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THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE HAS APPEARED IN THE RECORD ON March 27, 2002

How our jury panels are assembled


The fact that Maurice (Mom) Boucher 's four-female, eight-male jury spans both a wide age and occupation spectrum has more to do with how his jury panel was assembled than how his jurors were selected. While most astute court observers are acquainted with the open jury selection procedure that is followed in every jury trial, the same can't be said about the process and objectives, which underline the assembly of a jury panel. For example, Maurice (Mom) Boucher's trial required a jury panel of 250 people in order to find his 12 jurors. Another 400 candidates were available had they been necessary. How were their names found? It all begins with a constitutional angle.

Constitutional considerations

Ask a handful of non-criminal lawyers why the formation of a jury panel is a provincial matter when the selection of the actual jury is federal and you are bound to receive different answers. There is only one right answer and it has to do with our constitution. Jury selection has both federal and provincial aspects. By virtue of Section 92(14) of the British North America Act, 1867, all provinces are responsible for the administration of justice and therefore it is their right and duty to designate the lists or sectors of the population from whom prospective jurors are to be summoned.

On the other hand, since matters of criminal procedure are reserved to the federal government by section 91(27) of the BNA Act, this explains why the Canadian Criminal Code sets out a detailed process for the selection of an impartial jury, which is crucial to a fair trial. Because of both jurisdictions, two distinct stages are required in order to find a jury. The first one involves the assembling of jury panels. The second step involves the actual selection from the jury panel of a jury to try a particular case. Both stages share one important objective, namely they are designed to find jurors that are impartial, representative and competent.

Sheriff and Chief provincial electoral officer

In Quebec, the process of assembling jury panels is governed by the Jurors Act, which, in each judicial district, is administered by a civil servant, known as the sheriff. Despite a title that conjures images of the Far West, his only other functions involve civil seizures and forced sales of immovable property. Once a year the chief provincial electoral officer sends to every sheriff throughout the province the list of electors in his judicial district. The information is derived from Quebec's permanent list of electors, which has been used since June I, 1997 to hold provincial, municipal and school polls. At the Nov. 30, 1998 general election, 5,254,482 electors were registered on the list.

By way of illustration, the latest computerized list sent to the sheriff for the judicial district of Bedford, where I worked as a prosecutor for 15 years, contained the names of 111,302 registered electors. The list represents 53 municipalities and approximately 440 polling subdivisions

All about mixing 300 cards

Once the sheriff receives the list, he places in a box, in the presence of the clerk of the Crown or his deputy, 300 identical cards, numbered consecutively from 1 to 300 and mixes them. He then draws them at random, notes their number and sets them aside. In the old days, for each polling subdivision, he would manually select the names of the persons on the polling lists whose number corresponded to the numbered cards drawn from the box. Today much of the operation is done by computer thanks to a specially designed computer program. After each number is programmed into the computer, all of names that correspond to the number from each of the polling lists are listed.

One box for English names one for French names

Once the sheriff has enough names to draw up all of the jury panels during the following twelve months he places them in two boxes, one for the names of persons he considers to be French-speaking and the other for names of persons he considers to be English-speaking. Whenever an English or French panel is required for any given term or when a judge orders him to prepare a panel for a specific case, he selects the names at random from their respective box.

In the District of Bedford

In the District of Bedford where the computerized operation takes two days instead of two weeks under the old system, the sheriff requires only eight cards to obtain the required number of jury panels. Once entered in to the computer, the randomly selected numbers produce approximately 2152 French and 567 English-speaking names. The difference in number reflects the rarity of English jury trials.

Second random drawing

When assembling a jury panel for the District of Bedford, the sheriff draws approximately 200 names for a French panel and 500 for an English one. Why, again, the difference? Because the English population is older, he has to anticipate a higher number of exemptions for those who are 65 and older.

The sheriff then notifies each jury candidate to appear in court on a specific date, by means of a summons, which also contains the juror qualification information. In order to cut costs they are now sent by ordinary mail.

Number of candidates drops

On an average day when jury selection begins in the District of Bedford, there are approximately 120 candidates left in the panel, which is far less than the number of summons originally sent. The difference is due to the number of exemptions granted by the sheriff plus the number of summons returned due to changes of address and finally, the number of recipients who mistakenly believed they could avoid jury duty by simply not showing up in court.

As to the jury in Maurice (Mom) Boucher's murder trial, the 12 ordinary and untrained citizens will ultimately decide by their verdict whether or not he deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. Once their duty is completed, they will fade anonymously back into their every day lives just like the tens of thousands of other jurors before them.