Jury trials slated for the Home Circuit Court in Kingston continue to be dogged by low juror turnouts with the latest figures showing that, of the 1,500 Jamaicans summoned for duty during the current sitting of the court, only 33 have showed.

Responding to Jamaica Observer questions, the Court Administration Division (CAD) said between October 14 and November 4 there were 35 requests by individuals who wished to be excused. The CAD said, of that number, 29 requests were granted and six refused. It said there were zero deferrals.

The Home Circuit Court opened for the Michaelmas Term in September. Jury trials resumed in April this year after being suspended from March 2020 when Jamaica recorded its first case of the novel coronavirus.

At that time, the CAD reported low juror turnout in the parishes of Kingston and St Andrew, St James, Clarendon, and St Catherine. It, however, said the courts have been able to empanel and proceed with matters set for jury trials.

The issue rose to the fore during a case management hearing for a three-accused matter on Monday in the Home Circuit Division of the Supreme Court in downtown Kingston which was being presided over by Justice Leighton Pusey.

Defence attorney Diane Jobson, who represents one of the three defendants, had chafed at the length of time it was taking for a trial date to be set for the matter which, she said, had been before the court several times since the term began. Justice Pusey, in explaining to the attorney, said the further delay was due to several reasons, including the novel coronavirus pandemic, the ongoing Klansman gang trial — which has engaged two main courtrooms for the better part of two years — and insufficient jurors.

Jurors are not summoned for specific cases but are called for a particular period and placed in a pool from which they are then empanelled for different cases after orientation.

The CAD is responsible for issuing summonses to people for jury duty. Summonses are issued to the police for distribution to selected citizens who are expected to report to the court specified in the summons, on the date stipulated.

Failing to turn up for jury duty when summoned can result in a fine not exceeding $10,000.

President of the Jamaican Bar Association Alexander Williams, who had welcomed the resumption of jury trials, told the Sunday Observer that the low turnout could be interpreted several ways.

“When you say 1,500 summonses were issued and only 33 showed up, you must ask, of the 1,500 issued how many were actually served. So, you cannot look at that statistic and conclude as to whether or not the jury system is in trouble. A lot of times when summonses are issued the police really don’t go out and search out those jurors. Remember, too, people are just coming out of the pandemic, so there may be some reticence in coming forward because they are still trying to straighten out their lives,” the bar association president stated.

On Friday, the CAD said it was unable, at the time, to say how many summonses — 1,000 of which were given to the police and 500 sent via mail — had actually been served.

“At the moment we don’t know, we operate on a system of trust. There is a way to tell, but it requires a manual search,” the Sunday Observer was told.

According to the CAD, documentation which is done upon delivery of the summons which are returned to the courts would indicate what transpired when each summons was delivered.

In the meantime, the CAD said jury trials are ongoing across the island. It said statistics relating to the number of matters on the trial list for the Home Circuit Court in Kingston for this term for trial by jury were not available at the time the Sunday Observer made its queries.

Chief Justice Bryan Sykes has, on several occasions since 2020, urged individuals to opt for judge-alone trials.

“As far as jury trials are concerned, I think the time has come now for us to revisit whether we should retain jury trials,” he said on one occasion.

According to the chief justice, with trials being “pushed further and further back” due to the suspension of jury trials, because of the vagaries of the pandemic, “it is just a matter of time before someone is going to make the case that their constitutional rights to a fair trial within a reasonable time are being violated”.

In this context, the chief justice, while batting for jury trials to be struck out altogether, said, “The executive and the legislature really need to revisit this question of jury trials and if they are going to retain them, then you have to have all the financial and material resources necessary to make it work in the context of a pandemic because it is going to be costly.”