After a halt of seven months brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, jury proceedings are now expected to return – gradually and with major changes – to the courts of Bulloch County and rest of the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit.

A number of Bulloch County residents have been called to serve as grand jurors and begin hearing proposed indictments Nov. 2-4. A grand jury consists of 16-23 jurors, but Bulloch County Clerk of Courts Heather Banks McNeal said she has summoned more individuals than usual in case some are unavailable because of the coronavirus.

The county, which is authorized under state law to empanel quarterly grand juries, had to skip those in May and August. Even a scheduled call-back of the February-term grand jury was cancelled under the March 14 emergency declaration from Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold D. Melton.

Then, after extending that declaration each month, Melton in his September revised order allowed grand juries to resume at the discretion of the chief judge of each court in consultation with the district attorney.  Now he plans to sign an order Saturday allowing chief judges – who he previously authorized to work with a committee of court officials in each county to develop a plan – “to resume jury trials, if that can be done safely and in accordance with a final jury trial plan.”

But the press release issued by Melton’s office Wednesday stated that because of the time needed to summon jurors, jury trials “will not actually start until a month or longer after the process for resuming them begins.”

Trial before holidays

Chief Judge F. Gates Peed  of the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit Superior Courts told the Statesboro Herald that he would like to see a jury trial – probably just one and a relatively quick  one at that – held in Bulloch County by the end of the year.

“Our limitations, of course, are trying to comply with CDC guidelines as well as guidelines that have been established by a COVID task force of the courts, and our biggest challenge is being able to get enough jurors in to select a jury,” Peed said Thursday, “and then to go forward with the jury trial, we probably will start with something that’s simple in terms of time needs and space requirements.”

By a “simple” case, he means one expected to be tried within a day, he said.

Peed was scheduled to meet with Bulloch County’s committee for resumption of jury trials Friday at 9 a.m. and with Effingham County’s committee at 1 p.m. Committees in the two smaller counties of the circuit, Jenkins and Screven, are slated to meet next week.

“We’re moving ahead to put that protocol in writing so that there will be some comfort factor for the jurors as well as to comply with the requirements that the (state) Supreme Court set forth,” Peed said.

Challenges include how to fit people into something like a courtroom with six feet of space between them.

In the courtrooms upstairs at the Bulloch County Judicial Annex, the space between seats in the jury box is more like one foot, so seating an entire jury in the traditional place is out of the question. As of Thursday, the Bulloch County plan involved reconfiguring the larger jury assembly room, downstairs from the courtrooms, for use as a courtroom for entire trials.

“Typically in Bulloch we’d pull in 200 jurors for a jury selection,” Peed said. “There’s no place in the county that we could put 200 jurors in a place and space them out six foot.”

So jury pools, prior to selection of specific juries of 12 members plus alternates, will be much smaller than they have been in the past, he indicated. Another reason for starting with a single jury trial in the remainder of 2020 is that the holidays are approaching.

“We don’t want to overload the whole of people’s lives,” Peed said. “We would like, though, to fit a jury trial in before the end of the year, so we can work out our kinks and so that we can move ahead come the first of the year.”

Hundreds of cases

At this point, Bulloch County alone has 429 pending “indicted” criminal cases and 641 “not indicted” cases assigned to all judges, McNeal said Thursday. But defendants in 47 “indicted” cases have waived the right to a jury trial.

The “indicted” cases also included cases moved forward by accusation, a process that does not involve a grand jury. Peed noted that certain criminal charges can be handled this way and said that prosecutors have been doing this with more cases in an effort to move them forward.

Only a minority of cases actually go to trial in any year, with a few cases being dismissed and many others ending in guilty pleas.

In 2019, there were about 14 Bulloch County Superior Court jury trial selections, with jurors summoned for both criminal and civil cases, McNeal said in September.
“Each of these selections typically included lengthy calendars with multiple defendants,” she said.

But since mid-March 2020, and apparently extending forward through at least an eighth month, there have been no jury trials.

For the last five months, a statewide Judicial COVID-19 Task Force, made up of judges and lawyers appointed by Melton in May, has been developing guidelines for safe reopening of in-person court-proceedings.

A document called “Guidance for Resuming Jury Trials,” attached to the new order, will provide “detailed guidelines that address many topics, including the use of masks; the reconfiguring of courtrooms and chairs, installation of plexiglass barriers, … use of markers to ensure social distancing; … regular replacement of air filters and plans for guaranteeing public access to court proceedings,” stated Melton’s press release.

One suggested way to guarantee public access is to set up areas where people can watch remotely from within a court building.

Statewide planning

“From the beginning of this emergency – and even earlier – we have been preparing for this day,” Melton said in the release. “We have put into place rigorous safety protocols for grand jury proceedings and jury trials because we understand that the public must have confidence to come and serve on juries. It is paramount to all our judges that our citizens realize that their safety has been thoroughly considered.”

Although Melton will officially sign the new order Saturday, local judges had received drafts, and it was quoted in the press release.

The notice also acknowledges that “due to substantial backlogs of unindicated and untried cases, as well as public health precautions, proceedings will not occur at the speed they occurred before the pandemic.” Normal court deadlines will remain suspended under the new order.