Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The bill amends the Juries Act 1981. The bill ensures that people who have been sentenced to home detention for a period of 3 months or more within the previous 5 years cannot serve on a jury. It requires that a person serving a sentence of less than 3 months’ home detention be deferred or excused from jury service if they are summonsed while serving their sentence, and it ensures that the registrar may permanently excuse people from jury service if they meet certain criteria. The bill also allows for the address details of jurors to be removed from the jury panel and put on to a separate document that can be viewed only by eligible people. This ensures privacy and security for potential jurors.

I would like to commend the Law and Order Committee for its thorough consideration of the bill, and for the sensible amendments it has proposed. The committee received three written submissions on the bill, and heard two oral submissions. The committee also asked for additional advice from relevant parties in relation to the amendment allowing people aged 65 years and over to be granted a permanent excusal from jury service on written request. The committee considered this advice when deciding whether the bill should be amended. I note that some submitters, particularly the Human Rights Commission, were concerned about the clause allowing permanent excusals for those aged 65 years and over. The Human Rights Commission submitted that allowing people aged 65 years and over to apply for and be granted permanent excusal from jury service was against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and is ageist.

The committee considered the Human Rights Commission’s concerns, and the majority did not agree with them. The bill responds to the actual circumstances of those aged 65 years and over, and is in answer to thousands of requests received by my office and the Ministry of Justice from members of the public in that age group requesting permanent excusals. It recognises that people aged 65 and over have contributed to society for many years and deserve to be recognised for this contribution. Currently, people aged 65 years and over can apply for an excusal as of right each time they are summonsed for jury service. The bill simply extends this right and allows those who request a permanent excusal from jury service to be granted one. This is another benefit for people aged 65 years and over, and can be likened to universal superannuation and the SuperGold card or the transport discounts available to this age group.

I strongly believe that there should not be an upper age limit for jury service, and that people aged 65 years and over are a valuable resource to this country and should have the ability to discharge their duties as a juror if they wish. All people eligible to serve on a jury are actively encouraged to participate through the courts’ advertising campaign.

The bill also responds to concerns surrounding access to juror addresses and details, and recognises that these details should be protected. The bill allows only certain eligible people to view the protected address details. As introduced, the bill defined constables as eligible people who could view the protected particulars. The committee recommended an amendment to this clause after considering a recommendation in a submission. The amendment ensures that police employees who are personally connected to the facts of a case, or to a party to, or to a witness or a prospective witness in, proceedings are not able to view the protected particulars. The bill also ensures that contempt of court penalties are available where eligible people allow the protected particulars to be viewed or copied by someone ineligible.

The bill recognises that a fundamental concept of the law is the right to a fair trial. To ensure that people who represent themselves in court are able to exercise their right to challenge potential jurors, the bill allows a barrister or solicitor to be appointed by the court to exercise this right on their behalf, and allows the appointed barrister or solicitor to view the protected particulars. By talking with the self-represented litigant, the barrister or solicitor will be able to determine geographical challenges without revealing the potential juror’s protected address information.

The bill’s purpose is to protect the integrity of the jury system, enhance the administration of the jury system, and ensure jurors’ privacy and security are protected. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a relatively straightforward and simple bill, so limited in its real impact, I guess, that no regulatory impact analysis has been done because it has only a minor impact. I think the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill, however, does some useful things, and on that basis is worthy of support.

The bill basically does three things. Firstly, it prevents persons who have served a home detention sentence of at least 3 months from qualifying for jury service for 5 years. It is a limited exclusion of somebody who has broken the law to an extent that they have received more than a minimum sentence of home detention. Secondly, it empowers registrars to excuse permanently from jury service people who have chronic ill health, or a permanent disability, or who are 65 years and over. I want to come back to that point. This is not an exclusion of people on the basis of their age. People over the age of 65 have an important contribution to make. They make it competently. We would be in some trouble if, in fact, we excluded, in an ageing population, those over the age of 65 from being on a jury. Thirdly, it aims to help maintain the privacy, the safety, and the security of jurors by withholding their addresses from the accused person.

Part 1 of the bill deals with the question of jury service. It says that anyone who has committed an offence and who has served a sentence of more than 3 months on home detention will be prevented from serving on a jury for a 5-year period. There is a permanent exclusion, I understand, if you have actually served a jail sentence. The rationale is, I guess, reasonably simple: if you commit a crime that is serious enough to earn you home detention, then you are not really in a position to stand judgment over another person’s guilt or innocence for a period of time. I do not think that is a big deal.

The bill also allows people to seek exclusion from jury service on the basis of their disability, or their ill health, or if they are over the age of 65. The important point here is that those who seek such an exclusion are excluded permanently from service. I said before that the important point is that this does not introduce an age limit for jury service. It is worth considering some of the submissions, however, that were made to the select committee, because a number of groups felt that by introducing a permanent exclusion for those over the age of 65 who sought it, we would be stereotyping and we would be reflecting on the ability of those people to stand in judgment of others by being part of a jury. I basically disagree with their arguments, but I feel obliged to present the arguments that they made to the select committee.

The Human Rights Commission, for example, said it “considers that the proposed amendment has the effect of perpetuating stereotypical ideas about older people’s ability to contribute constructively to society and, given changing demographic profiles, has the possibility of impacting on the right to trial by one’s peers.” That is the Human Rights Commission. The National Council of Women also said “there are some reservations in regard to the proposed change to the age limit for being excused from jury service permanently.” The New Zealand Law Society did not take a position on the broad policy of the changes proposed in the bill. It simply emphasised, and I agree, that the fundamental principle that must underlie all criminal justice legislation is that the right to a fair trial is an absolute right. I think it would be a different situation if the decision to exclude was not one that was sought by the individual wanting exclusion and was not specific to the individuals who request it. I think on that basis the permanent exclusion provision is acceptable.

I want to now come to Part 2 of the bill, which provides protection of particulars of jury list information in order to maintain the privacy, safety, and security of jurors. It is appropriate that we should protect the privacy of people who serve their community in that way. It would be thoroughly unacceptable to have those who serve on a jury subsequently followed up by the accused, by the media, or by anybody else and grilled about why they made the decision they made. That would be in contradiction to the basic right of a person who does their duty for their community, serves on the jury, to maintain the confidentiality of their position and their identity. A party to court proceedings will be able to inspect the particulars of the jurors, such as their address, only through a barrister or a solicitor. That lawyer, in turn, cannot disclose to his or her client the contents of the protected particulars. There is a reason why this clause has been introduced, and that was a case back in 2010 when an individual who was representing himself as a defendant corresponded with people using his access to the names and addresses of those on the jury panel. As I said before, that simply is unacceptable behaviour, and we need to protect against it. The bill also, for that matter, requires that constables who are parties to proceedings should not be able to view those protected particulars.

Although this is the right thing to do, I do not think we can be naive about what the impact might be. It is not a foolproof way of stopping any party to the proceedings being able to track down the addresses of the jurors through other means. It might be by looking up the telephone book; it might be by looking at the electoral roll. The protection that we provide is something that I do not object to—it is worthwhile—but it does not provide a full level of protection to the jurors in that way. It just makes it slightly less easy for somebody determined to find out where the jurors live and how to contact them, because they will not be given that information directly. It would help if you were a juror by the name of Smith rather than Tisch, Mr Assistant Speaker. It might be rather easier to track you down than somebody with a name that is rather more common.

In conclusion, this is a bill neither with earth-shattering consequences nor one that is particularly controversial. The impact of the changes it makes are relatively minor, but I believe they are worthy of support, and we will be supporting the second reading of this bill.

The purpose of this bill, the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill, is to improve the jury’s administration and also maintain its integrity. Most important, and I think this is important and worthy of mention, it helps maintain jurors’ privacy, their safety—most importantly, their sense of safety—and also their security. We are ensuring through this bill that victims are heard, they get the support they need, and they are not brutalised again when defendants are tried.

I do not think we should underestimate the impact on the juror whose address and particulars were revealed to a defendant. It is something that must be guarded against, and this bill seeks to do just that. Although I acknowledge that one cannot completely hide jurors’ particulars—of course there is the electoral roll and of course there is the phone book—I believe we should be doing everything we can to make jury service a safe activity for those New Zealanders who are called upon to do that.

Just on that matter, the provision in the bill that gives registrars the power to grant a person permanent excusal from serving on a jury on the grounds of disability, chronic health problems, or, indeed, age, was I suspect misinterpreted by several of the submitters to this bill, who labelled it as ageist. I do not believe it was ageist. I believe it provided a little bit of getting rid of some form-filling for those over 65 who, for whatever reason, decide they do not wish any longer to serve on a jury should they be called. This provision in the bill provides that they do not have to make application each and every time. The view of the Law and Order Committee was that, in fact, this was a good thing. Rather than making any comment or any ageist reflection on people, the select committee regarded it as a good provision, one that would make life easier for those people who, for whatever reason, decide they do not wish to serve any further on juries.

The main provision of the bill is to remove the addresses of potential jurors from jury lists. It allows the prosecution, the defence lawyer, or the court-appointed adviser to defendants representing themselves to have automatic access to all that address information on request, but it does prevent the accused from ever seeing the potential jurors’ addresses by prohibiting the defence lawyer or the court-appointed adviser from showing the addresses to the accused. It extends section 14A(6) of the Juries Act, which makes it clear that misconduct in relation to jury lists may be treated as contempt of court, to include the provision that the act of showing the accused or any other persons jurors’ addresses will now be regarded as contempt of court.

Further changes in the bill as it is returned from the select committee include preventing certain people sentenced to home detention from serving on a jury. This closes a loophole in the Sentencing Amendment Act 2007, which created home detention as a sentence in its own right but failed to amend the Juries Act. This meant that those who had served or were serving home detention could still sit on a jury panel. People convicted to a custodial sentence of more than 3 years would be barred for life from sitting on a jury.

Further changes to the bill ensure that offenders who are serving a sentence of less than 3 months’ home detention are excused from jury service or are allowed to defer their service until they have completed their sentence. Registrars are given the power to grant a person permanent excusal, which I have already mentioned. Currently, a jury list must contain the name, occupation, date of birth, and full address of potential jurors. This very important point—this sticking point for jurors—has now been corrected. I commend the bill to the House.

The Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill is, I guess, one of those bills that does so little it would be very, very difficult to find a reason to oppose it. It is one of those bills that will certainly do absolutely no harm, but I think we can all agree it will probably do very, very little that is particularly positive, either. That is reflected in the fact it was determined that no regulatory impact analysis was required, given that the proposals set out in this legislation are expected to have no or, if any, minor impact on businesses, individuals, or not-for-profit entities—in fact, anybody in the judicial system in general, really.

If I were to find a reason that I may have some reservations about it, it would be the fact that predominantly it seems to focus on who cannot or may not serve on a jury when, really, what we should be doing as a nation is trying to encourage people to participate in the judicial process, to take up their democratic responsibilities, I guess, and to participate in the judicial process by being a member of a jury. I personally have been called for jury service on four occasions and have yet to make it anywhere near the courthouse, all for quite—

💬 Hon Member: Slacker.

I accept that. I would really have liked to be able to participate. The first two times that I was called up, I was actually studying, and somehow or other the jury service that I was called for coincided with exams. The third time, I thought I was going to make it. We got to the day before and we had a spate of illness at my workplace, and my boss came to me and said: “I’m sorry. I really don’t think we can release you for jury service.” We had this flurry of activity where we contacted the local court and managed to get me excused. The fourth occasion was immediately after the 2008 election, and my very recent election as a member of Parliament precluded me from being able to take up jury service. So as an individual who would like to participate, I think we should find more opportunities to encourage people to participate in the judicial process.

But, of course, in respect of two out of the three main provisions of this legislation, one is to preclude those people who have been sentenced to home detention for more than 3 months from jury service, and Labour supports that provision in the bill. It is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. But it is removing the opportunity for some of our citizens to be able to participate in jury service. The bill also offers the opportunity—and it is just an opportunity—for those aged over 65 to excuse themselves from jury service. There would be perfectly legitimate reasons why someone who is over 65 would like to take up that opportunity, and we support it. But I do make note of the fact that these are two provisions that potentially reduce the pool of people who are available for jury service in New Zealand, when we already know that really not enough people are taking up the opportunity to participate in jury service in the way that they should.

The third item in this legislation, which I am sure the whole House will support, is the protection of jurors’ information. We have had examples of why this is important—of recent occurrence, in fact—in New Zealand, and I think that that is something that potentially could encourage people to take up jury service: knowing that there will be greater protection of their information. Of course, there will not be absolute or guaranteed protection of their information; there are other ways that people could find out jurors’ personal details. But in this case Parliament is doing what it can, I think, to provide and afford the protection that is possible to people who are serving on juries. Of course, that will be important in encouraging people to participate in trials that may be of a particular nature, where people involved may have very strong feelings. There may be malicious intent towards jurors, and it is important to give ordinary citizens who take up that role as much protection as we are able to.

As I said, this is really a fairly minor bill. One suspects that it is just something the Government is pushing through the House to say that it is acting in the area of law and order, that it is tough on crime, or whatever other sound bites that it would like to use. It is not a bill that will do an awful lot, but it certainly will do nothing that will be detrimental, and for that reason alone the Labour Opposition is prepared to support it.

I am pleased to take a short call on this Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill. I think we would all agree that the basic principle of using juries does not need defending. The idea of a panel of one’s peers sitting in judgment or consideration of one’s innocence or otherwise has got a very long history. It is well established, well respected, and I think that certainly participation in jury service is an expression of our rights, and indeed, our responsibilities. It is a form of engagement in civil society that I think is valuable and entirely valid. This bill does make some relatively minor amendments, but it does make one or two useful amendments as well, and for the third time this evening the Greens will be supporting this Government measure, which might cause some members of the Government to go and have a lie-down, to get over it. But I assure you that by Thursday normal service will be resumed, and we will be critiquing the Government’s Budget very vigorously. That is something for you to look forward to.

More seriously, we do see value in some of the provisions of this bill. It seeks to protect to some extent the integrity, or at least the perception of the integrity, of the jury system, to the extent that it does either exclude or defer some participation, and it looks at issues around the potential for people to be excused, either temporarily or, indeed, permanently. The question of disqualifying a person who has been subject to a period of home detention of some 3 months or longer did give us some reason to consider that fairly carefully, but on balance we see that this provision brings in line people on home detention with those who have a custodial sentence. In that sense, given that in 1981, I think, when the Juries Act, the substantive Act, was enacted, home detention was much less commonly used, and we do use it now in forms and for reasons that formerly might have attracted a custodial sentence, that provision would seem sensible. It brings non-custodial home detention sentences more in line with custodial sentences in this context, and that would seem to be a reasonable thing to do.

Equally, allowing for jury service to be deferred for a person who is currently serving a sentence of home detention of 3 months, or indeed up to 3 months, again seems sensible. I do not necessarily think that a person serving a sentence of home detention would not be a fit and proper person to sit on a jury. We absolutely oppose in principle denying people normal democratic participatory rights simply because they are inmates, which is why we did actively and vigorously oppose the very poor piece of law that was passed, I think, earlier this year or late last year, that denied all prisoners the right to vote. That was a retrograde step, and one which we continue to regret. In this instance, however, the idea of deferring the participation of a person on a short home detention sentence I think is more about the perception. There could be public unease at the thought of somebody currently serving a sentence also sitting on a jury at the same time, and I think we need to respect that. So on balance we have no particular difficulty with that provision, given that that person, at the completion of their 3-month sentence, does have the right—and, again, the responsibility—to sit on a jury and to participate.

The bill allows for the permanent excusal—the word has been used and I will adopt it, though I am not sure it is a real word—of people by reasons of chronic ill health or disability, or of people over the age of 65. We are aware that this excited quite a lot of opposition—in particular, the question of the age of 65 being appointed at which people could choose to permanently excuse themselves from jury service. Different organisations and individuals suggested it was ageist, said it was paternalistic, and said it was excluding an increasingly important demographic, but I think the key to it is that it is a voluntary thing. We would utterly resist any imposition of a barrier to participation on juries on the basis of age, disability, or illness, but in this instance it is a voluntary thing. It is fair to say that for some people with severe disabilities, it could be extremely difficult for them to participate actively on a jury, and they ought to have the right to be excused.

Certainly, I think we will have to take care that this provision to allow for permanent excusal does not somehow morph into an expectation that we need not provide for the possibility that people with disabilities, for example, might choose to actively participate. We must always be alert to the fact that a person’s disability must not in any way exclude them from taking the choice to participate in a jury, as does any other citizen.

I have mentioned in passing that I do agree, I think, with the Labour Party minority report, which suggested that perhaps we need a sort of second-chance provision for people, particularly over the age of 65, who have chosen to take the permanent excusal route but who might think better of it. One can easily imagine a person in their mid to late 60s perhaps suffering a spate of ill health or some other life event that really does not put them in a mind to sit on a jury, who might take this permanent excusal road but then live to regret it some short time later, and a year or two later might wish to participate again. I think it might be helpful to consider at the Committee stage an amendment that might allow a person to take back the right to be a participant after excusal on the basis of age or disability—whatever it might be. I suggest that that sort of an opportunity to change one’s mind might be something that would not be exercised routinely or often, but I think it would do the amendment no harm to at least make provision for somebody simply to change their mind—for their situation to change, for their health to improve; whatever it might be—and to allow them a second chance at this participation in a very important civil service.

I think the second part of the bill—the second major part of the bill—at least talks about protecting the jurors’ personal details, their address, and other details. Mr Goff has quite clearly articulated the difficulty with endeavouring to make jurors’ details absolutely secret. In one sense, it is not desirable that people should feel the need for absolute secrecy. It is, after all, a jury of one’s peers. People should be able to sit on a jury with a degree of security, knowing that it will not cause any ill effect to them. There was, however, one instance where a person defending himself did get the opportunity to cause some discomfort to members of a jury when he was able to write to them directly at their home address. That could give people considerable cause for concern, and quite legitimately so. So to the extent that this bill does endeavour to put in place another layer of security and another layer of protection for people whose details might otherwise be readily available, it is something we can quite happily support—though again, it is only a partial remedy, and I am not sure any of us could come up with an absolutely ideal outcome on any of this.

I think, in passing, that there are things that this bill does not address that it could usefully address, and one of those would be compensation for jurors. I did once serve on a jury, and at that time I had the luxury of an academic salary. I was able to sit on a jury for some 5 or 6 working days and suffer no material cost. I think there was $20 or something, and one’s bus fare was provided. To me it was irrelevant; I was in a situation where I was able to participate. That is not the case for people who might be working part-time or working on an hourly rate. I think that as a general principle, people ought not to suffer any material disadvantage or loss through serving on a jury, and I think it unfortunate that the opportunity was not taken in this bill to address that very real difficulty, particularly for people on low incomes or fixed incomes, or for people who do not have the luxury, as I said, of a salary or a secure financial background.

With those slight reservations, we are nevertheless supporting this bill and will continue to do so. Thank you.

We seem to be on a roll tonight. We are having legislation after legislation being supported by the Opposition parties—the Labour Party and the Green Party. One might start to wonder whether we are actually doing the right thing if we are getting so much support from the Opposition, but we just take it as a sign of approval. I am expecting the obligatory speech from Mr Prosser, though, from New Zealand First, opposing this piece of legislation, the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill. That seems to be the trend tonight.

I think this is a very admirable bill and it is worthy of the House’s support tonight. It makes some important changes for juries, and it protects jurors, who are doing community service, effectively, on behalf of the nation. I do take the point that Mr Lees-Galloway was making that we should be encouraging more people to serve on juries. I have to say that we cannot get much more encouraging than making jury service mandatory. It is mandatory in the bill, and the Juries Act itself really does talk about those who cannot serve on a jury, because the assumption is that everyone else is eligible to serve on a jury. If the biggest problem Mr Lees-Galloway has is about potentially not being able to serve on a jury because he is a member of Parliament, I am sure we can easily remedy that for him if he is wanting us to.

The good changes in this legislation are really about the protection of jurors whereby their address details will not be available to defendants who are defending themselves, or who have their lawyer in a position where the lawyer may wish to provide the address details to the defendant. That would not be allowed. It may not be a huge problem that we have seen happening a lot, but there has been an incident where a juror was caused some discomfort and was harassed in a way by a defendant—in fact, by somebody who I understand was convicted of a crime—and that simply cannot be allowed to happen. Jurors are doing this on behalf of the community for an effective justice system. We need jurors to be putting their time in to serve on a jury, and I think if the State is requiring people to serve on a jury then the State should be protecting those people from any potential harassment going forward.

Other changes around who can serve on a jury around home detention, whereby somebody who is serving a home detention sentence of more than 3 months is unable to serve on a jury, are also a welcome move. I think New Zealanders would accept that if one is sentenced for a crime, then that sentence, even if it is just home detention, does lose one some rights and some abilities, and serving on a jury is one of those. Changes around ensuring that people convicted of a custodial sentence of more than 3 years are barred for life from sitting on a jury are also a welcome move.

I have just one final point before I conclude my brief call in support of this legislation. I have been listening to the comments that have been made around those who are aged 65 and over, and the changes that are made there. I think what is important for us to remember is that at the moment if someone is aged 65 or older, they can be excused from a jury. The only real change here is that rather than them having to be excused on a case by case basis, it can be a permanent excusal, which simply just makes it easier for the registrar and for the person involved if they wish to voluntarily be excused permanently.

This is a short piece of legislation, but it is important for those serving on juries. It is important to make this change for the justice system, and I commend the bill to the House.

It is a great pleasure to be able to stand in support of the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill. I guess one observation that I have always made with regard to members of the public being called in to perform jury service is that often they are not really exposed to the seedier side of life and criminal activity. Even though they are in the safe and controlled environment of a courtroom, if they are on a particularly nasty case, such as a rape, a serious assault, or a homicide, it can be quite intimidating for them to have to turn up to court and have to face an offender and aggressive witnesses. I think it is very important that we do all that we can to make them feel safe and make them feel secure, so that they are able to turn up and execute their duties as a juror in a focused and objective manner.

I think that the measure that is being put in place in terms of increasing from 30 kilometres to 45 kilometres the radius from a courthouse is a very good one, because it means that the pool of available jurors is going to increase significantly. Going on jury service can be a big disruption to your life. Some of these court cases can run for up to 2 weeks, 3 weeks, or a month and for someone who is in permanent employment it can actually be a big disruption for them. Some of the measures that are in this bill are going to go a long way to actually help relieve some of that stress on people.

The other thing that I really like about this bill is the fact that people aged 65 years and over have got the option available to them as to whether or not they want to serve on a jury. Actually, in my experience those people who are 65 years and older—and the Minister made a very good point here—are still very active. They still want to be involved. They do not want to feel like they are being put out to pasture, and many of them will present themselves for jury service. But it is also nice to know that should they feel they are not in a position, either through health issues or not being able to cope with the stress, to execute the duties of a juror, then they also have the ability to decline jury service.

So it is with great pleasure that I stand in support of this bill. I look forward to the Committee stage. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.