"THE AVOIDANCE OF JURY DUTY BY CITIZENS IS PERVASIVE, THE AUTHORS WROTE, ADDING THAT THE PROSPECT OF INTRUSIVE BACKGROUND CHECKS WILL ONLY WORSEN NEGATIVE PUBLIC SENTIMENT AND MAY ENCOURAGE MORE PEOPLE TO AVOID THEIR CIVIC OBLIGATIONS."
FROM PAPER PUBLISHED BY THE DAVID ASPER CENTRE FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO;
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Background: In a previous post I asked: "Why didn't Ontario prosecutors examine Dr. Charles Smith's qualifications a bit more closely over the years, pay more attention to court decisions suggesting he was biased towards the Crown and that that his opinions were seriously flawed - or at least share the existence of these decisions with the defence?"
My answer was that some prosecutors cared more about winning the case than the possibility that an innocent person might be convicted;
I buttressed my response with the story recently broken by the National Post that prosecutors in several parts of Ontario have been asking police to do secret background checks on jurors.
This controversy has lead to numerous requests for mistrials and could result in a bids to open numerous cases where accused persons have been convicted in the shadow of the illegal practice which taints a criminal jury trial from the outset.
The Charles Smith Blog is very much concerned with the question as to how far prosecutors will go to win the case and is therefore monitoring developments on a regular basis;
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The Toronto Star reports a constitutional rights centre's call for a public inquiry into Ontario's Jurygate scandal in a story by reporter Peter Small which appeared in Friday's paper under the heading "Wider probe into jury checks urged," and the sub-heading, "Research centre says the rights of thousands of prospective jurors could have been breached."
"A constitutional rights centre at the University of Toronto's law school is calling for a public inquiry or wide-ranging independent probe into why police conducted secret background checks on jurors at the behest of the Crown," the story begins;
""Potentially, the rights of thousands of prospective jurors have been breached," says the paper, which was solicited by the province's information and privacy commissioner as part of her investigation of the practice," the story continues;
""Jurors are innocent members of the public in a criminal trial. They have not been charged with a crime. Nor did they consent to invasive background checks conducted by state agents," says the submission by the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights at U of T.
In May, a scandal erupted after defence lawyers discovered that Crown prosecutors were asking police to do database searches on prospective jurors without their knowledge.
Jurors were flagged for minor criminal records, provincial offen-ces, mental health histories and even their attitudes toward police.
The revelations have led to three recent mistrials – one in Windsor and two in Barrie.
"The searches were a fishing expedition in which the Crown searched all potential jurors with no grounds for reasonable suspicion," says the 14-page paper, written by U of T Professor Lisa Austin, research assistant Kerri Lui and Cheryl Milne, executive director of the centre.
Milne said in an interview that although Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian has launched an investigation into the practice, her mandate is too narrow to address all the issues.
She can look into breaches of privacy legislation. "But what has happened goes beyond just those sorts of breaches," Milne said. "It's really something that goes to the essence of the criminal justice system."
Milne said there is a potential for many past jury trials to be called into question, as in the Askov case, in which a Supreme Court of Canada finding of breaches of constitutional rights led to thousands of cases being thrown out.
The avoidance of jury duty by citizens is pervasive, the authors wrote, adding that the prospect of intrusive background checks will only worsen negative public sentiment and may encourage more people to avoid their civic obligations."
The Toronto Star article can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/article/671149
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
