Pubdate: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 Source: Niagara Falls Review, The (CN ON) Copyright: 2014 Niagara Falls Review Contact: http://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/letters Website: http://www.niagarafallsreview.ca Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2907 Author: Alan Shanoff Page: A4 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/grant.htm (Krieger, Grant) CRIMINAL JURIES CAN SERVE AS SOCIETY'S CONSCIENCE My column last Sunday advocating the abolition of civil jury trials caused some confusion. To be clear, I am not advocating the abolition of juries for criminal trials. The right to a jury trial is enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for anyone charged with an offence - other than under military law - for which there is a potential sentence of five years or more. More noteworthy is the fact a criminal jury can serve as society's conscience. That's because criminal juries have the power to refuse to convict obviously guilty people. Juries can do this by refusing to apply the law. This power represents "the citizen's ultimate protection against oppressive laws and the oppressive enforcement of the law", according to a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. In essence, jury nullification allows jurors to judge our laws as well as the accused who appear before them. Judges have no power to order a jury to convict. That's been the case since at least 1670, when two Quakers were prosecuted in England for unlawful assembly after publicly preaching their views. The judge, incensed at the jury's refusal to convict, fined the jurors. Four of the jurors were imprisoned after failing to pay the fines. Ultimately, the four were released with an appellate judge overruling the trial judge and affirming the jury's independence. There is a long, proud tradition of jury nullification based on English Common Law, with jurors refusing to convict all manner of people charged under unjust laws or laws prescribing unjust penalties. A jury declared Joseph Howe not guilty of seditious libel in an 1835 pre-Confederation Canadian prosecution. Howe, a newspaper publisher, had been charged with seditious libel after publishing a letter accusing politicians of corruption. He was clearly guilty and the trial judge told the jury they should find Howe guilty, but the jury came back with a not guilty verdict in under 10 minutes. More recently, in the 1970s and 1980s, juries used this power to acquit Henry Morgantaler of criminal abortion charges of which he was clearly guilty. At that time, legal abortions could only be performed in a hospital and only after approval by the hospital's therapeutic abortion committee. Morgentaler, however, performed abortions outside hospitals and without any committee approvals, yet four juries refused to convict him. The last significant Canadian case of jury nullification arose in the 1999 prosecution of Grant Wayne Krieger of Alberta who had been charged with unlawfully producing marijuana. Krieger, suffering from multiple sclerosis, used pot for medicinal purposes. He also admitted to supplying the drug to other ill people. The trial judge directed the jury "to retire to the jury room ... and then to return to the court with a verdict of guilty." When some jurors balked, the judge said "(i)t is apparent that some of the members either didn't understand my direction this morning, that is that they were to return a verdict of guilty ... or they refused to do so." The jury then came back with a guilty verdict but Krieger appealed. The Supreme Court of Canada quashed the conviction, ruling the trial judge erred in forcing the jury to convict. The judge had wrongly taken away the right of jury nullification. There's no way of knowing how frequently juries exercise their nullification rights as our laws prohibit jurors from disclosing information about their deliberations, save in very limited circumstances. Instances of jury nullification, however, are likely rare in Canada as our law doesn't permit either defence lawyers or judges to advise jurors of their nullification rights. Clearly juries have performed a valuable role in the development and enforcement of our criminal law. It's a pity, however, that juries aren't told of their rich history and their absolute power. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom