Court Opinion

ID: 9771793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:53:36.15756+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:36.855572
License: Public Domain

VANCE, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result although I am disturbed by what appears to be a failure of compliance with the jury selection procedures set forth in K.R.S. 29A.070 and K.R.S. 29A.080. I find no reason, however, to believe that the failure to comply with the notations required by those statutes had any effect upon the trial of this appellant.
K.R.S. 29A.070 requires that all prospective jurors be required to indicate on a juror qualification form sufficient information to determine if they are statutorily disqualified from jury service. If they are so disqualified, the trial judge is required to note this fact on the juror qualification form and on the list of names drawn from the jury wheel. The obvious purpose of this procedure is to guarantee that no person shall serve on a jury who is disqualified by statute. There is no complaint in this case that any disqualified person actually sat on the jury.
K.R.S. 29A.100 authorizes a trial judge to excuse from those jurors remaining on the lists after the statutory disqualifications any juror upon a showing of undue hardship, extreme inconvenience, or public necessity.
The complaint here is that the notations on the jury lists, or the lack thereof, are not sufficient to determine whether or not the trial judge abused his discretion by excusing many jurors from service who did not show undue hardship, extreme inconvenience, or public necessity.
Nevertheless, there is not a showing here that the jury pool from which the jury was drawn, or the jurors who actually heard the case, did not represent a fair cross section of the community.
If a trial judge abuses his authority and violates K.R.S. 29A. 100 by wholesale excuses from the jury list without a showing of undue hardship, extreme inconvenience, or public necessity, sanctions for the violation may be in order, but there is no reason to reverse the verdict absent a showing that the jury panel which actually heard the case was not fairly constituted.