No shortage on jury-fix ideas over the decades, but reform elusive
TORONTO — The acquittal in the Colten Boushie killing that has angered many Indigenous people and sparked criticism from the justice minister has cast a harsh spotlight on Canada’s criminal jury system whose shortcomings, particularly in cases involving minorities, have been well documented over the decades.
No law mandates the make-up of juries as long as, the Supreme Court has found, they are “representative” of the community — a fuzzy concept at best.
In Boushie’s case, critics have noted no Indigenous people were selected out of the 200 prospective jurors who showed up to sit on the panel that acquitted Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley of shooting the 22-year-old Cree man as he sat in a SUV on Stanley’s property.
The case is far from the first in which an all-white jury has sat in judgment of a white person accused of a crime against black or Indigenous victims.