Deputy Speaker and Territorial At Large Representative Honourable Neville Smith believes that measures should be included in the new Jury Act to exclude active bloggers from sitting as jurors in court cases.
Smith’s concern was raised during a recent debate in the House of Assembly where he expressed that the new provisions in the Jury Act 2022 create new categories of persons which will expand the jury pool to potentially include persons who may also be bloggers.
He warned that something should be included within the act to assist with controlling who is selected as a juror.
“We talk about expanding the jurors list, but one of the things that concerns me the most is when we do this we also open up a room for more people to be a part of this jurors list, but, there’s something called blogs or bloggers and I’m wondering how we control that with the jurors’ list. Where we don’t know who these jurors are, we don’t know who are blogging so we don’t know who jurors will be and they might be still blogging and they’re sitting on a case,” Smith stated.
“That’s one thing I would like to bring up during the Committee Stage to see how we can tackle something like that. I think it will be a problem where you have a juror who is a blogger, who’s not using his real name but sits on a case and is blogging. So that is one thing I would like to bring up during the Committee Stage,” he added.
Special provisions should be in place for residents on sister islands
Also debating the Jury Act 2022 was Ninth District Representative Honourable Vincent Wheatley who highlighted certain aspects of the bill that he believes should have measures in place that caters to residents on the sister islands.
He pointed to Section 43 (2) of the Jury Act 2022 which speaks to the compensation fees that will be paid to jurors to assist them with conducting their duties.
Wheatley said for jurors on the sister islands, compensation fees should be paid upfront since it is more costly for these residents to travel to Tortola for court proceedings.
He said, “Everybody knows that travel from a sister island to any activity on the mainland can be expensive. The further away you are the more expensive it can be. There are no courts on Anegada. The one on Virgin Gorda I am not even sure is functional. I’ve heard various stories if it’s functional or not, so automatically those two islands are going to have to incur significant expenses because it didn’t say exactly when the fees were to be paid. If you get these things before or after?”
“If you’re asking someone to travel many times from Anegada to attend court, that person may rack up significant expenses just to attend court and I think that would be unfair if it is done afterward. And the same thing would apply on Virgin Gorda,” he added.
As it pertains to jurors being penalised for not attending court, Wheatley said there may be special circumstances that prevent those on the sister islands from attending.
He said provisions should be included into the Act to exempt sister islands jurors from being penalised in such instances.
“We have to be considerate of persons on the sister islands who maybe service during adverse weather conditions. Yes you may say the person may need to call but what if there’s no way of getting the message across, that due to these particular weather conditions here, I am not able to attend,” he added.