Welcome to Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! This week, lawyer Kyla Lee discusses the right to a fair trial in regards to a racially flawed jury selection.
Acumen Law Corporation lawyer Kyla Lee gives her take on a made-in-Canada court case each week, and discusses why these cases should have been heard by Canada’s highest court: the Supreme Court of Canada.
After the recent Colten Boushie situation in Canada, there was a huge uproar of the make-up of the jury in that case. Mr. Boushie had been killed by a Non-Indigenous person, but he was Indigenous. The jury however was primarily Non-Indigenous as well. One of the issues that arose in the political discourse that was the fallout of the acquittal in that case was whether there should be more effort made to make-up juries that are representative of an actual population in an area.
The Cornell case dealt with this as well. Mr. Cornell, an Indigenous person who was facing a trial by jury in the Yukon, applied for his jury to be done with 25% Indigenous people. That application was denied by the court on the basis that the jury selection process was done according to the law and therefore it was fair, even though he didn’t have an Indigenous juror on his trial and ultimately was convicted.
This case was an important opportunity for the Supreme Court of Canada to get into these racialized make-up issues that plague juries not just in Canada, but in the US and in plenty of other countries that deal with a jury system.
Unfortunately this was a missed opportunity for the SCC to realize that it is appropriate, considering the history of Indigenous people, to alter the terms of jury selection to make-up a fair and representative jury.
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