Court Opinion

ID: 9625280
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:34:42.67169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:05.053548
License: Public Domain

LUSK, J., with whom Rossman and Brand, JJ., concur,
dissenting.
The alternative writ, after alleging certain illegal practices on the part of the defendant and others in the selection of the jury list from which the grand jury was drawn, commands that “you, after the receipt of this Writ, do discharge the Grand Jury for the County of Lane empaneled on April 26, 1956 or that you show cause” for not having done so.
Among the charges in the writ is the following:
“That sometime during the period from February 1 to February 14, 1956 you, the said Honorable Frank B. Reid, did present a list of approximately 40 names, most of whom were labor union officials and leaders or their wives, to a deputy clerk with the instruction that said names be inserted into the 1956 *635jury list, which, names were in fact inserted into said 1956 jury list from which the March, 1956 term jury panel was drawn and from which panel the Grand Jury was drawn on April 26, 1956.”
It is also alleged that the names of approximately 64 persons were submitted to a deputy county clerk by seven individuals to be placed upon the 1956 jury list, that said deputy county clerk arbitrarily placed said names upon the 1956 jury list, and that a member of the grand jury is a person whose name was thus submitted.
Other illegal acts are alleged, but for present purposes they need not be specifically referred to. The charges which we have set forth, if true, show a violation of OES 10.080, which reads:
“ (1) No person shall ask or request any sheriff, constable or any other person, whose duty it is under the law to select or summon any jury or juror, to select or put him upon the jury; nor shall any person procure or offer to procure for himself or for another person a place upon any jury or seek to have himself or another placed upon the list of jurors that is required by law to be made.
“(2) No sheriff, constable or other person whose duty it is under the law to select or summon a jury shall select, summon or place upon any jury any person whom he has been asked or requested to select or summon.”
The defendant, by his demurrer, admits the truth of all the allegations of the writ which are well pleaded, including the charge that he himself violated the statute which we have quoted. If these things be true, then we are dealing with a packed jury and a circuit judge who is a party to the packing. Were the demurrer to be overruled the defendant would have the right to answer the charges. If he should fail to deny them, *636or if he should deny them but the evidence should sustain them, in either case we see no reason why this court should not exercise the power conferred upon it by the Constitution to put an end to an intolerable situation by issuing its writ of mandamus to compel the defendant to discharge this illegal grand jury. We can see many reasons why this court should do so, among which may be mentioned the following: First, our duty to defend the integrity of the jury system; second, the great public inconvenience which may result from an illegally constituted grand jury, the validity of whose indictments will be open to question; third, the reasonable apprehension that a packed grand jury might refuse to indict where it should indict.
If these charges be true, then the defendant has a duty which “the law specially enjoins” (OES 34.110) to discharge this illegal grand jury. Here is no question of controlling judicial discretion. The defendant, as presiding judge of the Lane County Circuit Court, has no discretion to keep this grand jury another day or another hour. The duty resting upon him is one that he cannot disqualify himself to perform, and the fact that there is no statute specifically prescribing the duty is beside the point. No statute required the defendant judge in State ex rel. Ricco v. Biggs, 198 Or 413, 255 P2d 1055, 38 ALR2d 720, on which the majority rely, to determine whether the relator, under indictment for a misdemeanor, was entitled to a change of venue. The statute involved withheld that power from the court in a misdemeanor ease and was declared unconstitutional — wrongly, as I thought and still think,— by this court. The duty here arises as a consequence of the violation of statutes governing the selection of the jury. It is the duty of a judicial officer to enforce the law which he has sworn to uphold.
*637The majority opinion betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of this proceeding. It was not instituted for the purpose of compelling the defendant to decide anything, much less to decide something in a particular way. All the learning in the majority opinion employed to demonstrate that a judge may not sit in his own case — about which there can be no dispute — is therefore irrelevant.
This is not a case in which it is sought to compel the circuit judge to try a law suit in which he is personally interested. This is a law suit between the state of Oregon, as plaintiff, and Judge Reid, as defendant, in which the state seeks a writ of mandamus commanding the defendant, in the exercise of one of his administrative functions, to discharge a ministerial duty. It is this court, not the defendant, that is asked to determine the question whether the grand jury for Lane County is an illegal grand jury. Were there an issue of fact here, this court, not the defendant, would have to determine the facts. Since there is only an issue of law arising on a demurrer and the admitted facts disclose the nature of the defendant’s duty, the demurrer should be overruled and the defendant permitted to answer the writ.
What has already been said sufficiently shows that the majority’s reliance on ORS 16.740 is misplaced. The purpose of that statute is to prevent a litigant, whose motion has been passed on unfavorably by one circuit judge, from applying to another circuit judge for the allowance of the same motion. The section cannot be so construed as to deprive this court of its power to compel action which the law enjoins, even though it be action by a circuit judge and a different circuit judge has refused to take such action.