Thank you very much.
Thank you to the members of this committee for inviting me to speak here today and for unanimously agreeing to open this study of juror mental health. If I may, I will also remark on the eloquence and sensitivity that each member expressed during your discussions and the vote that brought us here today.
Jury duty is one of the most important civic responsibilities expected of Canadian citizens. Indeed, it is likely the last mandatory service remaining since the abolishment of military conscription. However, I think it is fair to say that Canadians have a conflicted relationship with jury duty. Many see it as an inconvenience, a burden, and a major disruption, rather than accepting the important responsibility that it is.
In January 2014, I was selected as a juror in a first-degree murder trial in Toronto, Ontario. Like a lot of Canadians, I had no experience with the criminal justice system prior to the events of 2014, nor had I even really been in a courtroom. I served as foreman in the deliberations and ultimately delivered the verdict in court.
The trial involved the graphic murder of a young woman, Carina Petrache, by her on-again, off-again boyfriend. She was attacked one morning in the rooming house apartment they shared. Her throat was cut from ear to ear. She was stabbed 25 times and was ultimately set on fire as her murderer attempted to set fire to the basement unit in a vain attempt to bring the building down in flames. His arson efforts failed, and Carina, mortally wounded, was able to vacate the unit, only to die of her massive injuries en route to hospital.
The accused also suffered horrible wounds stemming from the fire, suffering burns to 90% of his body, leaving him grossly facially disfigured and disabled due to amputations. He spent 12 months in a medical coma before being charged. In the courtroom, he was a living ghoul, a reminder of the brutality of the attack, and he spent many hours staring down jurors in an attempt to intimidate and shock.
The trial lasted four months and was made complicated by an NCR defence, which is known as “not criminally responsible”. Hours of testimony from the coroner detailed the graphic murder, including dozens of autopsy photos of the victim, descriptions of her significant and superficial wounds, and articulation of the defensive wounds on hands and feet, which suggested that the assault was excessively violent and unrelenting.
The macabre police video provided a walk-through of the crime scene by moving about the burned basement unit where the assault took place, moving up the burned stairwell, and following a trail of the blood of the deceased, complete with blood splatters, bloody handprints and footprints, and pools of blood up and down the hallway and in the bathroom. Testimony from the fire and emergency response officers on the scene was harrowing and disturbing, especially the testimony of a seasoned fire captain who broke down on the stand, stating that this was the worst thing he'd ever had to endure.
The accused was ultimately found guilty of second-degree murder. The accused later hanged himself in the Toronto West Detention Centre prior to receiving his sentence.
In court as a juror, I took all the evidence in silently, as was my role. As jurors, we ingest the evidence and the facts. We do not interact with it. We are not afforded an opportunity to look away or raise our hands and say to the courtroom,“Turn that off; I've had enough.”
I remember a particularly brutal image being left on our screen during closing arguments for 45 minutes and wondering why this was even necessary. This image was not in any way going to influence my decision-making. At the time, I understood that any stress or sleeplessness and anxiety was my burden to bear in this particular role as a juror. It's part of the job, I reminded myself.
As a juror, you are extremely isolated. You cannot communicate with anyone in any form about the events in court or even really with other jurors. I would leave the court in a trance, not remembering even how I got home. I would stare blankly into space during meetings at work or at home while my three-year old daughter tried desperately to engage with me. My then pregnant wife, who had such an engaged husband during her first pregnancy, now had an emotional zombie in me, unable or unwilling to communicate.
I expected these feelings to subside as I left the courthouse on the day the verdict was delivered. I expected to experience a period of re-acclimatization as I re-entered my life, and then I would be fine. I expected that there would be a thorough discharge and debrief prior to being dismissed, and that perhaps a counsellor would be present who could direct us to services or mental exercises, or indeed talk to us. There was nothing.
My feelings didn't subside. They intensified and deepened. After the trial, I cut off communication with all friends and family, only interacting with colleagues at work, and then only superficially. I became hypervigilant around my kids, refusing to let them walk alone, even a few steps in front of me. I became unable to handle crowds and public spaces. My diet changed. I was unable to look at and prepare raw meat without gagging, something that persists to this day.
Images would haunt me day after day, an unrelenting bombardment of horror. My daughter's red finger painting would hurtle me back to the scene of the crime and I would stare transfixed, seemingly out of space and time. Sometimes I would just start to cry for no reason at all. Intimacy with my spouse was impossible, and I found myself either sleeping downstairs on some kind of vigil, or sleeping in my children's rooms at the foot of their doors, if I even slept at all.
I began to see everything as a potential threat, and even began arming myself with knives “just in case”, I would say to myself, as I would take my children to the park to play. My daughter asked me one day why I was putting a knife in my jacket and I struggled to understand, even myself, why I was doing it, let alone to explain it to a three-year-old. I knew something was horribly wrong with me.
Finally, my family intervened and said that I was ill and I needed to seek help. The first place I turned to was the courthouse, thinking that they would have immediate access to counsellors and services for jurors as a matter of course. I was surprised when my repeated calls went unanswered and finally learned that there were no services from the courts available to me unless they had been issued by a judge. This was the policy in Ontario at the time. Victim services were also not available because, of course, I was not a victim.
So began the dizzying fall into the public health system where it became my responsibility to find a clinician and to be put on a waiting list for psychiatric services, which was almost a year long.
Finally, after almost six months I found a clinic specializing in PTSD, which was my diagnosis, and began paying out of pocket for treatment for cognitive behavioural therapy with a psychologist. Grateful for the treatment, I began thinking that (a) I shouldn't have to be looking for counselling, and (b) that jurors should receive some treatment after serving in difficult trials as part of their service to the community and the country. Jurors should not have to suffer as a result of their civic duty.
I was motivated to do something about it, which began a very long and determined advocacy, resulting in the Ontario Government launching the juror support program, a toll-free crisis line and eight counselling sessions.
I wrote to every attorney general across the country, asking them to adopt a similar program or amend the barriers in the existing programs to match what Ontario had. I was met with resistance, or completely ignored in most cases. Yet I heard from countless jurors from across the country who shared similar experiences and who spoke of the woeful lack of mental health support in their provinces. Some of those jurors had been ill for many years and remain affected to this day.
I was determined to seek a federal standard, which brings us here today. Members of the committee, I want to let you know that treatment works. It's the reason I am sitting here now and talking to you. It works. I'm living proof of that.
Jurors are an important pillar of the justice system. I once said that jurors and first responders are bookends of that system. Jurors close the cases in trial that police and first responders initially answer. We see the same evidence, if not more, and we are all affected by the same horror and tragedy, yet one group receives treatment and support and the other does not.
I hope you will return a recommendation to the government and the justice minister that underscores the critical role jurors play in our justice system, and provide them with the support they deserve to return to their lives.
Thank you, committee.