ROBERT MATAS
Globe and Mail
December 9, 2006
VANCOUVER -- They have waited for years for the start of the trial of Robert Pickton on charges of murdering their daughter, Marnie Frey.
But as the process of jury selection for the Pickton trial begins today, Lynn and Rick Frey are angrier than ever. Time heals nothing, Mr. Frey said in an interview from his home on Vancouver Island.
They had to push authorities to investigate their daughter's disappearance in 1997, he said.
They had to prod officials to find out what happened to their daughter after Mr. Pickton was arrested in 2002.
Now they are fighting over whether the coroner can issue a death certificate and when their daughter's remains will be handed over to them. The family has been told her remains will not be available until after the court case. "We do not know where our daughter's remains are," he said. "Locked up in some little closet in some warehouse or something, probably."
The sensational case moves into a new phase with the start of the selection of the jury, almost five years after Mr. Pickton's arrest.
Mr. Pickton, 57, has been charged with murder in the deaths of 26 women. Most of them worked as prostitutes in Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside. The charges were split into two groups, and Mr. Pickton faces a trial involving six charges beginning Jan. 8.
The search for 12 impartial jurors begins this morning under tight security with as many as 600 people expected at the courthouse in New Westminster.
© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Saturday, December 9
Friday, December 8
Trial set to begin for pig farmer who could be Canada's worst serial killer
The Associated Press
Friday, December 8, 2006
VANCOUVER, British Columbia
The women began disappearing from Vancouver's seediest streets in the 1980s, hookers and dope addicts abandoned on the margins of society. Desperate friends and families were outraged when the police appeared to do little to find them.
Now, the man accused of murdering at least 26 of those missing women is finally going to trial. Jury selection was to begin Saturday for the case against Robert "Willie" Pickton, a pig farmer who, if convicted of all the murders, would become the worst serial killer in Canadian history.
Some 600 potential jurors were being called in Saturday. Justice James Williams has ruled that the trial will be divided into two parts, with the first six counts being tried first.
The gruesome allegations against Pickton fall under a publication ban which prevents the media from revealing details of the alleged crimes until opening arguments on Jan. 8.
Journalists covering the preliminary hearings have been so haunted by the courtroom revelations that some have sought psychological help to deal with their anxiety and nightmares.
What can be reported is that Pickton, 56, was arrested in February 2002 by police investigating the disappearances of sex-trade workers from Vancouver's grubby Downtown Eastside district.
Health officials later issued a tainted-meat advisory to neighbors who may have bought pork from his farm, concerned the meat may have contained human remains.
Pickton and his brother, Dave, used to throw parties at the hog farm in a barn they had dubbed the "Piggy Palace," telling neighbors they were raising money for charity. Investigators, however, have said the parties were drunken raves with prostitutes and plenty of drugs and booze.
After Pickton was arrested and the first traces of DNA of some of the missing women were allegedly found on the farm, the buildings were razed and the province spent an estimated C$70 million (US$61, or €45) to excavate and sift through acres (hectares) of soil looking for bones and other evidence.
Friends and family of the missing women say those who survived tell horror stories about what took place at the 7-hectare (17-acre) pig farm outside Vancouver in Port Coquitlam.
"We deal with stories out here that would blow your mind; this story is just the apex," said the Rev. Ruth Wright of the First United Church in the heart of the Downtown Eastside, the most impoverished neighborhood in all of Canada, where the average life span does not even reach 40.
She knew seven of the victims in her decade of work in the neighborhood, where heroin addicts and sex workers line up in front of her mission for a hot meal, a foot bath or free toiletries, to sleep on the church pews, or seek legal advice and help finding a job.
"I deal with it quite well, until somebody from the outside like you comes along," Wright said when asked how she copes with the loss. "I know that tonight I will have the dreams."
Wright remembers with sadness Sereena Abotsway, a sweet-faced prostitute who was 29 when she disappeared in August 2001, shortly after marching at the front of a parade demanding the city help find the missing women. Though the publication ban prevents reporting the details of what prosecutors believe happened to Abotsway, the first count of murder against Pickton is in her name and investigators have said that her DNA was found on the farm.
"She was very childlike, very gentle," Wright says of Abotsway. "The last conversation I had with her, she was holding a teddy bear. She loved stuffed animals."
Wright, relatives of the missing women and others who work or live on the streets of the Downtown Eastside say the city and police ignored their plight until the media began investigations of their own and relatives began holding demonstrations demanding answers.
"I knew a lot of the girls who said they went out to Pickton's to party; that he'd ask them to do weird sexual stuff," said Deanna Wilvers, a 25-year-old drug user and prostitute who said she has been on the streets since she was 16. She said she was close to Jacqueline McDonnell, one of Pickton's alleged victims who was 22 when she disappeared.
"He did it the right way though with those pigs, eh?" said Wilvers, alluding to how Pickton is rumored to have disposed of some of the bodies. "But I don't think he did it by himself."
Neither does Wright and others who have closely followed the case. They are angry that other suspects have not been named in the murders and that it took so long for Pickton to be charged.
But Constable Catherine Galliford of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Joint Task Force told a news conference in March 2002, just after Pickton was arrested and public criticism had peaked, that their resources were limited and the magnitude of the case overwhelming.
"The very sad truth is that horrible things are happening everyday to women who work the streets," she said. "This investigation into missing women is forcing light onto a part of our society that traditionally resides in the very dark shadows."
The task force says it has located at least 102 women believed to be missing. Another 67 women remain on the list, as well as three unidentified DNA profiles from the Pickton farm.
If Pickton is found guilty, he would be the worst serial killer in Canadian history, claiming more victims that Clifford Olson, who pleaded guilty to killing 11 children in British Columbia in 1982.
Hastings Street runs through the Downtown Eastside and leads straight out to the Pickton farm 18 miles (29 kilometers) east of Vancouver. Canadian historians say Hastings is the original Skid Road, where logs once skidded down a so-called corduroy road to the Pacific for shipping.
The farm out in the bedroom community of Port Coquitlam is now surrounded by wire fence, the conveyor belts used to sift the soil for bones are rusting.
Most of the ramshackle homes that surround the farm are being torn down for townhouses.
Those who remain on the road alongside the farm live behind chain-link fences guarded by Rottweilers and declined to talk.
Dave Pickton, flagged down in his flatbed truck, gave a friendly laugh through his long beard but said he did not care to discuss his brother. He would only say that he was now hoping to raise cattle on the property before driving on down the road.
In the cramped 35-seat courtroom in New Westminster, Pickton has sat day after day for preliminary hearings over the past year in a specially built defendant's box surrounded by bulletproof glass. The clean-shaven man with a bald crown and shoulder-length hair barely moves, though occasionally he chuckles to himself or scribbles in a notebook.
Maggie de Vries, whose sister Sarah disappeared in 1998, though her DNA was later found at the Pickton farm, said she hopes the public will remember the women as sisters, mothers and daughters, and not simply sex workers and drug dealers undeserving of respect.
She told an Ontario newspaper, The Record, that she likes to remember a letter written by 10-year-old Sarah about her Halloween costume, swimming lessons and gymnastics teacher.
"It was just so chatty, full of so much life and enthusiasm and talent," said de Vries. "I think it challenges people's perceptions about who women are who work on the street. They don't imagine them being a 10-year-old who wanted to dress up as a black cat for Halloween."
_____
Jeremy Hainsworth in Vancouver contributed to this report.
_____
First United Church: http://www.firstunited.ca/
Site devoted to the missing women: http://www.missingpeople.net/
RCMP missing women joint task force: http://www.rcmp-bcmedia.ca/missing_women
Friday, December 8, 2006
VANCOUVER, British Columbia
The women began disappearing from Vancouver's seediest streets in the 1980s, hookers and dope addicts abandoned on the margins of society. Desperate friends and families were outraged when the police appeared to do little to find them.
Now, the man accused of murdering at least 26 of those missing women is finally going to trial. Jury selection was to begin Saturday for the case against Robert "Willie" Pickton, a pig farmer who, if convicted of all the murders, would become the worst serial killer in Canadian history.
Some 600 potential jurors were being called in Saturday. Justice James Williams has ruled that the trial will be divided into two parts, with the first six counts being tried first.
The gruesome allegations against Pickton fall under a publication ban which prevents the media from revealing details of the alleged crimes until opening arguments on Jan. 8.
Journalists covering the preliminary hearings have been so haunted by the courtroom revelations that some have sought psychological help to deal with their anxiety and nightmares.
What can be reported is that Pickton, 56, was arrested in February 2002 by police investigating the disappearances of sex-trade workers from Vancouver's grubby Downtown Eastside district.
Health officials later issued a tainted-meat advisory to neighbors who may have bought pork from his farm, concerned the meat may have contained human remains.
Pickton and his brother, Dave, used to throw parties at the hog farm in a barn they had dubbed the "Piggy Palace," telling neighbors they were raising money for charity. Investigators, however, have said the parties were drunken raves with prostitutes and plenty of drugs and booze.
After Pickton was arrested and the first traces of DNA of some of the missing women were allegedly found on the farm, the buildings were razed and the province spent an estimated C$70 million (US$61, or €45) to excavate and sift through acres (hectares) of soil looking for bones and other evidence.
Friends and family of the missing women say those who survived tell horror stories about what took place at the 7-hectare (17-acre) pig farm outside Vancouver in Port Coquitlam.
"We deal with stories out here that would blow your mind; this story is just the apex," said the Rev. Ruth Wright of the First United Church in the heart of the Downtown Eastside, the most impoverished neighborhood in all of Canada, where the average life span does not even reach 40.
She knew seven of the victims in her decade of work in the neighborhood, where heroin addicts and sex workers line up in front of her mission for a hot meal, a foot bath or free toiletries, to sleep on the church pews, or seek legal advice and help finding a job.
"I deal with it quite well, until somebody from the outside like you comes along," Wright said when asked how she copes with the loss. "I know that tonight I will have the dreams."
Wright remembers with sadness Sereena Abotsway, a sweet-faced prostitute who was 29 when she disappeared in August 2001, shortly after marching at the front of a parade demanding the city help find the missing women. Though the publication ban prevents reporting the details of what prosecutors believe happened to Abotsway, the first count of murder against Pickton is in her name and investigators have said that her DNA was found on the farm.
"She was very childlike, very gentle," Wright says of Abotsway. "The last conversation I had with her, she was holding a teddy bear. She loved stuffed animals."
Wright, relatives of the missing women and others who work or live on the streets of the Downtown Eastside say the city and police ignored their plight until the media began investigations of their own and relatives began holding demonstrations demanding answers.
"I knew a lot of the girls who said they went out to Pickton's to party; that he'd ask them to do weird sexual stuff," said Deanna Wilvers, a 25-year-old drug user and prostitute who said she has been on the streets since she was 16. She said she was close to Jacqueline McDonnell, one of Pickton's alleged victims who was 22 when she disappeared.
"He did it the right way though with those pigs, eh?" said Wilvers, alluding to how Pickton is rumored to have disposed of some of the bodies. "But I don't think he did it by himself."
Neither does Wright and others who have closely followed the case. They are angry that other suspects have not been named in the murders and that it took so long for Pickton to be charged.
But Constable Catherine Galliford of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Joint Task Force told a news conference in March 2002, just after Pickton was arrested and public criticism had peaked, that their resources were limited and the magnitude of the case overwhelming.
"The very sad truth is that horrible things are happening everyday to women who work the streets," she said. "This investigation into missing women is forcing light onto a part of our society that traditionally resides in the very dark shadows."
The task force says it has located at least 102 women believed to be missing. Another 67 women remain on the list, as well as three unidentified DNA profiles from the Pickton farm.
If Pickton is found guilty, he would be the worst serial killer in Canadian history, claiming more victims that Clifford Olson, who pleaded guilty to killing 11 children in British Columbia in 1982.
Hastings Street runs through the Downtown Eastside and leads straight out to the Pickton farm 18 miles (29 kilometers) east of Vancouver. Canadian historians say Hastings is the original Skid Road, where logs once skidded down a so-called corduroy road to the Pacific for shipping.
The farm out in the bedroom community of Port Coquitlam is now surrounded by wire fence, the conveyor belts used to sift the soil for bones are rusting.
Most of the ramshackle homes that surround the farm are being torn down for townhouses.
Those who remain on the road alongside the farm live behind chain-link fences guarded by Rottweilers and declined to talk.
Dave Pickton, flagged down in his flatbed truck, gave a friendly laugh through his long beard but said he did not care to discuss his brother. He would only say that he was now hoping to raise cattle on the property before driving on down the road.
In the cramped 35-seat courtroom in New Westminster, Pickton has sat day after day for preliminary hearings over the past year in a specially built defendant's box surrounded by bulletproof glass. The clean-shaven man with a bald crown and shoulder-length hair barely moves, though occasionally he chuckles to himself or scribbles in a notebook.
Maggie de Vries, whose sister Sarah disappeared in 1998, though her DNA was later found at the Pickton farm, said she hopes the public will remember the women as sisters, mothers and daughters, and not simply sex workers and drug dealers undeserving of respect.
She told an Ontario newspaper, The Record, that she likes to remember a letter written by 10-year-old Sarah about her Halloween costume, swimming lessons and gymnastics teacher.
"It was just so chatty, full of so much life and enthusiasm and talent," said de Vries. "I think it challenges people's perceptions about who women are who work on the street. They don't imagine them being a 10-year-old who wanted to dress up as a black cat for Halloween."
_____
Jeremy Hainsworth in Vancouver contributed to this report.
_____
First United Church: http://www.firstunited.ca/
Site devoted to the missing women: http://www.missingpeople.net/
RCMP missing women joint task force: http://www.rcmp-bcmedia.ca/missing_women
Bernardo jurors: Pickton trial will change you
By Greg Joyce
Canadian Press
December 8, 2006
VANCOUVER (CP) — They found sex-killer Paul Bernardo guilty many years ago, but the trauma of the numbing evidence lingers for jurors Eric Broadhurst and Harshad Ondhia.
Their ordeal and that of their 10 fellow jurors lasted four long months.
This weekend, about 600 potential jurors for accused serial killer Robert (Willy) Pickton make their way to New Westminster Law Courts, and the 12 that are eventually selected as Pickton’s jury will embark on a trial of about one year’s length.
“Seven or so of us went for counselling after the trial and it was of some help,” said Broadhurst, now retired and living in Waterloo, Ont. “Time is a healer.”
Broadhurst, picked as the sixth juror in the infamous Bernardo trial in Toronto in 1995, said therapy was offered at the trial’s conclusion.
“It clarified a few things and cleansed your mind and helped bring yourself back to Earth.”
Ondhia remembered having to take “sleeping tablets” on some nights during the trial in which the jury watched videotapes of the girls’ torture and murder.
He said counselling “helped a little.”
“But no matter what, it’s never going to go away no matter how hard you try.”
When Broadhurst and Ondhia are told the Pickton trial is estimated to last between eight and 14 months, they are momentarily speechless.
“Incredible,” said Broadhurst, who worked as a self-employed human resources consultant until the trial “essentially killed my business.”
“I think that (trial length) would be life-changing. It blows my mind. Something that could last three times the length of what I sat through.”
Ondhia sounded stunned.
“Oh my God,” he said of the possible trial length.
“We had to go through quite a bit of stuff which never goes away,” said Ondhia, then and now employed by the Toronto District School Board. “It’s going to stay with you forever. It’s quite stressful.”
Pickton’s trial begins Jan. 8 and he faces six first-degree murder charges. The judge earlier severed the six counts from the original 26 charges.
A second trial on the 20 charges is to follow the first trial.
Pickton, who was arrested in February 2002, is charged in connection with the deaths of women who frequented the pitiable Downtown Eastide area of Vancouver.
Under Canadian law, an accused facing a murder charge can choose a jury trial or a trial by judge alone. Pickton has chosen a jury.
When the 600 potential jurors begin the process Saturday in New Westminster, they’ll represent about one-sixth of the total number of 3,500 people who received summonses for Pickton jury duty.
Out of that entire pool, 14 jurors will be selected starting Monday — 12 jurors and two alternates. The two alternates are excused when the trial begins hearing evidence.
Broadhurst recalled jury selection for Bernardo, who was convicted in the sensational killings of teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, took only two days and about 250 potential jurors before the final jury panel was chosen.
Broadhurst, Ondhia and about 1,500 other potential jurors in the Bernardo trial gathered in a hotel ballroom to hear the judge’s instructions.
A similar format has been put in place for Pickton, where the jurors will gather en masse Saturday in B.C. Supreme Court, receive preliminary instructions from Justice James Williams and then form into 20 groups of 30 people.
Each person is given a number and on Monday, when jury selection begins in earnest, people from the first group are called individually into the courtroom and asked questions to determine their suitability and impartiality.
Broadhurst recalled those early jury days with Bernardo.
“All kinds of excuses come out,” he said. “One woman claimed she couldn’t handle the horror she expected to come out of this. The judge saw the terror in her eyes and excused her.”
When the trial began, Broadhurst and the other jurors were asked not to read newspapers, listen to radio or watch TV.
They were not sequestered until they began to deliberate. The Pickton jurors also will not be sequestered until the trial ends.
Ondhia said the whole selection process for him and others was like being aboard a runaway train.
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t know much about the whole thing (selection). I don’t think the people that got selected realized what they were getting into.”
Criminal lawyer Mark Jette thinks the jury selection process in Canada is a big crap shoot.
A well-known Vancouver defender, Jette has been involved in criminal trial jury selections and is remarkably blunt about the process in Canada.
“There is absolutely no science whatsoever in what we do in picking juries, if you ask me,” he said. “The more I’ve done it the more I realize it’s just an absolute shot in the dark.”
And the Crown and defence lawyers are prone to the same subjective biases as everybody else. Almost all defence lawyers have categories of people they avoid, usually based on their occupation, he said.
Correctional officers, for instance, are routinely rejected as jurors by defence lawyers because of the assumption they may be biased towards the prosecution.
Many lawyers have their own “pet theories,” he said.
“I don’t pick bankers, accountants or teachers. But there is absolutely no empirical evidence in support of any of these things.”
Jette acknowledges that defence lawyers have biases and that “sometimes it comes down to simply looking at the person in court and getting a vibe.”
The prosecution is no better, he said.
“The Crown is as bad as we are because a guy might come up (as a potential juror) with a big pot plant on his shirt. The case might not be about pot but the Crown sees him as an anti-establishment person.”
Had the Pickton trial occurred in the U.S., the defence and Crown might be calling on people such as Sonia Chopra, who knows a lot about jurors and about trying to select the right ones for the right case.
She is a trial consultant with the National Jury Project, which has offices in four U.S. cities.
Virtually unknown and seldom used in Canada, jury consultants are often hired by U.S. lawyers and use research and social science to improve jury selection.
They may set up mock trials, design questionnaires to help weed out undesirable jurors, evaluate witnesses, and conduct surveys to advise counsel whether to seek changes of venue.
The judge in the Pickton trial, with input from the defence and Crown, will distribute a questionnaire to potential jurors to determine whether they should be excused because of financial or health considerations.
If a potential juror makes it past that initial screening, he or she will be subject to a “challenge for cause” in which the judge asks questions to determine whether he or she can’t be impartial and therefore unfit to be a juror.
The impartiality screening is important to Chopra.
“I’d be concerned about people who want to be on the (Pickton) jury because what is their motivation?” she asked in a telephone interview from her office in Oakland, Calif.
Chopra offers another, perhaps more important, piece of advice.
“You don’t want a person on the jury who has never heard of Pickton because they are not living in the real world.”
The Bernardo jury was picked fairly quickly. The defence and Crown in Pickton have said previously that they don’t anticipate any problems in finding a jury.
But jury selection in the U.S. can go on for a long time.
“The questioning of jurors can go on for several weeks in (a U.S.) court,” said Chopra, who earned her PhD in psychology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.
As part of her ongoing research into improving jury selection, she has interviewed dozens of Canadian jurors after they finished their duties.
“Some jurors said that some others on their jury should not have been there.”
Some jurors told her that their fellow jurors should have been asked outright if they can “take” the kind of evidence in a potentially disturbing trial.
“It would make for a better jury,” she said.
But jury duty, as judges always remind potential jurors, is an integral cornerstone of a democratic society.
Broadhurst and Ondhia say they understood that, and even formed close friendships with their fellow jurors.
“There was a profound friendship and bonding with the other jurors,” said Broadhurst. “And there was a fair degree of black humour amongst ourselves, which was sad in one way because of the seriousness of the case.”
Ondhia said that after the Bernardo trial, many jurors met regularly for dinners and get-togethers.
But now they seem to have drifted apart permanently.
Their last meeting, which involved about six or seven jurors, was about three years ago.
Canadian Press
http://www.cp.org
Canadian Press
December 8, 2006
VANCOUVER (CP) — They found sex-killer Paul Bernardo guilty many years ago, but the trauma of the numbing evidence lingers for jurors Eric Broadhurst and Harshad Ondhia.
Their ordeal and that of their 10 fellow jurors lasted four long months.
This weekend, about 600 potential jurors for accused serial killer Robert (Willy) Pickton make their way to New Westminster Law Courts, and the 12 that are eventually selected as Pickton’s jury will embark on a trial of about one year’s length.
“Seven or so of us went for counselling after the trial and it was of some help,” said Broadhurst, now retired and living in Waterloo, Ont. “Time is a healer.”
Broadhurst, picked as the sixth juror in the infamous Bernardo trial in Toronto in 1995, said therapy was offered at the trial’s conclusion.
“It clarified a few things and cleansed your mind and helped bring yourself back to Earth.”
Ondhia remembered having to take “sleeping tablets” on some nights during the trial in which the jury watched videotapes of the girls’ torture and murder.
He said counselling “helped a little.”
“But no matter what, it’s never going to go away no matter how hard you try.”
When Broadhurst and Ondhia are told the Pickton trial is estimated to last between eight and 14 months, they are momentarily speechless.
“Incredible,” said Broadhurst, who worked as a self-employed human resources consultant until the trial “essentially killed my business.”
“I think that (trial length) would be life-changing. It blows my mind. Something that could last three times the length of what I sat through.”
Ondhia sounded stunned.
“Oh my God,” he said of the possible trial length.
“We had to go through quite a bit of stuff which never goes away,” said Ondhia, then and now employed by the Toronto District School Board. “It’s going to stay with you forever. It’s quite stressful.”
Pickton’s trial begins Jan. 8 and he faces six first-degree murder charges. The judge earlier severed the six counts from the original 26 charges.
A second trial on the 20 charges is to follow the first trial.
Pickton, who was arrested in February 2002, is charged in connection with the deaths of women who frequented the pitiable Downtown Eastide area of Vancouver.
Under Canadian law, an accused facing a murder charge can choose a jury trial or a trial by judge alone. Pickton has chosen a jury.
When the 600 potential jurors begin the process Saturday in New Westminster, they’ll represent about one-sixth of the total number of 3,500 people who received summonses for Pickton jury duty.
Out of that entire pool, 14 jurors will be selected starting Monday — 12 jurors and two alternates. The two alternates are excused when the trial begins hearing evidence.
Broadhurst recalled jury selection for Bernardo, who was convicted in the sensational killings of teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, took only two days and about 250 potential jurors before the final jury panel was chosen.
Broadhurst, Ondhia and about 1,500 other potential jurors in the Bernardo trial gathered in a hotel ballroom to hear the judge’s instructions.
A similar format has been put in place for Pickton, where the jurors will gather en masse Saturday in B.C. Supreme Court, receive preliminary instructions from Justice James Williams and then form into 20 groups of 30 people.
Each person is given a number and on Monday, when jury selection begins in earnest, people from the first group are called individually into the courtroom and asked questions to determine their suitability and impartiality.
Broadhurst recalled those early jury days with Bernardo.
“All kinds of excuses come out,” he said. “One woman claimed she couldn’t handle the horror she expected to come out of this. The judge saw the terror in her eyes and excused her.”
When the trial began, Broadhurst and the other jurors were asked not to read newspapers, listen to radio or watch TV.
They were not sequestered until they began to deliberate. The Pickton jurors also will not be sequestered until the trial ends.
Ondhia said the whole selection process for him and others was like being aboard a runaway train.
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t know much about the whole thing (selection). I don’t think the people that got selected realized what they were getting into.”
Criminal lawyer Mark Jette thinks the jury selection process in Canada is a big crap shoot.
A well-known Vancouver defender, Jette has been involved in criminal trial jury selections and is remarkably blunt about the process in Canada.
“There is absolutely no science whatsoever in what we do in picking juries, if you ask me,” he said. “The more I’ve done it the more I realize it’s just an absolute shot in the dark.”
And the Crown and defence lawyers are prone to the same subjective biases as everybody else. Almost all defence lawyers have categories of people they avoid, usually based on their occupation, he said.
Correctional officers, for instance, are routinely rejected as jurors by defence lawyers because of the assumption they may be biased towards the prosecution.
Many lawyers have their own “pet theories,” he said.
“I don’t pick bankers, accountants or teachers. But there is absolutely no empirical evidence in support of any of these things.”
Jette acknowledges that defence lawyers have biases and that “sometimes it comes down to simply looking at the person in court and getting a vibe.”
The prosecution is no better, he said.
“The Crown is as bad as we are because a guy might come up (as a potential juror) with a big pot plant on his shirt. The case might not be about pot but the Crown sees him as an anti-establishment person.”
Had the Pickton trial occurred in the U.S., the defence and Crown might be calling on people such as Sonia Chopra, who knows a lot about jurors and about trying to select the right ones for the right case.
She is a trial consultant with the National Jury Project, which has offices in four U.S. cities.
Virtually unknown and seldom used in Canada, jury consultants are often hired by U.S. lawyers and use research and social science to improve jury selection.
They may set up mock trials, design questionnaires to help weed out undesirable jurors, evaluate witnesses, and conduct surveys to advise counsel whether to seek changes of venue.
The judge in the Pickton trial, with input from the defence and Crown, will distribute a questionnaire to potential jurors to determine whether they should be excused because of financial or health considerations.
If a potential juror makes it past that initial screening, he or she will be subject to a “challenge for cause” in which the judge asks questions to determine whether he or she can’t be impartial and therefore unfit to be a juror.
The impartiality screening is important to Chopra.
“I’d be concerned about people who want to be on the (Pickton) jury because what is their motivation?” she asked in a telephone interview from her office in Oakland, Calif.
Chopra offers another, perhaps more important, piece of advice.
“You don’t want a person on the jury who has never heard of Pickton because they are not living in the real world.”
The Bernardo jury was picked fairly quickly. The defence and Crown in Pickton have said previously that they don’t anticipate any problems in finding a jury.
But jury selection in the U.S. can go on for a long time.
“The questioning of jurors can go on for several weeks in (a U.S.) court,” said Chopra, who earned her PhD in psychology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.
As part of her ongoing research into improving jury selection, she has interviewed dozens of Canadian jurors after they finished their duties.
“Some jurors said that some others on their jury should not have been there.”
Some jurors told her that their fellow jurors should have been asked outright if they can “take” the kind of evidence in a potentially disturbing trial.
“It would make for a better jury,” she said.
But jury duty, as judges always remind potential jurors, is an integral cornerstone of a democratic society.
Broadhurst and Ondhia say they understood that, and even formed close friendships with their fellow jurors.
“There was a profound friendship and bonding with the other jurors,” said Broadhurst. “And there was a fair degree of black humour amongst ourselves, which was sad in one way because of the seriousness of the case.”
Ondhia said that after the Bernardo trial, many jurors met regularly for dinners and get-togethers.
But now they seem to have drifted apart permanently.
Their last meeting, which involved about six or seven jurors, was about three years ago.
Canadian Press
http://www.cp.org
Thursday, December 7
Hearing set for suspect in 1990 slaying of Yukon woman
Last Updated: Thursday, December 7, 2006 9:10 AM
CBC News
CBC News
A preliminary hearing for a northern B.C. man charged with the 1990 murder of a young aboriginal woman from the Yukon has been scheduled for Jun 4.
Cindy Burk, who was from Carmacks First Nation, was killed in 1990 but the suspect was only arrested in 2006.(RCMP)
Paul Felker, 60, was charged in Fort St. John on Nov. 16 with second-degree murder in the death of 21-year-old Cindy Burk, who was born into the Carmacks First Nation and also known as Tina Washpan.
Burk's body was found near Kiskatinaw Provincial Park, between Fort St. John and Dawson Creek, along the Alaska Highway, police said.
Police haven't said how she died.
Although she was born in the Yukon, Burk was later adopted by a non-native family and spent most of her life in Saskatchewan. She returned to the Yukon in the late 1980s to reunite with her birth mother and brothers and sisters, police said.
It's believed she was hitchhiking to Saskatchewan when she was killed.
Felker's preliminary hearing date was set in a Fort St. John court this week. He has not applied for bail.
Police have said they do not think Burk's slaying is related to the slayings and disappearances of young women along another northern B.C. highway.
The stretch of Highway 16 from Prince George to Prince Rupert has become known as the Highway of Tears.
Wednesday, December 6
Montreal Massacre memorial raises hotly debated question
How Do We Protect Sex Workers?
Montreal Massacre memorial raises hotly debated question.
Montreal Massacre memorial raises hotly debated question.
View full article and comments here http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/12/06/SexWorkers/
By Catherine Rolfsen
Published: December 6, 2006
TheTyee.ca
Today, in memorials across the country, Canadians remember the murder of 14 women at Montreal's École Polytechnic, 17 years ago. The memorials have become a time to focus on violence against women. Here in Vancouver, where jury selection for Robert Pickton's trial is taking place, the issue has become inexorably tied to missing women and the safety of sex workers.
But among those commemorating, a deep fissure has emerged: how best to protect women in the sex trade.
One side says that because sex work will always exist, we should decriminalize or even legalize it to make it safer.
The other side says that doing that will only entrench the violence and legitimize the abuse.
Living in Community proposes to create "safe zones" for sex workers in Vancouver. And Vancouver's Pivot Legal Society has published two reports on the sex trade, arguing for the decriminalization of adult sex work. In Canada, selling sex between consenting adults is legal, but common aspects of the sex trade are outlawed, such as being in a "bawdy-house" and communicating "for the purpose of engaging in prostitution."
"You have sex workers working in extremely dangerous situations that are a direct result of the criminal laws," said Katrina Pacey, a lawyer with Pivot who co-authored their reports.
Pacey argued that these laws put sex workers in conflict with police, meaning that the sex workers are less likely to seek -- or receive -- help when they are in danger. "I don't think we really know about the rates of violence that are going on right now because I would argue, or at least I would guess, the vast majority do not get reported," she said.
She says that a black market is inevitable in cases of criminalization.
'Beyond decriminalization'
In September, Pivot released Beyond Decriminalization, a report examining the way that human rights and labour laws would be applicable to a decriminalized sex trade. The findings were based on interviews with 80 male and female sex trade workers from the street level, massage parlours and escort services.
"People need to listen to sex workers and ask them what they want," said Pacey. According to her research, they're not asking for abolition, but for the ability to regulate their own industry to make it safer.
There is a difference between decriminalization and legalization. The former would mean repealing sections 210-213 of the Criminal Code of Canada, while the latter would involve government regulation of the industry, comparable to legislation on alcohol.
Against decriminalization
But this weekend, many activists argued that both options would exploit women. At the Montreal Massacre Memorial at Vancouver Public Library organized by Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, the main topic of discussion was how to protect sex workers. "I think those groups who argue for the legalization of prostitution as a way to create safety for women have unrealistic expectations as to what those kind of laws can actually do for women," said Daisy Kler, the organizer of the event.
Many activists worry that decriminalizing the trade would benefit pimps and johns while offering little protection for workers. The New York Times reported that legalization in the Netherlands, for example, has lead to a boom in the sex industry, but sex workers remain marginalized. ChildRight estimated that the number of prostituted children in that country had increased to 15,000 in 2001 from 4,000 in 1996, many trafficked from other countries.
Kler says statistics like these show the problems with considering sex work as a legitimate career option. "The idea that women are choosing this, and that it is respectful to be talking about it as choice, kind of seems perverse to me when you think that the average age of women who enter prostitution is 14," said Kler.
Wrong focus?
This sentiment was echoed by Gunilla Ekberg, a former advisor to the Swedish government, who helped implement laws in that country that shift the criminal focus from prostitutes to pimps and johns.
Ekberg decried the neo-liberal perspective in countries like the Netherlands that frame sex work as a choice. Power inequalities stemming from poverty, drug addiction and racism are left out of this analysis, Ekberg argued.
She said anyone who helps with decriminalization "stands on the side of those who profit from [sex workers]."
Ekberg described how Sweden has made "the purchase of sexual services" a crime punishable by up to a 10-year sentence. Meanwhile, she argued, "the women and girls in prostitution should be seen as victims of male violence against women." And she says, above all, they have a right to assistance to escape prostitution.
Protesting prevailing opinion
This weekend, two women disagreed with the prevailing opinion at the Montreal Massacre event. Susan Davis and Amanda Bonella, both sex workers and members of the B.C. Coalition of Experiential Women, a consortium of sex worker activists, wanted to participate in the day's discussions but were asked to leave a roundtable about harm reduction in the sex trade. They protested outside with signs, one of which read, "Stop exclusionist violence to sex workers."
"We need to have a trade association and safe places to work," said Davis. She called for "basic labour standards that every person, every worker in Canada, enjoys, and we get denied, just because of the nature of what we do."
Kler said she asked Davis and Bonella to leave because panellists -- including representatives from the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, Justice for Girls, and the B.C. Teachers' Federation -- had agreed to work towards the elimination, and not the legalization, of the sex trade. She insisted that former sex workers were at the table, but were not asked to identify themselves.
A rallying point for all parties was that greater social supports are needed for sex workers, especially for those who sell sex because of poverty and addiction. Rather than increased policing of sex workers, activists called for a guaranteed livable income, more detox beds and the support of women's centres.
But the future does not look bright for ground-level services for sex workers since Minister Bev Oda announced that she's closing three quarters of Canada's Status of Women offices, including the B.C. office. Provincially, more than 75 community groups help women with the support of the office, including the B.C. Coalition of Experiential Women.
Which is why social justice groups say they need to find common ground on which to fight what Pacey called the Conservative government's lack of attention to women's issues.
"The human rights issues faced by sex workers are certainly not getting any attention by this government," she said. "They deserve rights, they deserve dignity, they deserve to be cared for and they deserve to be alive and not die in the context of their job."
A rally against violence against women will be held tonight at the Vancouver Public Library at 350 West Georgia from 6:30-8 p.m.
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