Justice Committee on Nov. 27th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Hello colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to proceed with this session of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights as we continue our study into counselling and other mental health supports for jurors.

I want to apologize to both our witnesses today. There were unscheduled votes in the House of Commons beyond the control of any members of this committee. I deeply appreciate your patience and your willingness to stay and wait for us because I'm sure your input will be very valuable to the members of the committee.

We're joined by two witnesses for this panel.

First is Mr. Daniel Cozine, who is on video conference from Regina. Welcome, Mr. Cozine.

[Daniel Cozine, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for having me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

It's a pleasure.

We also have Ms. Michaela Swan, who is here with us. Welcome, Ms. Swan.

We're going to start with Mr. Cozine's testimony, then Ms. Swan's, and then we'll proceed to questions from the committee.

Mr. Cozine, the floor is yours.

[Daniel Cozine]

First of all, I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to do this important study. It's obvious that a gap needs to be filled, so thank you for taking the time to do this.

On January 18, 2016, I was chosen to be part of a 14-person jury in a murder and abuse trial of a four-year-old and a two-year-old, little girls.

I'll start with the selection process. There were hundreds of people in a room. Everyone was very nervous and not wanting to be selected, with things going on in life and being busy at work and having to be away from things. We didn't know what trial it was going to be until we got there, and it became very apparent that people really didn't want to be part of this jury for the obvious reason of it being about children.

The jury selection took about a morning. We were told right about lunchtime that the trial would start at approximately 1:30 that afternoon, so we had about an hour and a half over lunchtime to get affairs in order and be back at the courthouse, which is not an easy thing to do.

Our trial was relatively short, three weeks in duration. As with all trials, there were lots of very qualified and expert witnesses, police officers, DNA people, forensic pathologists, doctors, police personnel, things like that. I tried to take part of that as an opportunity to learn more about what these people do outside of what we see on TV, on shows, on CSI and things like that, and what actually goes on. But it doesn't take long to understand that what they're going to apply their expertise and knowledge to is not going to be easy.

For three weeks, we heard testimony and were shown photographs of the injuries to two little girls, the stories were told of what and how it happened and near the end, autopsy photos of a four-year-old girl. I don't think any of the 14 people in that jury box would be particularly ready to see those kinds of images.

There were 14 of us from every walk of life, from the unemployed to educated professionals, an 18-year-old girl, a 74-year-old grandmother, parents, non-parents alike, so in a way it was a nice cross-section of society but you also had many people in there who might not have been ready for what they were about to see and might not, at the conclusion of a trial, be able to access services, which is part of what we're here to talk about today.

I'm a teacher in Regina. I've been a teacher for 18 years. I'm now a principal of an elementary school. I think part of this process was difficult for me in that working with children every day over 18 years, I've worked with thousands of families. We see lots of kids maybe have some tough days sometimes, but to have to see what these people subjected these children to was particularly hard for someone who tries their best to make kids' day every day, so that was particularly difficult.

I mentioned the trial was three weeks away from work and things like that. It impacts family life during those three weeks, and not just you but your spouse and your family. It is substantially longer than that when you come out of a trial and you're trying to get your bearings again.

For me, I wanted to go back to work and be back with kids who were well and healthy and happy. I should never have been there. It was a waste of a week, and then we had a spring break. During that spring break, I finally took the advice of the people around me to seek counselling.

Through that counselling, one of the things I talked about was.... The trial ended late on a Friday. I mentioned 14 jurors. We were told 14 jurors so that if anybody dropped out, there would still be 12 to make decisions. All 14 were there at the end, and they needed to pull two jurors out of the deliberations.

Unfortunately—I say “unfortunately” purposefully—I was one of those who were pulled out and not allowed to make those decisions. That was extremely hard, because after seeing what happened to these little girls, for three weeks, to have no say, to have no part in the decision-making process was very tough. At the start, everybody jokingly said, “I hope I'm the one who gets pulled out,” and I obviously said it as well, but that last day, leaving the courtroom with “Thanks for three weeks. See you later” was exceptionally hard. I found out the verdict via Twitter the next day. To see what happened and be subjected to that, and then not be part of the decision-making process, was one of the most difficult things for me throughout that.

I don't want—and I've never wanted—for this to be something where people feel sorry for me, for people to say, “Poor you, you had to do that.” I believe in our justice system, in that we have juries for a reason. We need good, smart people to make decisions that will affect not only the accused but their families and the law in the future. You need juries to do that, but all along I've said that we need to have mechanisms in place to support people, if they should need it, after a trial.

I sought counselling. After about four appointments with the counsellor, who does a lot of work with first responders—EMTs and police specifically—he diagnosed me with PTSD. After what we had talked about.... I told him what we had seen and things like that. The way I was talking about it and the way I was carrying on daily life, he absolutely felt that this was the case.

It comes up every now and then in certain ways, ways you don't expect. Everyone has a bit of dark humour, so when I am at a family gathering and the baby is crying and someone says, “Just duct-tape him in the crib” or something, I have to leave. When you see what actually happened to children who were duct-taped, it's not a funny thing. That happened on a number of occasions, until people started to realize that they shouldn't be talking about that in that way.

Going back to work, the remaining part of that school year, I did not have a lot of trust in things that were happening with kids. A student would come to school with a bruise on their arm, and it might have been from soccer practice or a basketball game, but immediately I would be angry and questioning whether a parent or a sibling did that, how that bruise came to be, when really it was a very natural thing. Kids fall and scrape their knees. Kids do that all the time, yet I had a lot of distrust in what was going on with those kids.

I'm extremely lucky, and I've said this in a number of forums, privately and in the media. I'm very lucky to have an employer who provides assistance, monetary assistance to people who need counselling or other things. I have an exceptional wife who is brilliant and took a lot on in this process, although that's not her job, so there was stress for her as well in trying to make sure I was well. It takes a toll on a family.

For now, as I say, the issue comes up in different ways, at different times. I have gotten past some of that distrust, yet there are times where, for example, I may be lying in bed, and if my feet cross over, I have to immediately uncross them, because of pictures I've seen. This is now two years out, and those things are still coming up. I can't watch things like CSI, as I mentioned, or even 20/20, and W5, the investigative shows about these kinds of things, because it comes back.

I guess, in the end, what I've always wanted was a way for jurors to get help, should they need it. I understand that not everybody sees these things the same way, and that not everybody reacts to them the same way. There were people at our trial who may have gone back to work the Monday after, and said, “You know what? I'm glad that's over” and life goes on.

But I know there are people who come out of these trials, and it's months or maybe years afterward that they're still struggling with what they've seen and what they've heard. When people have to do jury duty, I think it's an omission to not support them afterward. I don't think it's anything purposeful. I don't think it was anybody deciding that, but I feel this is an opportunity to close that gap and make sure jurors are supported.

I open it up to questions, if anybody should have any.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much, Mr. Cozine. We're going to hear from Ms. Swan first, and then we're going to go to questions, but I want to take this opportunity to thank you, and in advance, Ms. Swan, for telling us some very personal stories. I understand it's difficult. There are a lot of emotions involved and it's hard to recollect, but it's also so important for all the members of the committee from all parties, who take this issue very seriously and really want to make sure we recommend the right things. It's important for us to hear the kinds of effects that being on a jury can have.

Thank you so much for sharing such personal experiences.

[Daniel Cozine]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Ms. Swan, the floor is yours.

[Michaela Swan, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Good evening. Thank you for the invitation to share my experience of serving as a juror in Canada. I want to thank you for conducting this study. I truly believe it will improve the experience for jurors in the future.

In June 2016, I served as forewoman in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. A teenager was charged with first-degree murder under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He was 16 at the time of the crime.

But let me backtrack to share my full experience.

I've always been interested in the Canadian justice system. I took additional studies during my university education to learn about the history, structure, and rationale for the processes of justice in our country. I am proud of the doctrine of innocent until proven guilty by a judge or a jury of your peers.

The day I received my jury summons on the green piece of paper, I was nothing short of ecstatic. It was my turn to serve. I was fortunate in that navigating the process to get time away from work was relatively seamless and without a financial impact to my family. I attended two jury selection dates during my summons period. The process was relatively smooth and was supported by friendly and informed sheriffs at my local courthouse in Kamloops. When my number was called, I walked before the judge and counsel. The crown referred to his notes, the defence just looked me up and down, and I was accepted as a juror. Not a single question was asked. We were provided paperwork to fill in, and were told to report back for jury duty in about two weeks' time.

For nearly three weeks, I listened to evidence of how a normal teenager's first love turned into a complicated and manipulative love triangle. Eventually the girlfriend lured her second boyfriend to an elementary school field. She ran into the bushes, as planned. The innocent boy, 22 at the time, was shot from 50 feet away and fell to the ground. As the co-accused ran to check on the victim, they put two more bullets into him—one into his back and one into the back of his head.

I listened to the pathologist explain the damage of each one of those bullets and how they led to his death. I looked at autopsy photos and crime scene photos. I listened to undercover RCMP officers explain their detailed investigative techniques. I watched hours of undercover video of a “Mr. Big” operation. I read hundreds, if not thousands, of text messages between young lovers trying to make a relationship work, with accusations and facts of cheating. I watched as the accused in my trial sombrely walked officers through an exact crime scene re-enactment.

While all this was happening, I watched the accused in the box. He was just a kid, clean-cut and gently spoken, with what seemed like a great family. It was very easy to feel empathy for him. I watched his father, mother, and brother sit in court nearly every day. I saw the pain of the victim's mother as she testified. Every day I drove home and processed what I heard or saw that day. It was gut-wrenching, and hard not to feel sympathy for the accused.

The need to process and balance the emotions during trial and deliberations was significant. I think it's natural to think like a parent, to put yourself in their situation, but I was still trying to be 100% clear in my role to judge the facts and, as forewoman, to lead a jury to also just judge the facts. We aren't allowed to feel. I believe the fact that the accused in my trial was a highly relatable kid created extenuating circumstances and increased the intensity of jury deliberations and post-trial impacts.

For me, the most difficult process in serving as a juror was that of deliberations and the resulting post-trial discharge. The charge to the jury is provided by the judge. Sheriffs escort jury members to the jury-room and remove our cellphones and all contact to the outside world. Twelve strangers are locked in a very small room with two adjoining bathrooms. We're essentially told not to come out until everyone agrees.

I can't go into the specifics of deliberations, as that's the unspoken jury code, but it's an intense situation with opposing views, values, personalities, and inflamed tempers. As individuals are going through, all the normal comforts of life and most coping skills are removed. You don't sleep in your own bed, you don't eat your normal food, and you don't have your friends or family for comfort or to talk to. It's confusing and highly complicated, but there is an immense drive to do the right thing. At times there can be a sense of hopelessness.

Speaking as a forewoman, I believe there is extra stress in the position. Once back at the hotel room, I would lie awake at night thinking about how to bring 12 people to agreement. It was my only time alone to think. What questions could I ask? How could I get passionate people to listen to their peers and dig into the rationale for their thinking processes? It was exhausting.

I still process this as a small price to pay for the duty I was to provide. There were two families who were also deeply impacted by the crime that occurred. The decision by the jury would impact them for life.

On a late Saturday evening, I opened the jury-room door and advised our sheriff that we had a verdict. The court was called to order, and the jury walked in. All eyes—from the families, the lawyers, the judge, the accused, and the media—were on me. I announced the guilty verdict. I will never forget the sound of the courtroom in that moment.

Following that, we on the jury were thanked for our service and dismissed. We waited in the jury-room and had a brief conversation with Madam Justice. She was appreciative of our service and reminded us of the confidentiality of what happened in the jury-room.

At this time, I did ask what supports were available to jurors following our experience, because I knew I needed help. I was shocked to learn that there was likely nothing. Within 20 minutes of delivering a verdict, and after four days of being sequestered, I walked through an open parking lot with 11 other strangers and returned to normal life. I had Sunday to reconnect with my family and was back to work Monday.

That week I did have a message from our sheriff's office that they could arrange a debrief if enough jurors were interested. I can tell you that I wanted to debrief, and I certainly wanted to talk, but there was nothing in me at that time that really wanted to see my fellow jurors. That was the last time I heard from the court.

I did seek help. I spoke in roundabout ways with friends and with professionals paid for by benefits through my employer. From my previous experience in the fire service, I know that immediate support is needed to process your thoughts, ensure they are compartmentalized appropriately, and dealt with as they arise—immediately and over time. I still think of my experience weekly, sometimes daily. I have to make a conscious effort not to transfer what happened to these teenagers into how I parent my kids. Around town I see the family of the accused, and the lawyers, judge, and sheriffs involved in the trial. I smile and make eye contact, as do they, but it's like walking around with this deep secret that can't really be talked about.

I will be okay. I have a great support system, and I am very proud to have served as a juror in Canada. But I strongly believe that mental health and counselling support immediately post-trial for jurors are required to provide early intervention and avoid long-term mental health damage.

From my own learning, I have a few recommendations, which I'll summarize. There should be pretrial education and an explanation of what the experience may entail. I believe it's important that jurors make an informed choice to serve. Compensation needs to be considered. Although my employer covered my wages, this was a significant stressor for other members on our jury.

Jury-room configuration is worth a consideration. When spending 12 hours a day or more confined in a very small room with two adjoining bathrooms, a breakout room or an extra space to spread out would be beneficial.

A standardized jury discharge process is needed. It should include a debrief, with information to take home for future reference that identifies what an individual may or may not feel, maybe what's normal, and when and where to seek help. I mentioned a formal debrief. I would like consideration of a peer-led debriefing process. Can former jurors be trained to provide this care to future jurors? From my experience, I still wish I could safely talk to people who understand and who lived the experience without the feeling that I'm breaking the law if I have a conversation.

Lastly, I believe follow-up to jury members on the conclusion of sentencing would help to close the experience. My sentencing went on for a year after we delivered our verdict. The only updates I would get were in the media, and it was always bringing it up. It would have been nice to hear from the court.

Thank you again for the opportunity to contribute my experience and recommendations. Canada has a criminal justice system to be very proud of, and continuous improvements, such as those under consideration, will make a difference.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much.

Again, I have the same comments as I made before. It's really appreciated that you're telling your personal story and you summarized it incredibly well.

We'll move over to Mr. Cooper for the first questions.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for your testimony, for being here, and for relaying your experiences as jurors. It's obviously very, very difficult. I guess no matter what, at the end of the day your lives will never be the same, having gone through and witnessed what you witnessed during those respective trials.

Ms. Swan, I thank you for some of the recommendations that you put forward. I think they're very helpful.

Mr. Cozine, are there any specific recommendations that you have—programs, supports, or other things—that, had they been in place, would have made your experience as a juror a little easier to deal with?

[Daniel Cozine]

You know, I would echo Michaela's comments.

As time has gone on, you get a little clearer thinking on these things. Peer support, having other jurors who have been through the process and have been in the tiny jury-room, as Michaela mentioned, and have been in those deliberations, the stress of watching the families in the courtroom, things like that.... Only jurors really know what that's about and can maybe give some advice on how to deal with that.

I've said from the beginning that some type of group debrief afterwards is essential. We do that all time. We have a meeting. We have something that has happened—even at school, where we have an incident, a lockdown, something like that—and we debrief those things. To debrief it with the people who were in the room with you, to get an idea of what everyone else is thinking and feeling about these things, I think is absolutely essential.

Employers have employee assistance programs. I don't know if there's a way for each province to have some type of program like that specifically for jurors. I know that becomes a budgetary item, but I would suggest that the budget that would go into that may be far less in terms of the mental health care that could come days, weeks, or years down the road.

As an educator myself, I absolutely echo what Michaela said about pretrial, going in and standing in front of the prosecution and defence, not one question is asked, and they just say, yes, you're in. We talk a lot about mental health in our day and age. There are people who may be struggling with mental health who should never be on a jury, but by virtue of having a health card, they're selected to go. Also, some way to educate people before they go into these trials to have some forethought about what they're going to be doing....

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you. That's very helpful.

I assume that in your case, when the trial concluded, there was no contact from the court—or was there?—in terms of a follow-up or the offer of some support.

[Daniel Cozine]

I had none, but again, I was pulled out of the jury before deliberations. It was essentially, “Get your backpack that you've packed for a number of days for deliberation and go, because we have to get deliberations started.”

After that, I got one correspondence. I can't say for certain what the 12 jurors in that trial had. I'm assuming some type of contact with the judge afterwards, but nothing formally, no.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you.

Another issue that was raised by a number of witnesses during our last committee hearing, which neither of you touched on in your presentations, related to a concern or a feeling of being intimidated by encountering sometimes the accused or friends and family of the accused—everything from going for a coffee break to parking one's vehicle at the courthouse.

Was that something either of you experienced as a concern?

[Daniel Cozine]

If Michaela would like to go first, that's fine. I could also speak to that.

[Michaela Swan]

I did not experience intimidation during it, but the sheriffs were with us everywhere. They walked us out to our vehicles or they would watch and oversee. They were always there. You could see the family of the accused or the victim's family walking to their cars. You're in shared...but I didn't take anything as intimidation. We did use separate doors entering and leaving. If we did go out for dinner, which wasn't often, we were escorted.

I never had that experience myself.

[Daniel Cozine]

For me, we had about two days of trial leaving the courthouse essentially out the same doors as the families of both the victims and the accused. We asked for a separate exit. They were very accommodating in that regard, but coming in, we had to go through the security checks into the courthouse and of course there were the family members.

I wouldn't call it intimidation. I would call it very awkward, at least for me and a few others as we walked down the hallway to the jury-room. You don't know if you should be making eye contact with these people or not, and how that's going to go. I wouldn't say I felt intimidated. It was just a very awkward few moments getting to the courthouse every day.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Fraser, go ahead.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, both, very much for your service as jurors but also afterwards, for the work that you've done, for being here today and trying to make things easier for jurors in the future. Your testimony is very much appreciated and will hopefully lead to some good recommendations from our committee.

Ms. Swan, I will begin with you, if I can. You talked about counselling and perhaps a debriefing session being made available after the trial. We heard in previous testimony about the possibility that counselling could be made available to jurors during the trial, or at least having some person available, confidentially, to discuss things after a particularly tough day for a certain juror. What do you think of that idea?

[Michaela Swan]

I think it's reasonable. There is a significant sense of loneliness as you are going through the process. I don't know if it makes a difference whether it's a day of deliberations or four days of deliberations. You are in the room for hours on end with these people, trying to come up with an answer or a verdict.

For me, as the forewoman of the trial, it was the hardest to try to navigate the relationships of the room and what people were thinking. It would have been nice to have somebody to talk to about that. I don't know if I was processing the material at the time, besides the decision ahead of me and the group in terms of the job that we were charged to do.

I don't know if I needed somebody, for me personally, to process the material or things I had seen at that point in time. It was more just somebody to talk to, to go through the process we were in, if that makes sense.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Okay, sure.

With regard to the code of silence that's on jurors, section 649 of the Criminal Code doesn't allow discussion with anybody in the public or even jurors about what happened during the deliberations.

Ms. Swan, you described the difficulty you had as the foreperson to try to come up with a unanimous position. Do you think that having an exception in the Criminal Code to allow discussions of deliberations with a mental health professional after the trial would be of any assistance? Would that have helped you? Do you think it might be a useful thing to do?

[Michaela Swan]

I think it absolutely would have helped me. Even in my sessions or with things that were happening, there was always a sense of the things I couldn't to. It wasn't even about the contributing factors that made me think guilty or not guilty. It was just the feelings or the emotions or the empathy that I just wanted to talk about. I still want to talk about them, but I feel that doing so would be breaking the law so I personally just don't talk about them.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Fair enough.

Mr. Cozine, I understand that your experience with the jury was completed before the deliberations took place. You said that if there were a debriefing session, it would be available for all jurors. I assume you mean for anyone who served as a juror through any part of the trial.

[Daniel Cozine]

Yes, if you were going to have a debrief session.... Obviously I was not one of the people deliberating, but I would want to be part of that. I understand what Michaela is saying. There becomes, whether rightly or wrongly, a very tight kind of bond with jurors who have deliberated. I've talked to other jurors who have deliberated, and it's a very different kind of feeling. For me, I know I would feel awkward about going back in with those 12 jurors, when I'm number 13 or 14.

Having said that, not having been able to be part of that process and that decision-making, I have so many questions about how they came to the decisions they came to, but because I am not able to contact or talk to other jurors about them, I don't know if those questions will ever go away. I think it is very important to be able to debrief, including for jurors who have left during a trial, for whatever reason, and especially if they are pulled off before deliberations.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Given that the experiences of jurors are different depending on the individual and, as Mr. Cozine explained, depending on their background perhaps—which can be quite varied in a trial—and also that some jurors will have served through the entire period whereas some will not have, do you think it makes any sense for any kind of debriefing program to be an individualized thing rather than a group exercise?

I'll open it to you, Mr. Cozine, and then to Ms. Swan for her thoughts.