New Electronic Response For Jury Duty To Be Tested

Sunday, January 17, 2010 04:00 AM

VICTORIA - Attorney General Michael de Jong, QC has announced a web-based system called eResponse that will give potential jurors the option of responding to summonses electronically will be piloted for a number of upcoming civil trials.

"By making it possible to respond to summonses online, we are enabling British Columbians to contact the sheriff service from their homes, in any corner of the province, at any time of day," de Jong said.

Citizens summonsed to provide a panel of potential jurors for upcoming trials are selected at random from the provincial voters list and a paper summons is sent in the mail. This step will not change. Jurors participating in the pilot will be able to use the Internet to verify
if they can participate in the jury selection process, rather than mailing in their response or travelling to their local courthouse during business hours.

"Reducing paper use and associated costs ultimately means savings for taxpayers and frees up time B.C.'s sheriff service normally devotes to processing paper summonses, allowing sheriffs to perform other duties vital to court operations," the attorney general added.

Similar eResponse jury selection programs are currently in use in some United States communities. B.C.'s eResponse system will be the first of its kind in Canada.

Once the pilot is complete, eResponse will be available across the province for criminal and civil trials.

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Posted on Sunday, January 17, 2010 04:00 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: Palopu on January 17 2010 10:40 AM

The Great Canadian Justice System.

(a) Pick your jurors at random from the Voters list. This eliminaes those who do not register to vote from doing jury duty.

(b) A random pick quite often gets some people called on numberous occasions, and others never get called.

(c) Once your name is randomly selected you attend court with approx 75 others. At this point in time your names are entered into a can and shook up. If your name is pulled out of the can, you are either accepted or rejected by the Prosecutor or Defence lawyers. Once 12 jurors are selected the balance are sent home. Again some people never get picked.

This new system while allowing potential jurors to reply on line, does nothing to change the archaic selection system.

Posted by: MrPG on January 17 2010 12:14 PM

"This eliminaes those who do not register to vote from doing jury duty."

If you're too lazy to register to vote, you're probably not going to show up for jury duty anyway.

"A random pick quite often gets some people called on numberous occasions, and others never get called."

That is the definition of 'random'.

You're great at identifying problems, but have very few solutions.

Posted by: Palopu on January 17 2010 1:20 PM

MrPG.

Firstly I have been selected for jury duty on a number of occasions (have you)

Secondly. Why should people who dont register to vote get out of their civic duty to be a juror???? Your statment makes no sense. If you dont show up for Jury duty you are subject to a fine, and could in fact be put in jail.

Thirdly. Thats why the random system is bogus. Some do more jury duty than others.
The system could be fixed by having all people registered and once they serve on a Jury have their name removed for a period of time. That seems simple enough. Why dont they do that???

With thousands of civil servants getting paid in excess of $60,000.00 per year, plus benefits, why should I find the solutions. What in the hell are we paying them for????