Alabama’s Judicial Inquiry Commission advised on June 17 that a circuit court could accept money from a local bar foundation to pay for jury trials. Because of shortfalls in state and local funding, the court was “confronting reduction of jury trials by half” for lack of money to pay juror expenses, the commission’s advisory opinion said.
The opinion described a tax-exempt foundation that raises gifts and bequests from lawyers and law firms, among other donors. The circuit’s presiding judge sat on the foundation’s board but would take no part in considering the proposal, and neither court staff nor jurors would know whether any particular lawyer had donated.
The commission’s answer was “Yes, under the facts presented.” Accepting the money would not “create any appearance of impropriety or erode confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,” the commission wrote. The commission cited an earlier opinion, No. 03-826, which allowed a local bar foundation to fund court positions such as court attendants to keep them from being eliminated because of budget shortfalls.
In Jefferson County, the presiding judge asked the Birmingham Bar Foundation to help pay jurors. The foundation was incorporated in 1994 as the charitable arm of the Birmingham Bar Association.
Alabama’s courts had been cutting costs since 2008. In March, Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb told legislators that trial courts were forced to lay off 120 employees the year before and that she was authorizing at least 74 more layoffs. The Administrative Office of Courts had already asked judges and clerks to ask jurors who were able to waive their juror pay, and the courts had limited juror sequestration to capital murder cases.
Peter Hardin reported this story for Gavel Grab on June 29, 2011, when the site was a project of Justice at Stake. His original post is preserved by the Internet Archive. This account of the same events was written from the public record.
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