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Bias - Jurors. R. v. G.D.
In R. v. G.D. (Ont CA, 2026) the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed a criminal appeal, this brought against a conviction for 'sexual abuse'.
Here the court considers the human side of criminal case jurors (and bias) - here where a juror sent a supportive note through Facebook to the complainant a day after verdict:[54] Jurors are human beings who may and should feel empathy for victims, as the Supreme Court observed in R. v. Find, 2001 SCC 32, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 863, at para. 71:One cannot automatically equate strong emotions with an unfair and prejudicial bias against the accused. Jurors are not expected to be indifferent toward crimes. Nor are they expected to remain neutral toward those shown to have committed such offences. If this were the case, prospective jurors would be routinely and successfully challenged for cause as a preliminary stage in the trial of all serious criminal offences. Instead, we accept that jurors often abhor the crime alleged to have been committed – indeed there would be cause for alarm if representatives of a community did not deplore heinous criminal acts. It would be equally alarming if jurors did not feel empathy or compassion for persons shown to be victims of such acts. These facts alone do not establish bias. There is simply no indication that these attitudes, commendable in themselves, unfairly prejudice jurors against the accused or toward conviction. They are common to the trial of many serious offences and have never grounded a right to challenge for cause. [Emphasis added.] [55] Although parts of the message refer to the juror’s life experiences, these experiences also do not mean that she was biased. As the Supreme Court explained in Find, at para. 43, “Impartiality does not require that the juror’s mind be a blank slate. Nor does it require jurors to jettison all opinions, beliefs, knowledge and other accumulations of life experience as they step into the jury box. Jurors are human beings, whose life experiences inform their deliberations.”
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