JACKSON - The Mississippi Senate passed SB 2135 recently, and now it is in the hands of the Mississippi House of Representatives.
If passed, this bill would allow a circuit court to expand the pool of potential jurors to the entire district, but only after three trials have ended in mistrials or hung juries. Currently, Mississippi law requires jurors to be selected from the county in which the crime occurred.
Senator Lydia Chassaniol (R-Winona), author of SB 2135, said this bill is needed to prevent counties from being overwhelmed with the costs of retrials due to small jury pools. In her own county, Chassaniol said initially she wrote the bill after the fifth murder trial of Curtis Flowers concluded with a hung jury. The total cost to Montgomery County for those five trials was $300,000.
Flowers is currently awaiting his sixth trial for allegedly shooting four people in a Winona furniture store in 1996. His first three convictions were overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court, and two ended in hung juries.
During the last trial, two jurors were indicted for perjury. Charges were dismissed in one of the perjury cases, and a plea agreement was made for the other. Mary Purnell, the juror who issued a guilty plea, was sentenced to serve 10 months in jail.
"This is something that has cost our poor little county," Chassaniol said. "It can cost other counties the same."
Montgomery County is part of the Fifth Circuit Court District, including Grenada, Carroll, Attala, Webster, Choctaw, and Winston counties. So far, of the 8,000 registered voters in Montgomery County, 1,800 have been called to jury duty to hear Flowers' last three trials. A change of venue was requested in the first two trials.
"In this case, the families of the victims need closure," she said. "The family of the defendant, I'm sure would like closure as well. If the jury finds he didn't do it, let him go. [If they find he did] then he will face justice."
Chassaniol said she is happy the bill passed the Senate, but this year, there was considerably more debate than last year.
However, the measure passed overwhelmingly by Mississippi's Senate, 34 to 15.
The bill was passed by the Senate last session, but it never made it through the House Judiciary A Committee to a House vote. Chassaniol is hoping this session will be different.
Opponents of this bill argue that the SB 2135 is unconstitutional, and it violates a defendant's rights to be tried by the citizens of the county where the crime occurred.
Senator Gary Jackson (R-Kilmichael), also a Montgomery County Senator, voted for the measure.
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