House Bill 5962
Sponsor: Rep. Andrew Richner
Committee: Family and Civil Law
Complete to 9-27-00
A SUMMARY OF HOUSE BILL 5962 AS INTRODUCED 9-26-00
Under current law, jury boards are required to select jurors from a list provided to them by the county clerk. These lists are created from a list of licensed drivers and a list of personal identification cardholders who reside in that county. The lists are sent by the secretary of state to the clerk of each county, and the county clerk then compares and removes duplicate names and merges or combines the two lists into one. The resulting list is provided to the local jury board and the jury boards select persons from this list to serve on juror panels from which individual jurors are chosen to sit for jury duty.
The bill would amend the Revised Judicature Act of 1961 to eliminate the jury boards that are currently responsible for the selection of jurors from the lists provided by the county clerk. Instead, the county clerk for each county would be responsible for selecting the people who are to serve as jurors from those lists. The duties and responsibilities for jury selection would not be changed; however, those duties and responsibilities would be transferred wholly to the county clerk.
The bill would also remove archaic language requiring the board to distinguish between freeholders and non-freeholders and provisions that have expired through sunset dates, as well as references to the jury board and the jury board box. References to the presiding circuit judge would be amended to refer to the chief circuit judge. Further, the sections of the act that establish qualifications and membership of jury boards, election of officers, compensation of members and assistants, requirements that members take an oath, requirements for meetings, and procedural rules for those meetings would be repealed.
MCL 600.1304 et al.
Analyst: W. Flory