Jury Panel Selection - Part 1

So, I got selected for a jury panel a while back.

For myself, I was a bit nervous about what the procedures were - so I searched the web for information. About the only info I could find was a nice post at some forum that had really good info from someone that had been selected for a civil jury panel.

Since I really appreciated that person's post, I thought I'd note my experience for others interested in learning about the procedure involved in jury panel selection for criminal trials in BC (or at least at New Westminster). Since this is a fairly long tale for a blog post, I'll probably break it into two or three shorter posts.

It started with the typical letter in the mail from the Sheriff's office. This wasn't the first time I had been selected - the first time I was just starting full time school and was excused. This time, since I had a fairly legitimate excuse to avoid it (I was a groomsman in wedding that conflicted with the selection date) I mailed back my summons with a letter requesting exclusion. A day or so later, I received a call from the Sheriff indicating that I was excused for that month's jury panel selection; however, I would have to show up the following month. (...thought I had avoided it... damn ;-))

How it works is, they send out letters to a few hundred people and out of that they usually get a couple of hundred people as potential jurors for the pool for that month. That pool of jurors is from where all of the juries for the criminal trials that require a jury for that month are selected.

More on the actual jury selection process and more later...