Court Opinion

ID: 9738904
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:05:04.571378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:09.146150
License: Public Domain

PIVARNIK, Justice,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent from the majority opinion, wherein it finds that appellant did not waive the issue concerning the manner in which the jurors were selected by accepting them at trial and failing to raise the question until his motion to correct errors. It is true that the system of selection used by the jury commissioners here was improper and did not comply with the statutes. It is also true, however, that appellant did not look at the public records in the Clerk’s office or make any other attempt to determine whether the statutory procedure had been followed. As the majority has pointed out, Fenwick v. State, (1926) 197 Ind. 572, 150 N.E. 764, places a duty on a defendant to examine the records and raise the issue at a time when the trial court can correct the problem by discharging the jurors who were improperly selected and requiring the commissioners to select a júry in the proper statutory method. This is the law under Fenwick, supra, and its progeny. See Sturrock v. State, (1951) 229 Ind. 161, 96 N.E.2d 226; Anderson v. State, (1941) 218 Ind. 299, 32 N.E.2d 705; Souerdike v. State, (1938) 214 Ind. 523, 15 N.E.2d 379; Kark v. Central Greyhound Lines, (1949) 119 Ind.App. 303, 85 N.E.2d 277.
Appellant argues that he did not discover the problem until four or five months after the trial, when the question was raised in another unrelated case. When the trial court had the issue before it in this other case, the jurors who had been selected were excused and new ones selected in a proper manner. The appellant gives no reason why he could not have discovered this in. May at the trial of his case, when in fact it was discoverable in another case a few months later. Appellant’s counsel never looked to attempt to discover it. The only other exhibit in the record is an affidavit by the Brown County Clerk, which simply states that the improper procedure could not have been determined by looking at her records. This affidavit is bewildering, to say the least, and is certainly not sufficient to establish the proposition adopted by the majority opinion — that appellant did not waive the issue. The Clerk gave no facts to substantiate the bare statement that the impropriety of the selection process would not have been disclosed by looking at the records. Without explanation, her conclusion is not sufficient.
*269If the records in the Clerk’s office failed to show at all how the jurors were selected, this alone would have given appellant, if he had examined the records, grounds for raising the question in the trial court. He could have called into question the propriety of impanelling a jury selected by a process not revealed in the records. On the other hand, if other facts would show that the improper selection process described by the Clerk was actually used, but the records falsely showed that a procedure which complied with the statutes was followed, this would give rise to a claim by those looking at the records and relying on them that they had been misled as to what actually happened and therefore should be excused from making the wrong conclusion as to whether to raise an issue concerning the correctness of the selection procedure. We have no basis for making either of these findings here, as we have been furnished nothing by the appellant except the accepted fact that he made no effort whatever to investigate this issue at the timé of trial, and the simple statement by the Clerk that he could not have determined it if he had investigated.
This record clearly shows that appellant failed to exercise due diligence in attempting to discover the alleged errors and thereby waived the issue. I would therefore affirm the trial court on this issue and proceed to consider the other issues raised in this appeal.
GIVAN, C. J., concurs.