Canada: Aziga judge allows three jury screening questions

In June, I reported that Johnson Aziga's lawyers, Selwyn Pieters and Davies Bagambiire , had asked Justice Thomas Lofchik to rule on the kind of questions that should be used to screen jurors in Mr Aziga's forthcoming murder trial.

The questions that Mr Aziga's lawyers wanted to ask were as follows:

1. Would your ability to judge the evidence in the case at bar without bias, prejudice or partiality be affected by the fact that there has been recent newspaper, television, radio, or internet broadcasts, regarding criminal transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (“HIV”), the cause of AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome)?

2. Do you have an inflated sense of the risks of HIV transmission and a tendency toward HIV-phobia or panic (as opposed to a healthy fear of possible infection, based on a realistic assessment of risks associated with various acts, that can be part of prompting sensible, informed precautions)?

3. Do you have any fears, assumptions and prejudices about HIV Virus period, which may feed into your judgments and assumptions about the accused and also your ability to assess the evidence in a calm rational fashion?

4. Would your ability to judge the evidence in the case at bar without bias, prejudice or partiality be affected by the fact that the individual charged is a black Canadian citizen who was born in Uganda, has HIV and the alleged victims, including the two deceased women, are white?

5. Are you one of those men or women who are so adverse to discussing issues of science and/or mathematics, that you would have a mental block in relating to the evidence of science that the Crown is likely to present against the accused in this case?

Although Justice Lofchik ruled that anyone who had read some of the pre-trial media reports (or seen them on TV) may well be biased, he did not accept that there was community-wide bias against people with HIV that would render jurors incapable of being unbiased, nor did he accept that "emotions surrounding HIV and AIDS and their transmission will lead to prejudicial and unfair juror behaviour"; not did he accept that asking about scientific 'mental blocks' was necessary.

He has allowed the following questions:

1. Do you have any previous knowledge of this case (or other recent cases involving criminal HIV transmission) through the newspaper, radio, television or the internet?

2. Given your knowledge of this case (or other recent cases involving criminal HIV transmission), are you able to decide this case based solely on the evidence you hear in the courtroom and the judge’s directions on the law?

3. Would your ability to judge the evidence in this case without bias, prejudice or partiality be affected by the fact that the individual charged is a black Canadian citizen who was born in Uganda, has HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), and the alleged victims, including the two deceased women, are white?

The full ruling of R. v. Aziga, 2008 CanLII 29780 (ON S.C.) — 2008-06-18
Ontario — Superior Court of Justice, can be found on the Canadian Legal Information Institute website here and downloaded as a pdf here.