Court Opinion

ID: 9587193
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:19:07.09119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:14.478840
License: Public Domain

Haymond, Judge,
concurring:
Though I concur in the affirmance by this Court of the judgments below I do not concur in point 1 of the syllabus in this case. It is incomplete in that it does not deal with or mention the requirement of Section 2, Article 2, Chapter 52, Code, 1931, that a list of persons qualified for *56grand jury service be prepared by the jury commissioners of a county, but deals only with the time of the preparation of the list and the maximum number of persons to be included in it. It should have dealt with the requirement that a list be prepared and pronounced that requirement mandatory. Its failure to do so differentiates it from the holdings of this Court in State v. Carduff, 142 W. Va. 18, 93 S. E. 2d 502; State v. Gory, 142 W. Va. 5, 93 S. E. 2d 494; State v. Jaranko, 142 W. Va. 1, 93 S. E. 2d 537, all of which were decided simultaneously with this case, that the requirement that a list be prepared is mandatory but that the requirements relative to the time of its preparation and the maximum number of persons to be placed upon it are directory. As the 1952 grand jury list for Harrison County and the validity of the indictment returned by the grand jury selected from that list were involved in each of the three cited cases and in this case, there is no perceivable reason for this singular differentiation. In consequence the foregoing syllabus is unnecessarily restrictive in dealing only with the directory provisions of the statute and, for that reason, I consider it inadequate and unacceptable.