Fifty Calgarians who were passing through lunchtime Thursday at a Calgary mall found themselves summoned immediately for jury selection. This rare procedure imported from England was used at the Core Shopping Center to force these people to go immediately to the Calgary Courthouse, a few minutes walk away.
The unusual course of action was decided after the court realized that the panel of jurors originally summoned was not large enough for an upcoming trial.
Too many jurors had been excused due to several factors, said Donna Spaner, a prosecutor in charge of jury selection who was in court Thursday. Among those factors were the summer vacation and the subject matter of the lawsuit, she explains.
This led a Queen’s Bench judge to issue the summonses to fill this gap, explains the prosecutor.
” Clerks and the sheriff drove to the mall and began handing out to members of the crowd […] these summons obliging them to appear at the courthouse. I’ve been working there for 20 years and I’ve never seen this. “
The prosecutor says for sure that a number of people whose Thursday afternoon was inconvenienced were not not particularly happy.
She said the judge did a good job guarding the afternoon as efficient as possible and acknowledging the coercion exerted on those selected at the mall.
A rarely used procedure
Balfour Der, a criminal defense attorney and author of criminal law textbooks, says the procedure that was used Thursday is called Talesman and was brought to Canada from England.
They’re just people who haven’t been subpoenaed. They are picked off the street and brought into the pool of potential jurors who might be chosen for a particular jury.
He explains that it is very rare for a potential jury pool to be completely exhausted for an upcoming trial.
A spokesperson for Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro says the last time the procedure was used in Calgary was in 1996 and in Edmonton in December 2020.
In the case of Thursday’s case, 80 potential jurors showed up in court, but there weren’t enough people to select two juries. The first jury was selected, but the second lacked six jurors, so additional people were needed.
The spokesperson explains that if the people who were brought in from the mall on Thursday are selected to serve as jurors, they will have to return to court for trial.
Trial by jury is the cornerstone of our criminal justice systemsays Tyler Shandro.
The right to a trial by jury implicitly implies that the jury will be chosen at random, that it will be impartial and representative of the community as a whole. Jury management is working hard to avoid having to rely on Talesman procedure.
Based on information from Jade Markus
Radio Canada
Source: Radio-Canada
