Jury Duty in Guelph: What to Expect when you're Expected
So this actually happened a few weeks ago, but due to laziness and an outbreak of hand foot and mouth disease in my house, I didn't get around to finishing this post until now. Better late than never!
Sometime earlier in the year (February? I honestly can't remember) I was sent a questionnaire to fill out by the Sheriff's Office at the Ministry of the Attorney General. I did not know that such an office existed in Canada. Erik was skeptical and told me not to fill it out in case it was a scam.
It was not a scam. Apparently we do really have a sheriff's office and they deal with court stuff and jury duty in Ontario. So I filled out the survey and sent it back. About a month and a half ago I got a summons to jury panel duty and I said "uh oh."
I did NOT know what to expect but I was relieved to note that it was during one of Erik's times off, so no baby sitter was required. I immediately hit the Internet to try to find ANYTHING about what to expect. I remembered that Yarn Harlot had been called last year, so I re-read her post(s), and found a link to another blog post about it in the comments of her blog, but ultimately none of this helped because going for a jury panel in a smaller municipality is so much different from going in Toronto. No offence TO, but you are really big.
I was so worried and apprehensive about the whole experience because I didn't know what was going to happen or even what I should wear, or what I should bring. The whole week before the date for which I was called I couldn't do anything because I just felt so... worried.
So I wanted to share my experience for anyone wanting to know what happens when you are called to the Superior Court of Justice in Guelph. I'm not sure how dissimilar this experience would be for someone in another smaller municipality, but it may be useful to see the difference between this and Toronto.
First thing is, my summons did not specify that I must leave any sharp things at home, or anything like that, but because of reading about Toronto, I was worried about possible security checks and left my knitting at home. Luckily I have5000 a few books that I never seem to get around to reading, so I took this as an opportunity to catch up a little. I packed myself a coffee, hopped on the bus (as per the sheriff's recommendation) and headed to the court house.
When I arrived there was a line up almost out the door of other jurors waiting to check in. The line went fairly fast, which was a welcome surprise. At the front of the line, They took the bottom half of my summons, crossed my name off a list voting booth style and told me to go upstairs. I noticed that they had a tidy pile of envelopes stuffed with cash waiting for those who wrote in requesting a travel reimbursement ahead of time.
We were told to go to the courtroom on the upper floor and wait. We were not allowed food or drink in the courtroom so there was a group of us hanging out in the hall havin' a cuppa. It wasn't so bad, there were many benches and there was really no rush. We were called to register for 9:00 but attendance was at 9:30, so we had time to go to the washroom, or finish our drinks and generally get settled.
Instead of waiting in some jury holding room, or huge waiting room, we were actually all packed into one courtroom, which I did not expect. The room itself was fairly large but it was packed. We were asked to scootch closer together and there were people sitting up in what I thought was a juror's box, but wasn't. I don't know what it was but it looked special.
So. Attendance. Attendance was interesting. A page (I think most of us assumed she was the judge at first) stood at the front and called out the number of every juror who had signed in. They try not to use anyone's actual name, so they would call out juror numbers a few times until someone said "here". If there was still no answer they called out the person's name, but that was rare.
I'm not sure how many people were given numbers and were unable to attend in the first place, but there were a few double digits, a few 100's she skipped the 200's all together, a few 300s and so on. The numbers went up into the 1200s, but I don't think there were more than 175 people actually there. The most fascinating part for me was that there were actually people who had checked in who didn't show up for the rest of the day. I guess they thought they could just run away and no one would notice? About 15 people were called who were absent, but there were 7 people whose names had not been called, so I guess that's still about 8 people who were MIA.
So they finally get through everyone's numbers (it was actually only about 15 minutes) and we are told that the judge will be arriving at 10. Then, closer to 10 we are told that the judge will be 15 minutes late. I didn't mind, I was reading my book, but there was a collective sigh in the room that sounded a lot like "Oh, come on!"
Finally the Judge, who ended up being amazing and very funny, arrives, we all stand, we all sit, we all listen.
She proceeds to explain:
Sometime earlier in the year (February? I honestly can't remember) I was sent a questionnaire to fill out by the Sheriff's Office at the Ministry of the Attorney General. I did not know that such an office existed in Canada. Erik was skeptical and told me not to fill it out in case it was a scam.
It was not a scam. Apparently we do really have a sheriff's office and they deal with court stuff and jury duty in Ontario. So I filled out the survey and sent it back. About a month and a half ago I got a summons to jury panel duty and I said "uh oh."
I did NOT know what to expect but I was relieved to note that it was during one of Erik's times off, so no baby sitter was required. I immediately hit the Internet to try to find ANYTHING about what to expect. I remembered that Yarn Harlot had been called last year, so I re-read her post(s), and found a link to another blog post about it in the comments of her blog, but ultimately none of this helped because going for a jury panel in a smaller municipality is so much different from going in Toronto. No offence TO, but you are really big.
I was so worried and apprehensive about the whole experience because I didn't know what was going to happen or even what I should wear, or what I should bring. The whole week before the date for which I was called I couldn't do anything because I just felt so... worried.
So I wanted to share my experience for anyone wanting to know what happens when you are called to the Superior Court of Justice in Guelph. I'm not sure how dissimilar this experience would be for someone in another smaller municipality, but it may be useful to see the difference between this and Toronto.
First thing is, my summons did not specify that I must leave any sharp things at home, or anything like that, but because of reading about Toronto, I was worried about possible security checks and left my knitting at home. Luckily I have
When I arrived there was a line up almost out the door of other jurors waiting to check in. The line went fairly fast, which was a welcome surprise. At the front of the line, They took the bottom half of my summons, crossed my name off a list voting booth style and told me to go upstairs. I noticed that they had a tidy pile of envelopes stuffed with cash waiting for those who wrote in requesting a travel reimbursement ahead of time.
We were told to go to the courtroom on the upper floor and wait. We were not allowed food or drink in the courtroom so there was a group of us hanging out in the hall havin' a cuppa. It wasn't so bad, there were many benches and there was really no rush. We were called to register for 9:00 but attendance was at 9:30, so we had time to go to the washroom, or finish our drinks and generally get settled.
Instead of waiting in some jury holding room, or huge waiting room, we were actually all packed into one courtroom, which I did not expect. The room itself was fairly large but it was packed. We were asked to scootch closer together and there were people sitting up in what I thought was a juror's box, but wasn't. I don't know what it was but it looked special.
So. Attendance. Attendance was interesting. A page (I think most of us assumed she was the judge at first) stood at the front and called out the number of every juror who had signed in. They try not to use anyone's actual name, so they would call out juror numbers a few times until someone said "here". If there was still no answer they called out the person's name, but that was rare.
I'm not sure how many people were given numbers and were unable to attend in the first place, but there were a few double digits, a few 100's she skipped the 200's all together, a few 300s and so on. The numbers went up into the 1200s, but I don't think there were more than 175 people actually there. The most fascinating part for me was that there were actually people who had checked in who didn't show up for the rest of the day. I guess they thought they could just run away and no one would notice? About 15 people were called who were absent, but there were 7 people whose names had not been called, so I guess that's still about 8 people who were MIA.
So they finally get through everyone's numbers (it was actually only about 15 minutes) and we are told that the judge will be arriving at 10. Then, closer to 10 we are told that the judge will be 15 minutes late. I didn't mind, I was reading my book, but there was a collective sigh in the room that sounded a lot like "Oh, come on!"
Finally the Judge, who ended up being amazing and very funny, arrives, we all stand, we all sit, we all listen.
She proceeds to explain:
- How the rest of the day/days/weeks will play out. This sounds scary. It is not. We were actually done by lunch time, but sometimes, especially if there is more than one trial, or if it is a criminal trial, the process can take a few days. Ours was only for one civil trial so it only took the morning. I say weeks above because we are all technically on call in case things fall out with other jurors and we are (extremely rarely) called to come back again later.
- That we were only selecting jurors for one civil case that required 6 jurors (a criminal case would require 12)
- The details of said case, who the defendant and the plaintiff are, who the lawyers are and a very long list of all potential witnesses. If we know ANY of these people we are automatically excused from duty, but we have to wait to see if we get called to leave
- When, where and for how long the trial is expected to last
- Any other issues that may excuse us from duty
After hearing all of this, the same page from before turns one of those big rotating raffle drums with all of our numbers inside
 |
| Exhibit A |
We are called randomly, one at a time. A person's number and occupation is called, they are given an opportunity to tell the judge if any of the aforementioned disqualifications apply to them or ask her if they may be excused for other reasons. A few people were deferred to appear at another date because of vacations/business obligations, and a few were excused outright because of physical ailments/disabilities. I sat next to a woman nursing a 10 week old. I am fairly certain she would have been excused had she been called.
So if they had no issues, or if their excuse was not accepted (I don't think there were any, most of the feeble excuses were deferred to other dates) they sat in the juror's box. It took a surprisingly long time to get 6 people to actually sit down. Then we all got a 10 minute break.
Both the plaintiff and the defendant get to choose up to 4 jurors to veto for whatever reason they want. So just when you think it's all done, it takes another 40 some odd minutes to fill all the holes. Then they go back and ask if there are any more vetoes (assuming they didn't use up their 4 in the first round) and so on until every one's happy/ can't do anything about it anyway.
THEN they pick an extra 20 jurors to be on real standby until the trial is over, but these people didn't get a chance to be excused, so I assume they don't get called upon very often.
After that it was all over, and I was home in time for lunch. I did not get called, and that was that.
I was fairly relieved not to have been called, if only because of the little monkey. At another time in my life I think it would be very interesting (so long as the case wasn't brutal in any way). The funny thing is, as we were all leaving I heard a few older business men saying the exact same thing to each other.
I officially deem this post too long.
The End
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