Jury pool needs to be widened – Thomas

After observing the same jurors sitting in back to back trials, defense attorney Jomo Thomas has made the point that the jury pool needs to be widened.

The lawyer was voicing this concern to Justice Brian Cottle at the High Court on December 13 at the close of the criminal assizes.

“The size of the jury pool has always been a point that I wonder about,” the concerned attorney indicated.

In less than a month he had more than one trial before the judge, Thomas recalled, and “I think we had four persons from the first trial also sitting on the second trial.”

“I am sure that all of our jurors love to come to court, love to participate in these matters,” he intoned, “but I wonder sometimes if the frequency with which they are called…”

“With such a small jury pool…it is possible, probably even probable, that at least one juror, unless the Director of Public Prosecutions(DPP) chooses to remove that person, could sit in the 12 matters or however many matters we do,” he posited.

Therefore he expressed that a consideration may be for the jury pool to be enlarged from 48 to 96 persons.

“Which would mean that statistically a persons likelihood of getting called would not be so frequent as we see so often,” he concluded.