You be the Judge

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Having been appointed a Justice of the Peace at the young age of twenty-three, I have had a lifelong interest in the law and its administration and, throughout my career in education, had somewhat lamented the fact that teachers were, in those days, exempted from jury service. The reason, presumably, was that our profession was then valued because of our on-going responsibilities for the children in our daily care.

Interestingly, teachers are no longer exempt from jury duty, while for some reason, dentists, pharmacists, medical practitioners, mining managers and “undermanagers of mines” are exempt! But that’s another story.

So, with a mixture of anticipation and frustration, I dusted off a suitable coat, slacks, business shirt and tie, (rarely worn since my retirement and “overdressed” as things emerged), and headed off into the city... a trip I’d done daily for some 20 years, but now endured, rather than enjoyed.

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As my retirement became a reality, I assumed that I would, “in the fullness of time”, be called on to serve. Nothing happened. In the meantime, my wife, a busy high school Principal, was summoned for jury service on several occasions.

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My enthusiasm unabashed, I actually wrote to the NSW Sheriff’s Office, enquiring as to why I had never been “called up”, and confirming my willingness to serve. I received a delightful letter from the Sheriff, thanking me for my interest and confessing that in all his years of office, he had never before received correspondence from a citizen actually wanting to undertake jury duty. He also indicated apologetically, that he had no control over the ballot selection system, which is completely random.

However, some few months later, (surprise, surprise), I received a formal letter from the Sheriff’s Office, advising me that I was now on a jury roll, and could be summoned for service at any time.

Within less than a month, I was!!

Good old Murphy’s Law intervened, as the relevant criminal trial was expected to last at least three months, with a school vacation smack in the middle. Now, although I have retired, my wife is a high school Principal and we are obliged to use the school holidays for our vacations.

Knowing that these courts were in the old Mark Foys Department Store building near Museum Station, I entered this once-grand establishment, to be confronted by boredlooking security officers who waved their magic wand over me, made my way through the “doorway of truth” and had my small bag x-rayed.

With no-one to guide me and faced with a bewildering plethora of signs, I made my way to the 4th floor, where, gradually, a group of equally bemused people drifted in and sat down. “Aha!” methinks. “Fellow jurors!”

Eventually and purely by chance, I discovered that they were, in fact, criminals, ne’er-do-wells and their lawyers, waiting for their trials to begin.

No official seemed to know where we would-be jurors should go, so, again by accident, I found myself on the lower ground floor, where some 200 equally lost souls (or sheep) were being herded around on the basis of being “Jury O, R, S, T etc.” of us submitted such statements (so much for civic zeal!) judged by one’s peers.

Now it may well have been that the four officials who took charge of us that morning knew what they were doing, but they gave an Oscar-winning performance of making it appear otherwise.

For reasons certainly unknown to me, the “recorded message” lady with the highpitched, breathless and high-speed voice was in charge, and was clearly in love with the P.A. system.

By some arcane process, our statements were collected, taken away and read (or marked?) to determine the validity or relevance of our various excuses.

Among those actually selected were two Chinese ladies whose English was so limited that they repeatedly failed to recognise their jury numbers, and a young man from Eastern Europe who confessed to me (in excellent English) that he’d deliberately written his statement in terrible English, as he could not afford to be away from his coffee shop.

Also chosen was a terrified young man with obvious intellectual disabilities, who had not told his employer that he’d been summoned, out of fear of losing his job. When invited to telephone his employer, he knew neither the phone number nor the company name.

I now have serious doubts.

The law has become so complex, our lifestyle so self-centred and our society so diverse and multi-layered, that I wonder whether 12 randomly selected citizens, who may be bored, angry, dopey, linguistically and/or culturally inept, are necessarily the best minds to adjudicate on what may be matters of sensitivity, complexity, or otherwise quite beyond their range of experiences or competencies.

Perhaps the recent circus in which I was peripherally involved has jaundiced my views. After three days of being mucked around, I was not required, and received the princely sum of $15.86 for travel and attendance. Bermuda, here I come!

If at least some of us, as responsible citizens, actually wish to serve as jurors, while clearly, many others do not, the “lottery” we currently use and the laborious sheep-herding procedures seem oldfashioned, wasteful and, in some ways, insulting.

As Judy suffers from Paget’s disease, she is unable to drive our campervan, so the driving is down to me. I wrote a “personal explanation” outlining the above and it was duly accepted. “How nice,” I thought. “How sensible.”

Lo and behold, dear readers, just before the forthcoming school vacation, I received another jury summons, again for a criminal trial and expected to last at least six weeks.

Rather than tempt fate by re-explaining that the same complication would apply, I decided to attend court on the appointed date, and to seek involvement in a shorter trial, as the accompanying pamphlet had outlined.

Having cleared the decks of all commitments for the next six weeks or so, I rang the Jury Information Line on the evening before the designated date, to see if “our jury” was required.

A high-pitched, breathless and gabbled message appeared to indicate that we were not required, after all. The same breathless

Before long, confusion and rumblings of discontent were all too evident, not least of all because it was obvious that at least 80% of the flock did not want to be there. These ranged from mobile-toting businessfolk who were “supposed to be elsewhere”, through to board-shorts and T-shirt-wearing surfies who’d checked the waves before grudgingly coming in, to several vaguelooking folk who didn’t seem to know quite where they were, or why. (I have a lingering suspicion that some of them thought Mark Foys was still open for shopping.)

Now, dear readers, as I stated at the beginning of this article, I have been a life-long advocate of our British system of justice, supposedly one of their better legacies.

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Fundamental to it is the jury system, wherein one has the benefit (?) of being

I know I found my recent experience frustrating, inefficient and personally disillusioning.

I think we can do much better.

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Furthermore, it was obvious that among the potential jury flock were large numbers of people for whom English was not their first (or second) language.

Somehow, we were divided into our jury groups and taken into a court-room, where the “System” was explained to us, in our case by a jovial gent who obviously fancied himself as “Rumpole of the Bailey”.

Perhaps more significantly, we were invited to write a “Personal Statement” if we were unable (or unwilling) to undertake jury service as allocated. At a guess, at least 80%

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