Reports on the court proceedings of the murder of Josette Scicluna last week quoted forensic expert Mario Scerri saying that when a victim is knifed in the pubic region (particularly if the aggrieved is a woman, he stressed) it is proof that the individual went through moments of great torture and terror before she died. Maybe women can come closer to imagining this kind of pain than men.
As it turned out, there was only one woman sitting on the jury, together with eight men. When the court was shown the gory pictures of Ms Scicluna's butchered body on screen, the woman juror asked to be excused. Request granted, she was substituted by a man. Thus, the jury ended up with nine men.
What happened is more grist for the mill of those who say how difficult it is to have women sit on juries. It's definitely a throwback but, in fact, how hard are we trying to have an available pool of women ready to take on this commitment?
I know that technical problems will be brought forward which can only be solved by changing the system of choosing jurors. So? We'll change the system if need be. Not all women throw up or go weak at the knees at the sight of nauseous images. I know more men who do so. I think that most of us who have been through natural childbirth know what I am talking about. Surely, there are the faint-hearted men and women and in this case the jury was deprived of its only woman, bringing the female deficit to 100 per cent.
Why the need for a gender-balanced jury? How else can society address the existing stereotypes and assumptions surrounding victims of rape and domestic violence? This conditioned behaviour that may be used in cases where victims even end up murdered, might prejudice jurors' verdicts unfairly. Assumptions could vary according to the sex of the juror and the latter's preconceived ideas about the way aggressors and victims should have behaved. Thankfully, it did not happen in the Scicluna case but we have seen it happen before in other cases, for instance, the Diane Gerada case, which I mentioned again not long ago.
I have seen jurors who approach their duty with great diligence but we all know that it is not always the case. I'm not saying that there aren't instances where women can be more judgmental than men but to have a 100 per cent male jury with their perspective and baggage decide on a case and not even one woman's viewpoint shows a democratic deficit in how our society is organised and functions.
The government commission on gender equality sometimes speaks of gender mainstreaming when prodded by some parliamentary question or other but somehow we continue running on the spot in this area of policy. Gender mainstreaming is very weak in most government work but can we afford its non-existence in our law courts?
At a conference organised some time ago on the sociology of law, I recall a (woman) law professor highlighting the attitude of jurors as one of the biggest challenges in rape and murder trials where women are victims of their partners or other men with whom they had an intimate relationship. Her argument was that there are still persisting views about proper female behaviour and that there is a reluctance to accept gender equality in the sexual sphere. Thus, the necessity to have both genders represented on juries.
In his book We, The Jury: The Jury System And The Ideal Of Democracy, Jeffrey Abramson speaks of the ideal type of jury which is a model of deliberative democracy. Jurors bring with them their experience and knowledge and work together to come to a verdict. Jurors, as representatives of society, as members of the various categories (gender, class, religion, etc) that make up their identities, bring a variety of perspectives that represent those categories to the deliberation. As long as jurors do not act as blind voting blocks for the categories they represent but still listen, discuss and come to a decision together, Mr Abramson contends that we would be living up to the democratic ideal of the jury.
In many of our cases, the democratic ideal of the jury is thus not being reached when one category - that which represents one half of the population and also the deceased victim in this particular case - was initially grossly under-represented (eight men and one woman) and then, during the course of the jury, ended up not being represented at all.
The author is a Labour member of Parliament.