Summoned to serve: What are your rights when jury duty calls?

Juries are an essential part of our criminal justice system, and it takes a large amount of citizens to make them work.

Next year, Nova Scotia alone will summon a pool of 50,000 jurors – many who don’t show up or are granted exceptions.

Dawn Bishop, the jury co-ordinator at the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax, says the province’s jury list comes from MSI files and is selected at random every July.

She says an average jury pool for a trial is about 1,000 people, but the numbers could vary.

“There are factors that we have to look at,” she said. “The length of the trial, the number of defendants, if there's a challenge for cause.”

In New Brunswick, the jury pool is also selected from the health care list, voter’s lists, and the list of registered vehicle owners.

But Bishop says approximately one third of the list will come in for jury duty.

Defence lawyer Kevin Burke says many juries end up being made of retired people because the trial doesn’t impact their time.

But he says a jury of 12 seniors, or any one group for that matter, is not ideal.

“You need a proper mix of people to represent the community,” said Burke.

There are automatic exemptions for police officers, members of parliament, senators and members of the Canadian forces. New Brunswick includes exemptions physicians, dentists, veterinarians, priests, clergyman or members of religious order who’ve vowed to live in a convent.

Those convicted on a crime and have served more than two years in prison can also be excused, along with someone whose employer refuses to pay wages while the juror serves.

Jurors receive $40 a day in all three Maritimes provinces, which Burke says has to be improved. But he says the best way to reform the jury is education.

“They have to understand that it’s a civic duty,” he said.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Rick Grant.