WATCH: A number of Albertans got a big surprise when they were summoned for jury selection in a trial slated to last 42 weeks. Shallima Maharaj reports.
EDMONTON – A number of Albertans are facing the possibility of jury duty for a trial scheduled to last almost a year.
They’ve been summoned for jury selection at a Court of Queen’s Bench in Edmonton for a trial slated to last 42 weeks.
Each person who ends up serving on the jury will be paid $50 per day, according to provincial law. Some expenses are covered, including lunches, parking, mileage and bus fare.
However, there’s some concern about the toll such a long trial could take on potential jurors.
“I cannot honestly foresee a way I could survive that way,” says Chris Falconer, who received a summons. “I’d have to sell my house or move in with my father or girlfriend or something and really change my life. It would really be a massive hit on my situation in the world.”
“Fifty dollars a day, $1,000 a month doesn’t even pay half the mortgage.”
Falconer opened the summons on Christmas Eve.
“Is it a speeding ticket? What really was it? Was it a Christmas Eve present? To open it and to see a juror summons I was like, ‘OK, this is interesting.’ Then I read a little farther and realized it said 42 weeks and my heart sort of dropped. Instantly I thought … this is going to be a major hardship for me.”
“Forty-two weeks, what is this?”
He will be submitting a request for exemption, which he hopes will be accepted by the court.
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Alberta Justice has yet to confirm the nature of the trial, but University of Alberta professor Peter Sankoff says it’s quite rare for a trial to be scheduled for such a long time. He expects the jury will hear complex issues and a lot of evidence.
“The length of the trial is usually determined by the nature of the evidence that needs to be called – so the complexity of the number of witnesses and the issues at stake. The other thing that adds length is the number of parties that are involved,” says Sankoff.
“Every party has their own lawyer and they all ask questions and that complicates matters immensely.”
“The judge – in selecting a jury for this particular trial – is going to have a lot of difficulty finding jurors that have the ability to do it, let alone are wanting to do it.”
“What I worry about, to a certain extent, is that the representation of this jury is going to be compromised. I think you’re going to be looking at people that are unemployed, I think you’re going to be looking at people that are retired. It’s going to be difficult to get the mixture of people who can actually do this for any length of time.”
Sankoff says the only trials he’s seen go on this long are those involving complex frauds and ones involving organized crime, when people involved are hesitant to speak to the charges.
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