Court Opinion

ID: 7823902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-07 18:02:36.086444+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:30:48.614125
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, concurring. The majority opinion correctly states and addresses the petitioner’s contention, but I believe the petitioner is misdirected as to the purpose served by Ark. Code Ann. § 16-32-103 (1987) — Arkansas’s law that establishes the procedure for selecting a district’s or county’s master list of prospective jurors. Section 16-32-103 (a) sets forth the random manner by which names of persons are selected from the voter-registration list, and § 16-32-103(b) provides the required minimum numbers of names to be listed from which petit or grand jurors are drawn and empaneled. Section 16-32-103 provides no requirement that a separate master list be kept for petit and grand juries. Nonetheless, petitioner here contends otherwise, arguing that the judge was required to compile a grand-jury-master list, containing 100 prospective grand jurors, from which he should have empaneled the grand jury. Petitioner argues that the judge erred by selecting 60 names from the petitjury-master list, which contained 800 prospective jurors.1  Assuming the correctness of the petitioner’s interpretation of § 16-32-103(b), no prejudice would attach by the procedure employed by the circuit judge since he selected 60 prospective jurors from a petit-jury list (and jury wheel) containing 800 randomly selected names rather than the lesser number of 100 names, which, under petitioner’s theory, would have been required if a grand-jury list had been prepared. In sum, the petitioner was favored with a larger master panel (800) from which grand jurors were selected since if a prospective grand-jury list (and jury wheel) had been prepared, the judge would have drawn from only 100 names. Justice Purtle, in his dissenting opinion, concedes that a separate grand-jury list containing 100 names would comply with the statutory law, but he also suggests that a list with the total of the minimum petit and grand juror numbers (1000 and 100) set out in § 16-32-103 (b) would comply with the law as well. Frankly, the language contained in § 16-32-103(b) is not as clear as it should be, but I fail to see how the major purpose and intent of this law is enhanced by a construction that would require adding the minimum members for petit and grand jurors when preparing the master list. The major importance of § 16-32-103 is its employment of a random-selection method used for the empaneling of petit and grand juries. Section 16-32-103 proscribes situations as the one presented in Streett v. Roberts, 258 Ark. 839, 529 S.W.2d 343 (1975), where the judge instructed the sheriff to select twenty-five grand jurors — the panel from which the judge chose the sixteen-member grand jury. In the instant case, the petitioner was afforded the protection of the random-selection method which provided a large number (800) of prospective jurors. In enacting § 16-32-103(b), the General Assembly required that at least 100 prospective jurors be randomly selected before the circuit judge proceeded in drawing a grand-jury panel. In my opinion, the judge’s action in this cause was totally, not just substantially, consistent with the requirements set out in § 16-32-103. Therefore, I concur with the majority that the petitioner’s request for a writ of prohibition should be denied. Hickman, J., joins in this concurrence.   Petitioner also complains that § 16-32-103(b) required Pope County to have 1,000, rather than 800 prospective petit jurors.