The Missouri Supreme Court has provided us with a new order explaining how jury trials will be reintroduced during the pandemic.
https://www.courts.mo.gov/page.jsp?id=159265
This new Supreme Court order builds on its previous orders which adopted a 4-phase reopening plan. It outlines the steps that local courts need to take to ensure the health and safety of prospective jurors, court personnel, and trial participants.
Interestingly, the Supreme Court indicates that “[a]bsent exigent circumstances, jury proceedings are not anticipated prior to a court’s implementation of Phase Three.” In other words, they expect jury trials not to begin in a jurisdiction until it is more or less recovered from the pandemic. The City, as I previously wrote, is presently partly in Phase 1 (the Civil Courts Building) and partly in Phase 0 (the Carnahan Building). Yet, my understanding is that it is the 22nd Judicial Circuit’s intention to conduct a single jury trial during the week of June 22nd!
More strangely still, Robert Taaffe received an email from Judge Stovall-Reid indicating that because there will be available jurors during the week of June 22nd, he too should be ready to begin trial on his case, which was previously set for trial.
What are they thinking? Are they thinking?
Taaffe observed that the City isn’t even having in-court proceedings at this point and asked rhetorically how can they expect to do a jury trial in less than two weeks.
Besides a whole host of logistical problems associated with jury selection (how do you move jurors in the elevators, make bathrooms available to large numbers of people, etc.), I think there are serious problems with the parties getting a fair trial — in fact, I think any lawyer that would agree to trial under these conditions is simply incompetent. And if forced to go to trial, I think a lawyer for either side would be able to make some significant constitutional challenges to the whole process.
I understand that there are individuals who are confined and they have a right to a speedy jury trial — that describes many of my clients. But I want them to have a fair trial. I have a question for the judges: would you want your son or daughter facing prison to go to trial under these conditions? If your son or daughter had been murdered and the accused was going to trial, would you want the trial to proceed under these conditions? I guess as long as it’s someone else . . . .