Dear Editor: Jury duty in T&T feels like the apex of indignity

“[…] The morning began with a scene of casual dehumanisation. We were herded like livestock into the entrance of the Hall of Justice—a throng of roughly 100 souls, a crowd so vast and impatient it could easily have been pension day at a commercial bank.

“The instructions were curt, the process mechanical. We were told to empty our pockets of anything metallic, phones, our keys, the small instruments of our daily lives.

“While the need for security is an obvious one, this was the first step in a process designed to strip away our individuality and reduce us to anonymous components of a flawed machine…”

The following Letter to the Editor on jury duty in Trinidad and Tobago was submitted to Wired868 by Joel Quamina:

A civic duty, we are told, is a pillar of a functioning democracy. It is a noble act of service, a commitment to justice, and a sacred trust.

But for those of us recently summoned to the Hall of Justice for jury duty, that noble act felt far more like a profound and calculated waste of our time—a stark reminder of the colossal disconnect between the lofty ideals of our republic and the cold, unfeeling reality of its systems.

The morning began with a scene of casual dehumanisation. We were herded like livestock into the entrance of the Hall of Justice—a throng of roughly 100 souls, a crowd so vast and impatient it could easily have been pension day at a commercial bank.

The instructions were curt, the process mechanical. We were told to empty our pockets of anything metallic, phones, our keys, the small instruments of our daily lives.

While the need for security is an obvious one, this was the first step in a process designed to strip away our individuality and reduce us to anonymous components of a flawed machine.

Then came the true insult. We were instructed to write our personal information, our names, addresses, and contact numbers on a piece of paper. This was a baffling, Kafkaesque exercise.

Were we not the very people the state had taken the time and resources to summon? Was this not information they were supposed to have readily on file?

This pointless redundancy was not just an inconvenience—it was a clear signal of institutional contempt for the time and identity of its citizens.

The apex of this indignity was our two-hour wait inside the courtroom. We sat in enforced silence. We were told to rise when the judge entered, a final act of subservience before the grand pronouncement.

The judge, in a moment of stunning detachment, looked out at the collective and announced that the lawyers were not ready. Not ready. After having a hundred people give up their jobs, their day, and their personal schedules to obey a summons, we were dismissed and told to return the next day.

She then spoke of being proud to see so many persons complete their civic duty. This was a hollow and patronising platitude. The cold reality, the single truth whispering between us, was the fear of imprisonment.

We were not there out of a noble desire to serve justice; we were there out of a very real and justified fear of the consequences for our failure to attend. This is not the service of a citizen but the obedience of a subject.

We are not a monarchy, but we are treated like monarchy slaves to the crown, lowborns at the mercy of a judiciary that has yet to evolve past its colonial-era practices.

Among my peers were single mothers and fathers, the day-to-day workers for whom a lost day of work is a lost meal, a missed rent payment. The consensus among them was absolute: today was a profound and unforgivable waste of time.

The judiciary of Trinidad and Tobago, with all their collective knowledge and supposed wisdom, could and should have a better, more efficient system in place.

We are an independent nation. We are a republic. It is high time our institutions began to show our citizenry the respect and dignity they are owed. Do better.

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