About 600 potential jurors for the multiple murder trial of Robert Pickton have been summonsed for selection on Saturday by the province's court services branch — four times the number sent out for a regular trial.
It's a summons many didn't want to get because of the likely grisly nature of the trial. Officials sent out summonses to more than 3,500 residents in communities near New Westminster, B.C. The trial is being held in New Westminster because the alleged offences occurred in Port Coquitlam, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
Clockwise from top left: Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.
Already, 1,400 prospective jurors have been excused from the case. Those selected will have to be willing to hear unpleasant evidence for a year during the trial.
Pickton is facing six counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marnie Frey.
Lawyers involved in the case said Friday they aren't so worried about finding jurors as much as keeping them. At least ten jurors will be required to stay on until the end.
"Once you go down to nine, you must have 10 to arrive at a decision, or then the proceedings would start over again," Stan Lowe, a spokesman for the Crown Counsel told CBC News.
'These women, our children, mothers'
Such an outcome concerns the victims' families, who have waited four years for the trial to begin.
Rick Frey's daughter Marnie was 26 and living in the grips of heroin addiction when she was last seen on the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
"I'd like the jury and the people who are going to be following this case to realize that these girls, these women, our children, mothers in some cases…they didn't want or say, 'Hey I'm going to be a to be a drug addict when I grow up,'" he told CBC News. "It's happened."
On the eve of the start of the process to find 12 jurors and two alternates, Pickton's lead defence lawyer expressed confidence that the search might not take a long time.
"No one can predict these things with any degree of exactness, but I think the optimism as far as the defence is that we can pick a jury relatively quickly in this case, hopefully within a day or two, maybe three," Peter Ritchie said Friday outside court.
"I think the Canadian public is fully capable of such that we can find 12 people who can hear this case."
Case will be hard on jurors: psychologist
The jurors won't begin hearing the evidence police found in what was the largest crime scene search in Canadian history until Jan. 8.
Hearing a difficult case such as the Pickton trial takes its toll on jurors, who are not allowed to discuss with anyone what goes on in the jury room, said Gordon Rose, a psychologist at Simon Fraser University.
"It's very difficult because most of the normal support systems that we have in our day-to-day life are taken away from them," he told CBC News.
The judge in the case has acknowledged that the sacrifice required of the selected jurors will be "particularly onerous" and has banned the media from identifying them.
The jurors will be paid $20 a day at first, and after more than two months they'll get $100 a day.
With files from the Canadian PressRelated
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