I wrote these songs yesterday in response to this editorial by the Jamaica Gleaner. The paper has published at least 5 editorials since last December, on the jury system in Jamaica.
The music is all A.I. (I have more on that, but for another day).
I have the profoundest personal respect Chief Justice Sykes but I disagree with his framing of the jury question.

The present debate on the survival of the jury in Jamaica is framed like this: abandon trial by jury, or accept the delays which are inevitable with that system since nobody wants to serve.

Surrender your right, or accept a sham of a justice system which frustrates everyone: the victim’s family and the accused who is presumed innocent until proven guilty. 

I reject both positions. 

Here’s a possibility, how about we take the trial by jury seriously? When we have done that, then we will be able to have an informed discussion.

Serve the summonses

The first thing is to summon the jurors. 

To know for certain if and when they are served. 

To track who attends, who is excused, and why. 

Before we sentence the jury system to death. Let’s settle whether the jury is guilty of all the delay we accuse it of occasioning. As it stands, there is ample evidence to contradict that view.

First is the most recent development in Mario Deane case which triggered the Gleaner’s editorial. 300 summonses were prepared for jurors and the police served none. The judge called it a national disgrace.

“How can 300 summonses [go] out and none have been served? You put that together and round it out in your heads,” he said.

Yet, two days later while reporting it, the Gleaner said, “The decision was made based on the difficulty of finding jurors in St James to try the case against the three officers.” What difficulty? In the same paragraph they mention that not a single summons was served and see no problem publishing two manifestly contradictory statements.

Second, in January (2024), Chief Justice Sykes reportedly said the police can’t get to people in gated communities. Which when translated means, no service.

Third, we have this from a Gleaner Editorial: “There is no immediately available data on the overall number of people summoned annually as jurors and the number that turns up. The anecdotal evidence suggests that only a small fraction does.”

Add to that this pandemic-era article from the Jamaica Observer under the heading ‘Dodging juror duty’ said that “of the 1,500 Jamaicans summoned for duty during the current sitting of the court, only 33 have showed.” But buried in the belly of the story we hear from the department responsible for issuing the summonses, “was unable, at the time, to say how many summonses — 1,000 of which were given to the police and 500 sent via mail — had actually been served.

“At the moment we don’t know, we operate on a system of trust. There is a way to tell, but it requires a manual search,” the Sunday Observer was told.

What killed Mario Deane?  

It may surprise you to know that to some people it is easier to scrap a major human right than to figure out how to make it work. 

The irony of it is that it is done in the name of progress. For our sakes, they say.

That cavalier attitude to rights is even done in the name of people like Mario Deane. (Thankfully, Jamaicans for Justice, an organization which has championed the cause of Mario Deane consistently, has also come out against abolishing the jury).  

What however killed Mario Deane? Why are the police on trial?

Was it the decision of a police officer to keep him in custody an extra couple hours instead of processing his bail because he made a comment she did not like?

Was a decision to put him in a cell with mentally ill cellmates?

Whatever the court finds on those issues isn’t the answer. Look further.

Isn’t the culprit the same thing which killed Agana Barrett, Ian Forbes and Vassell Brown as far back as 1992?

Some people call it ‘the system?’

That label however is very wrong. What we face is an amorphous thing which is precisely a lack of system. 

What’s most destructive about it is how forcefully it engages the life and liberty of citizens with no rhyme or reason of how to deal with them justly and in accordance with any ideal.

We are ruled by whims of powerful people and a policy of ‘lawd it look bad now’. 

Agana Barrett’s death came at the end of a series of eye rolls at his rights of the citizen. The court noted, for example, that after his arrest, prior to him being caged, the police took his finger prints “contrary to the finger prints Act”.

The watch word of every act of brutality meted out against the Jamaican people has always been “efficiency.”

There is a dangerous paternalism in the Jamaican state which we see easily in the police, but miss elsewhere. This sense of we know best. Sit down boy. They don’t need all that. They won’t die.

That’s what they say, and then we die.

I am opposed to a ‘shoot first and ask questions later’, ‘justice demands it’ model of justice which combines ruthlessness, when derogating from citizen’s rights, with a paradoxically toothlessness when state actors refuse to simply do their work.

1. Access to gated communities curbing take0up of jurors - Sykes (Gleaner)

2. Dodging jury duty - (Jamaica Observer) - November 6, 2022

3. Why Jurors shun court - (Jamaica Observer) - January 15, 2023

4. Editorial | Fix the jury dilemma (Gleaner) - December 7, 2023

5. Editorial | Jury system debate (Gleaner) - March 11, 2024

6. Editorial | Prevent Bad Faith Juries (Gleaner) - March 18, 2024

7. Editorial | More on juries, please (Gleaner) - March 24, 2024

8. Editorial | Start Bench Trial Debate (Gleaner) - November 20, 2024