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Georgia Jury Selection

Jury selection refers to a procedure employed to choose the people from among the community using a reasonably random method to serve on a trial jury.  The board of jury commissioners is entrusted with the responsibility of compiling, maintaining, and revising a trial jury list of upright and intelligent citizens of the county to serve as trial jurors.  A grand jury list of the most experienced, intelligent, and upright citizens of the county is also created to serve as grand jurors[i]. In carrying out revisions of the trial jury list and grand jury list, the board of jury commissioners makes use of all of the following:

  • A list of all residents of the county who are the holders of drivers’ licenses or personal identification cards issued by the department of driver service
  • The registered voters list in the county; and
  • Any other list of persons resident in the county as may be deemed appropriate by the board of jury commissioners.[ii]

Once the trial or grand jury lists, or both, are established, the board of jury commissioners may revise such lists from time to time by adding new names to the lists, correcting names and other data on the lists, and deleting names from the lists by reason of death or other legal cause. The trial jury box for the county shall be taken from the trial jury list established by the board of jury commissioners, and the grand jury box for the county shall be taken from the grand jury list established by the board of jury commissioners.  The information contained in the trial and grand jury boxes shall be stored in a security data processing storage bank from which all trial or grand juries in the county shall be selected.  For selecting jury, the jury commissioners place tickets containing all the names of grand jurors in a box from which grand jurors are drawn.   The trial jurors are also selected in a similar way. No person shall be qualified to serve as a juror unless that person is a citizen of the United States.  Convicted felons and mentally ill are also not qualified to serve as jurors. If juries have not been drawn for any regular term of the superior court and there is not sufficient time for drawing and summoning jurors to serve at the regular term, the judge of the superior court for the county in which the failure has occurred, by order passed at chambers, may adjourn the court to another day, may require the requisite number of grand and trial jurors to be summoned, and may enforce their attendance at the term so called. [i] O.C.G.A. § 15-12-40  (2009) [ii] O.C.G.A. § 15-12-40  (2009)


Inside Georgia Jury Selection