Georgia to continue COVID-19 judicial emergency. What does that mean for Columbus trials?
Those who long have been waiting for justice as Georgia curtailed jury trials during the COVID-19 crisis are going to have to wait even longer.
The state has decided the recent spike in coronavirus infection rates makes it too dangerous to resume trials in January, when such restrictions were to be eased. Muscogee County, part of the six-county Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit, had hoped to resume operations on Jan. 4, summoning a pool of jurors for criminal trials.
Now those plans will have to be postponed: Jane Hansen, public information officer for the Supreme Court of Georgia, said the chief justice met with the state’s Judicial Council on Tuesday, and decided further to extend a “judicial emergency” declaration suspending jury trials until February.
The judicial emergency first was declared in March. The Supreme Court order modifies a recent extension of the order to postpone jury trials.
In the Chattahoochee Circuit that besides Muscogee includes the counties of Harris, Chattahoochee, Talbot, Taylor and Marion, each county had formed a committee to make recommendations on how to safely resume jury trials during the pandemic.
The courts here in Columbus were going to summon jurors to the city’s ice rink adjacent to the Civic Center at the south end of Veterans Parkway, where they could be socially distanced, issued face masks and screened for symptoms of the virus. Those remaining in the jury pool would go from there to the Civic Center, where trial attorneys would question them and pick the number needed for trials to be held in courtrooms in the Government Center tower at 100 10th St.
But COVID-19 infection rates have worsened since such plans were put in place, and authorities anticipate another surge after the holidays. As of Dec. 20, Columbus had reported 811 confirmed infections at a rate of 423 cases per 100,000 people over two weeks, more than four times the rate necessary for a local government to enforce a mask mandate under Georgia law.
Statewide, health officials reported more than 6,000 cases three times this month.
This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 4:48 PM.