The Colten Boushie killings

As a former jury foreman in the murder trial of a minority person, I take umbrage at both the prime minister’s and justice minister’s comments regarding the verdict in the Gerald Stanley trial. Emotionally, the feelings are understandable but, from a process perspective, our country’s leaders should understand this is the process jurors work under.

People from all walks of life are taken from their families, jobs, without any particular guidance, sequestered for days or weeks, sometimes months and expected to come up with a unanimous decision. The deliberations can acrimonious at times as jurors struggle to discern fact from conjecture and arrive at a verdict that is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” in what at the best of times could be considered grey areas.

To have our PM and justice minister criticize the process we have used for decades because the result proves emotionally challenging smacks of politics. Perhaps, instead of criticizing the process and jurors’ decisions, our leaders should pull together teams of former jurors from across the country, representing all our cultures, and ask them to provide ideas into changing the process. I can tell you they’d have a few. We don’t know for sure that the shot that killed Colten Boushie was intentional or accidental. And he didn’t deserve to die but, if he and his friends hadn’t invaded Gerald Stanley’s farm, he’d still be alive. But they are First Nations and can do no wrong. If it had been the reverse, a drunken white man acting aggressively on a reserve and being shot, would there be any outrage by the residents? Or by the liberal left? I think not.