Sometimes it is hard to defend a principle

This week a story broke about an appeal launched by Troy Davey. Now to be fair this clip is not about defending a murderer nor is it an attack on the local police so back off and read this piece carefully. This story, about the appeal, is based on an insidious practice called - jury vetting. Quite popular and seemingly widespread, this practice is the way some Crown Attourneys have been ensuring that juries are less than random. In theory every person demanding a jury trial is entitled to be heard by jurors drawn at random to ensure impartiality. Each side, at trial, is entitled to challenge each juror as they appear in front of the judge for selection. It became obvious, last year, that as part of the jury selection process, when the names of the jury panel were submitted to the local Police for a routine criminal check, that some Police Services, as a favour to the Crown (?) were adding editorial comment to the names. This would indicate if the named person was partial to one side or the other.

If the Cobourg Police Service was doing this then it was part of a widespread problem as the practice is illegal and offensive and could pervert the course of justice by placing friendly people on juries. But it is a question that the Police Services Board has to answer - did they do it and have they stopped it? If a retrial of Troy Davey is necessary to correct this practice then sobeit, a price to pay for a clean system.