COMPILATION OF ROLLS OF JURYMEN

Wanganui Chronicle, 26 February 1947, Page 4

COMPILATION OF ROLLS OF JURYMEN

PROCESS IN PROGRESS IN WANGANUI

Jury lists are being checked in Wanganui.

Certain classes of persons are exempt from serving on the jury, for example, members of the Houses, judges, magistrates, chemists, clergymen, schoolmasters, barraters and solicitors, medical practitioners and dentists. Certain classes of civil servants, the police, gaolers, licensed pilots, masters of vessels in the service of the Government, seamen, and army and navy personnel on full pay also come under this category. Every January, jury officers request the police to compile a list of persons qualified and eligible to serve. This is done and notice of the revision of the list is given by posting notices either on the doors of courthouses or polxca stations within the jury district—which takes in a radius of ten miles from the court.

Ti’ie jury list is revised by a meeting of all justices who choose to attend, on the first Friday in April of every year. Persons who have any objections to make against their names being included in the list should attend and let the justices decide whether he or she should remain on the jury list or not. At the same meeting the justices can strike out the names of men disabled by lunacy, deafness, blindness, or any other permanent infirmity of body, and they can also Insert any othei' name, that is, "anyone qualified or liable, to serve, whose name has been omitted therefrom.

The following classes of persons are not qualified: “Anyone who is not a natural born or naturalised subject of His Majesty; anyone convicted of any infamous crime, or of treason, or of any crime formerly punishable as felony, unless he has received a fre» pardon; anyone who is an undischarged bankrupt or of bad fame or repute.” Justices are empowered under the Juries Act, 1908, to make a review of the list. The final list, after revision, is delivered by the jury officers to the sherriff, who numbers the list and prepares, or has prepared, ballot card! to correspond with the numbered list. When a jury is required—and the drawing of the jury Is public—the sherriff draws the numbers from a ballot box and the names of those required to serve are taken from the jury list and summonses are issued. The age of jurors is now, for men, between 21 and 65, and women are also entitled to serve on a voluntary basis. The list must be completed before the seventh day of March and justices meet on the first available Friday in April. As the first Friday in April falls on Good Friday this year, Mr. W. Parker, registrar of the Supreme Court, has informed, the "Chronicle” that the meeting ot justices will be called for April 11, 1947. For the Grand Jury the sherriff selects from the common jury list all special jurymen he considers neces- < sary. They shall be men who are ' known to him to be, or from their ' description appear to him to be, qualified, whether by reason of their education, training, or occupation, or otherwise, to determine different questions in relation to scientific, technical, business, or professional matters.”

Section 38 of the Juries Act, 1908, provides “that any person qualified as a special or grand juror shall be exempted from serving on any common jury.”

A separate Maori jury list is prepared concurrently with the ordinary jury list.