I was a juror in a murder trial exactly eight years ago at the Montreal courthouse. A sordid story of drug addict neighbors, in Pointe-aux-Trembles, who slept together for “small 20 dollars” and which culminated in murder, by strangulation, after an evening of party on hard drugs.
A little Wednesday, that is.
If you are wondering what a typical day in the life of a juror looks like, I would answer: like during the trial of police officer Maxime Dubois (Mathieu Baron) in Indefensible on TVA, but with much less acting, lord.
The five episodes ofIndefensible devoted to the work of a jury, and immersed in the heart of the deliberations room, were very realistic.
Your honor, I exclude from this statement the burlesque scene where the president of the jury was electrocuted while leaning against a ladder on the roof of his suburban house. For the rest, it passes the credibility test.
As in Indefensible, the family of the accused cries, a few meters from us, almost every day. Obviously these repeated sobs weigh down your morale and crush your heart.
As in Indefensible, a juror debates very specific legal concepts with 11 other novices, who come from socio-economic backgrounds that do not often cross paths. I can no longer count the number of times I almost lost my temper after a person on the jury who didn’t understand quickly (the worst!), who took up too much space for their level of skill (unpleasant at the most) or who was limited to defending an idea that was in no way logical (patience, Hugo, patience).
But for real, gang, let’s turn it on, let’s get into gear, because we won’t spend three months here, OK?
We saw it clearly in Indefensible, tension quickly rises when 12 strangers persist in a windowless room, agitated by very bad coffee. During the six weeks that my trial lasted, in the fall of 2015, I witnessed all of this: fatigue, discouragement, anxiety attacks, personality conflicts between jurors, impatience, disgust, the overly motivated jurors who play at the top of the class, the others who blame themselves or those who slow down the group, too happy to have put their real work on hold.
Some of my comrades were jubilant at having been selected to judge this gloomy case, where the victim’s corpse contained 41 old needles “forgotten” for trips of heroin, spread over several years. Others, including me, would have wanted to flee to Alberta with Me Frédéric Legrand (Martin-David Peters) to avoid this exasperatingly slow process.
Because being a juror, at $103 a day, is a long, long time. It’s tedious, routine, there are a lot of rules to follow and I’ll spare you the sterile debates during which jurors asked endless questions about the reimbursement of their metro ticket. Sigh.
As in Indefensible, a juror returns home after his day at the courthouse. Sequestration occurs at the very end, when the jurors decide, once the evidence is closed, on the final verdict.
Without cell phones, TV, radio, tablet, newspaper or internet access, we slept in a hotel in Longueuil, along the majestic Highway 20, we always ate with the 12 jurors together and two constables made sure that no one discussed the talk around the table. Same thing during transport, by minibus, between the hotel and the courthouse: ban on speaking about the accused, his victim, their powder delivery man or the thief of the Maxi de la Place Versailles (true story) .
We end up running out of “small talk”, true, but we only talk about justice once the door to our little room is closed, never before.
As in Indefensible, we regularly vote to check which way the scales lean. Eight against four, nine against three, it’s good, we’re getting closer to a verdict. From memory, we were secluded for two days before reaching unanimity (guilty of unpremeditated murder).
IMAGE FROM THE SHOW
Marie-Laurence Lévesque in a scene from‘Indefensible
As in Indefensibleit’s easy to determine who on the jury will be easy to convince or who will resist the longest.
A criminal lawyer for 40 years, Clemente Montessori, who defended Vito Rizzuto all the way to the Supreme Court, has followed the adventures of the Lapointe, Macdonald and Desjardins law firm from the start. “It is very close to reality, particularly for the notions of law, the objections formulated and the comments of the judges. It matches what we see at the courthouse, it’s not too romanticized. And the show explains the rules of law well, it’s almost educational,” notes the Montreal lawyer.
Crown prosecutors, who very often lose in Indefensiblea series that was co-created by criminal lawyer Richard Dubé, would say the opposite, but hey.
Who wants to trigger M’s furye Biron (Marie-Laurence Lévesque), the most predatory prosecutor of the DPCQ? Not me.
Like Mathieu Baron for two weeks, I play it low profile, contrite look and neutral expression.