the relative dearth of criminal jury trials.
The first of these is that the significant majority of criminal matters are heard in lower level or provincial courts. These courts never sit with a jury, and hear matters of summary jurisdiction (sentences including an option of up to six months custody), or hybrid offences where the Crown has chosen to proceed by indictment (which can be heard by a Superior or Queen’s Bench court, and may involve a jury), but where the accused has elected to have the matter heard in provincial court.
Typically, a common reason accused persons choose trial in provincial court (where the choice exists) is that they want the matter resolved more quickly - usually because they are in custody having been denied bail. Superior court level trials - especially jury trials - take far longer to come to hearing.
Where a matter proceeds to trial in Superior court, many accused choose trial before a judge sitting without a jury because their defence involves or centres around a question of law, or an alleged breach of the Charter rights of the accused. Even where a jury is sitting, a Charter challenge is something a judge alone determines; and they can be determinative of whether a case continues.
For example, a suspected drug dealer is pulled over by police, is questioned and searched, and has his car searched and drugs are found. He is then arrested. Defence will argue that the police violated the accused’s Charter rights by detaining him without telling him why, or informing him of his rights upon detention, and searching the vehicle without justification. If the Court finds that any or all of these actions have breached the rights of the accused, one of the remedies to this is to exclude any evidence seized as a result of the breach. No drugs = no case. Often, this is the only “defence” an accused can raise, thus if no breach is found, or one is found but the drugs are still admitted as evidence, the accused typically will then enter a guilty plea.
Jury trials in Canada are usually chosen in matters where the accused is trying to elicit a degree of sympathy from the jury (provocation, honest mistake, etc.) or where they are angling for a lesser conviction (manslaughter vs. murder, 2nd degree vs. 1st degree murder, etc.). This choice is almost exclusively the right of the accused. There is only one avenue where the Crown can force a jury trial, and that is the case of a direct indictment, where the accused spends no time in provincial court, and all proceedings are initiated and occur in Superior court. Direct indictments are a comparative rarity, and even then it is not unheard of for the Crown to consent to a direct indictment matter being heard by a judge sitting alone.
In my personal experience, jury trials are typically much harder and time consuming to conduct, and are also fraught with more opportunity for errors leading to appeals. When you combine that with the fact that so many of those chosen for jury duty try all manner of excuses to get out of serving, the ratio of judge & jury to judge alone seems to be about right.
It isn’t really that much more common in the U.S. to be on a jury. I’m 60 and I’ve only been on a jury once. Two or three other times I received a postcard notifying me to call the county courthouse the night before a particular day to see if I would have to go to the courthouse to be considered for being a juror, but those two or three times I got a recorded message when I called that I didn’t have to report on that particular day.
Spare Me’s summary of the practicalities counting towards judge alone and away from jury trials in criminal matters strike me as accurate.
For civil matters, there’s the fact that jury trials tend to be longer, which adds to the expense. In civil matters the loser pays the winner’s court costs, which includes costs of the jury and the associated longer trial costs, which is one factor counting against jury trials in civil matters.
IIRC the Supreme Court has ruled that offences carrying a penalty of less than 6 months are presumbed to be petty, and the accused does not have a right to a jury trial. At least under the US constitution; individual states can have stricter requirments and many require a jury trial if there’s any possibility of a custodial sentence at all. Some states have “misdemeanor juries” with just 6 members (as opposed to the “felony juries” that sit with 12).
By the way, welcome aboard, Spare Me!
I’ll add my welcome, Spare Me. Good to have you here!
Thank you all! I’ll be here all week - please tip your waitresses generously!
Thanks for all the great replies. Very informative. It seems that:
-
Yeah, Canadians don’t have that many jury trials, for various reasons, but…
-
Americans don’t have that many jury trials either.
Interesting. Thanks for fighting my ignorance!
In Ohio, you’re entitled to a jury trial if the crime with which you’re charged could result in a jail term of any length whatsoever.
I did some research on jury trials awhile back and came across the interesting fact that an estimated 90% of all jury trials in the world are in the U.S. The deprivation of trial by jury was a key complaint against King George III, and it’s always been a very important part of our court system.
I dealt with juries as a prosecutor many times, and have done so a handful of times as a magistrate. I’d love to serve on a jury someday but have just never had the chance. My wife and I are both about the same age and have been registered voters for almost 30 years. I’ve been called exactly once in all that time, and was excused as unneeded without ever setting foot in the courtroom. My wife has been summoned twice, each time after the birth of one of our children, and was likewise excused.
Most civil cases in the U.S. are settled before trial, and most criminal cases result in a plea agreement before trial. Of those which actually go to trial, relatively few do so before a jury. But you never know, and it’s nice to have it as an option.
I’ll let G.K. Chesteron, in his inimitable style, explain the usefulness of juries: Issue Content Essay | Lapham’s Quarterly
Worst. Night Club. Concept. Ever.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, let’s have a round of applause for Northern Piper, who will read to you section 144 of the Canada Criminal Code, Escapes and Rescues!!!
Since civil matters in Québec don’t use jury trials, getting a jury summons here tends to cause a small amount of fear because you know it’s going to be a criminal matter and you really, really hope it isn’t a long trial about [that gory/upsetting/truly depraved thing] you heard on the news a while back.
I got called back in September and was told to “be available”, whatever that meant, for the fall session (until the end of November). I was told to go to the court house once, where I sat around for 8 hours and did absolutely nothing at all other than chat with other people. I never got called to talk to anyone, and at the end of the day they announced that they had a jury and I got sent home. I got reimbursed for my Subway sandwich lunch and $6 for transit, although I had a bus pass at a discounted rate (yay, profit!).
Since I didn’t even speak to anyone official - only a “bonjour” to the woman who handed me an instruction sheet - I never got to find out whether having a cousin who is an RCMP detective in the region was enough to get me out of jury duty. Though I was unemployed and bored at the time, and I kind of wanted to serve, just to do something!
Ok I stand corrected - but…
I still don’t understand, like the OP, why the ratio - real or perceived - of jury trials is so much much lower in Canada. There are a huge number of cases invlving crimes where sentence is over 6 months, just like the USA, but it rarely seems they are jury trials unless its a very high profile case.
Is the choice of jury the prosecutors’ choice or always the defendant’s choice in the USA and Canada?
According to Northern Piper, in cases where a jury trial is allowed, the choice is the defendant’s (though the prosecution can override the choice not to have one in some cases).
Also, if I recall correctly, jurors are severely restricted from discussing what happens on a Canadian jury even after a trial. There was a trial of a juror for obstruction of justice several years ago where I live and that was one of the talking points on the radio.
This may contribute to the perception that juries are less common (ie they can’t talk to the media, so the media don’t pay as much attention to them).
But the same thing applies as the OP - I rarely (!!) hear of jury duty in Canada, yet it seems to be relatively comon in the USA. Do Americans think they will get a better response from a jury?
It’s just part of the national culture here - a key grievance when we declared independence, woven inextricably into the law, and now a recurring theme in TV and movie dramas. People gripe about jury service, but also know that they just might benefit from a trial before a jury of their peers rather than a bored, jaded, seen-it-all, harsh or crooked judge if they ever got in trouble.
In some 40 years here, only one of my colleagues (in a department of 40) was ever called. On the other hand, my daughter has been called three times (and served once–on a hung jury) in 20 plus years in NYC. She was excused the other two times as soon as they heard about the hung jury.
Americans also are occasionally called to serve on grand juries, although that’s probably not common enough to raise the participation rates.