The discharge of citizenship through jury duty is perhaps the most powerful expression of service to your country, writes ELAINE BYRNE
JURY DUTY invokes images of Sidney Lumet's 1957 classic film, 12 Angry Men. The movie powerfully examines the entrenched prejudices of the all-male, middle- aged and middle-class jury. In a seemly open- and-shut case, just one dissenting juror initially votes not guilty. He then goes on to persuasively argue reasonable doubt, compelling the other jurors to re-evaluate their own personal perceptual bias and indifference towards the teenage defendant, an uneducated, frightened boy from the slums.
I sat on a jury recently and found myself questioning the Irish jury system. Is middle class now grounds for disqualification to sit on a jury? For those who bothered to turn up for jury duty, it was a frustrating morning filled with inane waiting. Names were randomly selected and the excuses then began.
“I’m sorry, your honour, but I’m the CEO of a large company with many employees and jury duty would cause an onerous time constraint on me at this time.”
The self-employed had the best thought-out and well-rehearsed reasons for abandoning their civic responsibility. The judge accepted their justifications without challenge or query.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act last year showed that more than half of those who received a jury summons in Dublin did not serve. Since the introduction of the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2008 in January, the fine for failure to comply with a jury summons is €500, yet many self-employed are prepared to pay a jury tax rather than incur a multiple of this from lost earnings because of a potential commitment to a long-drawn out jury trial.
The president of the Law Reform Commission and former Supreme Court judge Catherine McGuinness has been consistent in her criticism of the unrepresentative nature of Irish juries and has highlighted the financial disincentive for the self-employed to sit on a jury. These sentiments were echoed last month by the Director of Public Prosecutions, James Hamilton, in his address to the 10th annual prosecutors’ conference.
“At the moment, far too many categories of people are excluded from jury service, as a result of which juries are not as representative of modern Irish society as they might be.”
The DPP has submitted proposals to the Law Reform Commission which is due to publish a consultation paper on the Irish jury system in the coming months.
That a former Supreme Court judge and a sitting DPP would raise concerns in a public manner on the very basic principles of our justice system suggests that something is fundamentally and extraordinarily wrong.
On our jury, a self-employed plumber, cursed his lack of confidence to lie to the judge. “I just felt intimidated, it was my first time in a court and I didn’t know what to say when my name was read out.” Instead, he conducted his business on his prohibited mobile phone in the jury room toilet. This became exasperating when we sat down to deliberate.
“I’ll just go along with whatever ye decide,” he assured us as he discussed backflows, ballcocks and vents to his customers. So, we had to wait each time as he took a call before we could continue. Not that it mattered as he believed that by participating it would prolong the obligation on his time.
Our deliberations centred on a case involving a teenage boy. When his address was read out in open court, the juror beside me put down his notebook and stopped taking notes. He later told us over our three-course lunch in the nice hotel that such behaviour was common to that general area, a place well known to gardaí, as that subtlety goes.
In that fictional movie, 12 Angry Men, one juror put it more crudely: "This boy . . . a product of a broken home and a filthy neighbourhood. We can't help that. We're here to decide whether he's innocent or guilty, not to go into the reasons why he grew up the way he did. He was born in a slum. Slums are breeding grounds for criminals . . . Children from slum backgrounds are potential menaces to society."
The concept of jury duty is based on the assumption of objective and dispassionate analysis. A fundamental requirement is to display fairness through the accumulated life experiences of the 12 jurors.
For the most part, our jury was engaged and earnest in our responsibilities. The first day of trial proved difficult to concentrate. Most of us were distracted by the unfamiliar legal terminology and pageantry of the court proceedings. Bearing intimate witness to our justice system was at times uncomfortable viewing. Garda evidence was littered with contractions and admissions of “that was an error on my part, your honour”.
The teenage boy sat impassively throughout, alone and without any visible support from parents or guardians. In evidence, he spoke like a well-weathered man, long naked of any lingering leftovers of childhood innocence.
The discharge of citizenship through jury duty is perhaps the most powerful expression of service to your country. Instead it left me with a deep sense of sadness.
But mostly anger.