One of the most significant civic duties of Canadians is jury duty. As a juror you will be, quite literally, serving as a judge of the Superior Court and deciding matters of great importance to the community. That said, jury duty, is a burden and sometimes potential jurors are excused from serving on a jury due to hardship.
If you receive a jury notice and it is difficult for you to attend at the courthouse because of your employment, business, schooling, vacation, or personal circumstances, you may ask to be excused from jury duty, or to have your jury duty deferred to a later date. To be excused you must write to the court office on the jury notice and explain the nature of your difficulty. Be as specific as possible and attach copies of any documents that support your request (say copies of travel itineraries or out of town job offers). It makes sense to call the court office to make sure your request has been received. Your request will be considered by a judge and the court office will let you know if your request is approved by a judge. If your request is not approved you must go to court – failing to do so can lead to serious consequence.
Some people are not required to serve on a jury because of their profession. Most of these exceptions relate to legal practice (judges, for example are exempt) but some others include legally qualified medical practitioners, veterinary surgeons, police officers and firefighters.
If you are selected to serve on a jury you are paid as follows:
• From day 1 to 10: No fee
• From day 11 to 49: $40.00 per day
• From day 50 to the last day of trial: $100.00 per day. Trials of this length are very rare.
Jury panel members who reside more than 40 kms from the courthouse, and who live outside the city limits, will receive a travel allowance.
Serving on a jury is a serious matter and a burden; that said, it is an honour and one of the ways Canadians can take a part in government.
4 comments:
Jurors should be properly compensated. The privileged civil servant of course, gets full compensation but for the most part the rest do not.
Only Canadian citizens can sit on a jury. It is one of the reasons I believe that non-citizens should not be allowed to vote.
Too many immigrants choose not to learn the English language. These people cannot serve on juries either. It leads to the appearance of a heavier WASP jury pool.
A few points I could relate to you after serving in a jury..
1) The lack of compensation leads to resentment. When deliberations started a decision came down just before the end of the day to avoid staying overnight at some dump downtown. It was not a coincidence.Proper compensation might have changed that.
2) Any information (unless perhaps the jury is sequestered)that the jury is not supposed to know is known to them. In todays information age it is naive to assume otherwise.
3) There were stunning procedural activities that waste time during the selection process. eg; Some 200+ people waited with a judge, full court staff, guards etc. while roll call was done over the course of an hour. There are modern ways to do this that would take all of 5 mins. -Thousands of dollars wasted.
4) One morning the jury was called in only to be immediately released for the rest of the day. Juries should be informed of delays. They too have lives.
5) There are a lot of people who despise drugs and drug users.My guess is that many people have seen families destroyed and people killed by the drug industry. Many potential jurors were visibly angry when asked about their possible bias in a drug case. This was an eye opener for me.
The fairly lax opinion some politicians have on drug use is clearly unpopular from a large segment of society. These people are highly motivated to vote as well.
I agree jurors should be properly paid. Anyway, I gotta get back now to my unpaid jury!!!
Does Canada have an equivalent of Jury Nullification like in the US? Do judges in Canada have as much hate for it as the American ones do?
Canada does have jury nullification -- and the judges here hate it just as much as they do in the States!
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