Cultural Differences Overwhelm Jury

Image by Raskhan Kaderi from Pixabay

This happened in British Columbia (BC), a province of Canada, located on the Pacific coast. I remember this place because I watched the 2010 Winter Olympics on TV, which was hosted in Vancouver, the largest city in BC. This is a true story and it happened in BC in 2015.

The members of jury on a criminal case were quite overwhelmed by the contradiction and the outlandish characters of the case that they couldn’t wrap their mind over it. Two members wanted to quit the jury duty right away since they couldn’t handle it. Although they were persuaded to stay, they were eventually allowed to leave. Then a third member came forward, claiming that he couldn’t handle it either. If three members quit, the jury had to be dismissed and the whole thing had to start all over again. Some jury members even suggested that the whole case and the people involved in it should be sent to a mental hospital rather than the court.

At the center of the turmoil is the plaintiff, Tang, a young man and a student of a local college, who told the court that he wanted to kill his father but had not had the time and opportunity to do it. On the other hand, his father, knowing that his son wanted to kill him, still passionately defended his son and insisted that his son didn’t mean what he had said. He also hired the best criminal defense lawyer in Canada to defend his son, who had allegedly killed his mother and stuffed her into a suitcase. Not only that, the father praised his son for the murder and claimed that his wife deserved it since she tried to control the father and the son with an iron fist and a bitter heart.

This case was only briefly reported in Canadian media, but it was extensively analyzed and discussed and talked about in several Asian media outlets.

( To Be Continued Here)