Jury trials to begin Monday after year hiatus
♦ With an emphasis on juror safety, local courts begin on the road back to full functionality.
Spread out across a large ballroom in the Forum River Center, jurors listened to an investigator’s description of the crime.
They’d found several bottles of prescription drugs in a search and none of them belonged to the man they’d found the drugs on.
Holding up one of the brown pill bottles, the officer squinted, reading the label for the record.
The defendant, a wellconnected lawyer, was convicted but he’ll never serve any jail time. It was all a test.
As the Floyd County Superior Court prepares to resume jury trials Monday, one day past a yearlong hiatus, they’ve been practicing to discover any unforeseen issues.
“When you’re going to embark on a new voyage you have to test the sails,” Rome Circuit District Attorney Leigh Patterson said while watching the mock proceedings.
Jury proceedings came to a screeching halt, like much of life, when the pandemic hit Georgia in March 2020. Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton issued a continuing series of emergency orders halting most court functions, with the exception of those deemed essential.
In the fall, courts statewide began exploring how they could resume trials.
Floyd County Superior Court Chief Judge John “Jack” Niedrach headed up a local committee comprised of lawyers, administrators and representatives from the public health department to come up with the plan to safely resume jury trials.
“We’re very cognizant of those in custody and getting them their day in court.”
Judge John “Jack” Niedrach
The committee began meeting in October and put together a tentative plan to reopen. That plan covered, among other things, how to comply with social distancing recommendations prior to and during a trial as well as where jurors will deliberate after a trial.
Locally, two spaces have been deemed large enough to hold a socially distanced criminal jury trial — Floyd County Superior Court courtroom A and a portion of the Forum annexed by the county for that purpose.
The use of the Forum has been key, Niedrach said this week. With the use of the facility Floyd County will have the same number of jurytrial capable courtrooms as larger counties, like Fulton County.
“They’ve used a lot of the things we’ve learned from the grand jury ... Our grand jurors from last November were the first and very brave to come in and do their civic duty,” Patterson said.
The Forum’s large open spaces have been in use for Grand Jury proceedings since they resumed in November 2020.
Getting started
With only two functioning courtrooms and a concern with having too many people in a space, they’re starting back slowly.
Judge Niedrach and Judge Kay Ann Wetherington will be presiding over low level trials that won’t require too many people in the courtroom. As they work out issues real time, they’re working up to presiding over larger, more complex cases.
The plan is to give older cases and cases where people are being held in jail, especially held without bond, priority a reopening plan stated.
“We’re very cognizant of those in custody and getting them their day in court,” Niedrach said.
With vaccinations picking up and the number of COVID-19 cases currently in decline, there’s hopes to expand the ability to work a continually growing backlog.
Of the 540 people housed at the jail, 274 are currently waiting trial, according to Floyd County Jail records published weekly in the Roman Record. Just over 200 of those are being held without bond.
Another 52 people have already been sentenced and are awaiting transfer into the state system.