Missouri - Questions On Jury Service For Old People
Posted : 20 May, 2014 05:27 PM
I became interested in the issue of Missouri - or at least Phelps county - putting people in the Jury Pools who are in their eighties. I'm 82 and in March of 2014 they put me in the Jury Pool. I sent the Clerk of Circuit Court a letter when I returned the form they sent, and indicated I did not want to serve on a jury because of medical reasons. I included a medical report. But the Clerk did not call me or send me a note saying I was excused from jury duty. So, I took the form they sent to a doctor, who signed it and I personally took it to the Circuit Court Clerk's office. Now I am getting medical bills for going to a doctor to get him to sign that form to excuse me. The bill is $137.
The problem is that Missouri does not have a law saying that people beyond a certain age, often 70 or 75, can be excused from jury duty if they ask to be excused. Many other states have such a law.
Some might say that citizens have a duty to serve on juries, even if they are beyond 80. However, as the jury system exists now, juries are under the courts, and judges have control over members of the juries - and even have power to hold a member of a jury in contempt of court. The real possibility of having to be confined for many days and having your freedom restricted by a judge is stressful even to younger people, and often more so to a person in his eighties. Older people get tired more easily and being tired can result in higher levels of stress, high blood pressure, etc.
Thomas Jefferson said that "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by
man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its
constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789......"If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and
fact." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.
The U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Article 4, Section 4 says "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union, a republican form of government..."
In a republican form of government, no one arm of government has total power, but there is to be a balance of power by dividing the parts of government into independent and separate bodies. This is why we have an executive branch, a legislative branch and a legal branch of government, and in many states the legislature is divided into a Senate and lower House, as at the federal level. In the case of jury trails, the citizen jury must then be independent of the courts for this principle to work at the local level. The judges should not have power to run the juries, but the juries as a part of "We the people" should be run independently of the courts and judges. The independent jury would then have, as Jefferson wanted, power to decide both fact and law, meaning a jury can openly decide against a law, something the courts do not allow now.
This is an interesting issue, but at this point in time it is doubtful if state governments would set up the jury system independent of the courts and of judges. It could be done, but the policies of governors, legislatures and state supreme courts probably would oppose it. I doubt if lawyers would want independent juries.
My question is whether in Missouri people in their eighties actually serve on juries, especially on major criminal cases, which can go on for weeks. Second, do you know of
any advocacy groups in Missouri that would be interested in the issue of the state not having a law allowing people over 75 or over 80 to be excused from jury duty without having to pay a doctor to sign a form to excise them? Last, have you or anyone you know in their eighties served on a jury who were in their eighties?
