Opposition Leader Honourable Julian Fraser has recommended that the government establish a board to oversee the process of identifying those eligible to serve as jurors under the new Jury Act.
Fraser, who spoke during the House of Assembly debates on the act, said he believed that the mundane task of verifying the up to possibly 18,000 people now eligible under the new legislation, should not be an added responsibility to the duties of the Registrar of the Supreme Court.
“I am recommending that we put in place what could be referred to as a Jury Pool Board and it becomes the responsibility of that board to create the pool. We have a board for immigration that determines who should and should not become belongers and hold certificates of residence… I don’t believe that as it now stands the persons who are responsible for creating a pool has the time to do it, they have other things to do. This could be time consuming if done right. This does not seem to be a priority job and should be assigned to someone, a board, whose priority it is to create the pool”, he explained.
Fraser said one of the key areas that he believes the board would help to address, is the loss of a majority of seemingly eligible jurors to potentially arbitrary exemptions as has been the case in the past.
“I am being told that the pool as it is today, after all the exemptions… it is a little over a thousand people. I just told you that registered voters are 13,500. What happened to the other 12,000 people? All those people are ineligible based on exemptions? 12,000 people?” he said.
The Opposition Leader also took a moment to caution his fellow legislators and said that in his view the addition of additional categories as a method to expand the jury pool was a slippery slope.
“We’re going down a slippery slope and last time I checked, brakes can’t help you. So let’s not take that track down the road, that slippery slope… if you’re going to do anything let’s do it right”, he said.