The list of persons who are selected to perform jury duties has not been updated in years and this is an issue which needs to be addressed to reflect the current realities of the country, Attorney General Anil Nandlall has posited.
During his programme “Issues in the News”, the Attorney General explained that he has since written the Chancellor of the Judiciary Yonette Cummings-Edwards on this matter.
“Only today (Tuesday), I have dispatched a letter to the Honourable Chancellor of the Judiciary conveying to the Honourable Chancellor, the complaints which I have received in my public consultations with various stakeholders in relation to the stagnant jury pool which exist in Guyana,” Nandlall outlined.
“The jury pool in Guyana has not been reviewed in a number of years, perhaps decades. So, the complaint is that the jury pool is quite narrow. Firstly, that many of the companies that form part of that pool, whose employees are drawn to sit on juries, those companies are no longer existing or functioning.”
“Secondly, there are hundreds of new companies that have entered the arena, whose employees are not part of that pool, so their employees do not get an opportunity to discharge this important civic responsibility.”
According to Nandlall, because of this stagnation, “the question arises whether the pool from which the juries are drawn reflect Guyana’s current realities. The principle upon which the jury system is predicated is the trial by the accused, by a jury of his peers. That’s the fundamental principle, that you must be tried by your peers…does the jury pool from which these juries are formed, do they now accurately represent the peers of the accused person, this pool having not been revamped or reviewed in decades?”
Noting that with these concerns having been raised with the relevant authorities, Nandlall expressed “hopefully we can get some action”.
He emphasised that this issue is one of many needed to be addressed to improve the criminal justice system in Guyana.
