PSY 3173 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Indictable Offence, Summary Offence, Authoritarianism
28 Apr 2018
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Department
Course
Professor
February 1, 2017
Juries: Fact Finders
Learning Objectives
Describe how jurors are selected
Distinguish between representativeness and impartiality
Describe the effects of pretrial publicity and how to deal with it
Outline the stages to reaching a verdict
Describe variables examined to predict verdict
The Right to a Jury Trial
In hybrid offences, the Crown decides to pursue the case as a summary or indictable offence
For very serious indictable offences, judge alone can be selected if both the attorney general and the judge agree
Selecting a Jury
Selected from list: randomly selected from the population
Become part of jury pool
-Can be jailed or fined up to $1000 for failing to show up for jury duty
-Peremptory challenges: can reject the juror for no specific reason, limited number of challenges
-Challenge for cause: can ask questions to determine whether or not the juror is eligible
•Can’t be related to the defendant
•Can’t have pre-existing biases, prejudices, or attitudes
•Cannot be connected to the defendant in some way
-Ex. Gillian Guess became romantically involved with the defendant while she was a juror in his murder trial.
Set legal precedent in three areas in Canadian law. She was charged with obstruction of justice.
Selected as juror
Type of Offence
Right to Judge Alone
Right to Judge and Jury
Summary offences
Yes
No
Indictable offences
Yes
Yes
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February 1, 2017
Characteristics of a Jury
Representativeness: a jury composition that represents the community where the crime occurred
-Accomplished by random selection (ex. randomly drawing names from the voter registry)
Impartiality: a characteristic of jurors who are unbiased
-Threats to impartiality:
•Negative pretrial publicity related to an increased number of guilty verdicts
-Possible solution: publication bans - decrease pretrial publicity that can bias jurors
•Emotions that pretrial publicity raises are remembered, while factual information tends to be forgotten
-Retroactive memory falsification
-Stern’s reality experiment: forget facts, remember emotions
-Increasing impartiality:
•Change of venue: moving a trial to a community other than the one in which the crime occurred
-Rarely used
-Party requesting the change of venue must be able to demonstrate the the community is prejudiced against
the defendant
•Adjournment: delaying the trial allows the bias to dissipate
-Rarely used
-Delaying the trial can cause witness memories to fade
-Can also allow witnesses to leave town or die
•Challenge for cause: an option to reject biased jurors
-Two triers selected from the jury pool will decide whether or not the juror in question is biased, based on the
answers provided to questions by the lawyers or judge
Jury Faults
CSI effects: jurors might be more likely to find the defendant guilty if the procedures and techniques from television
are used in real life
•Jurors now expect that sometimes unnecessary and expensive tests be performed, and they may acquit
defendants if these tests were not performed
Jury Functions
Wisdom of 12 (instead of 1)
Conscience of the community
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Document Summary
Describe the effects of pretrial publicity and how to deal with it. In hybrid offences, the crown decides to pursue the case as a summary or indictable offence. For very serious indictable offences, judge alone can be selected if both the attorney general and the judge agree. Selected from list: randomly selected from the population. Can be jailed or ned up to for failing to show up for jury duty. Peremptory challenges: can reject the juror for no speci c reason, limited number of challenges. Challenge for cause: can ask questions to determine whether or not the juror is eligible: can"t be related to the defendant, can"t have pre-existing biases, prejudices, or attitudes, cannot be connected to the defendant in some way. Gillian guess became romantically involved with the defendant while she was a juror in his murder trial. Set legal precedent in three areas in canadian law.
