Convictions may be lost due to secret jury checks

Convictions may be lost due to secret jury checks

WHERE ARE THE GOVERNMENTS, PROVINCIAL and FEDERAL?

What a sick travesty. Jury of your peers? Not in Ontario. What about other provinces? The buck stops at government. Governments must TURF MANY of  THESE ROTTEN PEOPLE THEY APPOINTED TO MAN THE CROWN OFFICES before the whole system goes down the tube!
The story: All about secret jury checks the defence lawyers weren't told about!
The Ontario Court of Appeal will hear arguments today in a case that could lead to several convictions being overturned in the province as a result of secret jury vetting by the Crown and police.
The appeal filed by Ibrahim Yumnu and two other men is the first opportunity for the court to decide on a legal remedy for the improper jury checks that occurred across Ontario for several years, until the practice was exposed last spring by the National Post.
There are at least a dozen other outstanding appeals where jury vetting took place, including the case of a young man convicted of killing a police officer, all awaiting the outcome of the Yumnu case.
Local police services in the Barrie area searched confidential databases to uncover information about hundreds of potential jurors, which was passed on to the Crown.
The secret jury checks in Barrie, which took place in more than 50 cases in just the past three years, have "tarnished the appearance of fairness," writes Yumnu's lawyer Greg Lafontaine in arguments filed with the court.
The inadvertent disclosure in Barrie last spring about the jury vetting "triggered a chain of events that has caused some members of the public to question the very legitimacy of Ontario's criminal justice system," Mr. Lafontaine suggests.
Secret background checks of jurors in the Barrie Crown office took place in dozens of cases, dating back at least until 1996, according to internal memos now filed with the Ontario Court of Appeal. Far from being a clandestine affair, it appears that several levels of employees at the courthouse, as well as many local police services all worked together to probe potential jurors, keeping only the defence out of the jury vetting loop.
Neither the Crown nor the defence is permitted access to a list until 10 days before jury selection, according to the provincial Juries Act. But in the trial of Ibrahim Yumnu and his co-defendants, the vetting machinery in the Barrie Crown office started its work nearly seven weeks before any juror was supposed to attend court.
"Gisele," began a cheerful Dec. 9, 2004 sticky note from Marilyn Frechette, secretary in the Crown's office, to prosecutor Gisele Miller (now an Ontario Superior Court judge). Ms. Frechette indicated that she had spoken to the court services employee (who is supposed to be independent) in charge of the jury lists. "She will have one of the students help her with this and get the lists to me ASAP," said the note, dated 36 days before the Crown was legally entitled to have the lists. Once the Crown's office had the lists, they were sent to police. Hundreds of potential jurors were investigated using more than one database.
The results were turned over to the Crown's office and a colour coded list was constructed to help decide on the acceptability of a potential juror. One of the police officers involved in the vetting admitted during cross-examination in the Yumnu appeal that even addresses were analyzed to see if someone lived in a "nice area" which might make them more Crown friendly. People who had been charged with a crime, even if it was later dismissed, received a "thumbs down," because they might be critical of police, the officer admitted.