Columbus court trials delayed when no one shows up for jury duty. What happened?
Almost everyone was ready for trial Monday in Judge Bobby Peters’ Columbus court: the defendant, the defense attorneys, the prosecutors, the judge, and the deputies and bailiffs needed to secure the courtroom.
Only one crucial element was missing: a jury.
An assault case set for trial in Peters’ courtroom was postponed because not one of 350 people who were supposed to have been summoned for jury duty showed up at the 2100 Comer Ave. building Muscogee County now uses for jury selection.
The reason wasn’t that all those people decided to shirk jury duty: It was that they were never notified to begin with.
Jury Manager Sonya Kibble said the county contracts with a vendor, Tyler Technologies, to compile lists of potential jurors and send out summonses, and it pays the mailing costs through an account with the United States Postal Service.
After the massive no-show Monday morning, she discovered the funds in the mailing account had run low, and a check for $7,000 the city sent to USPS on Oct. 27 had just been deposited.
Kibble, who worked 30 years for the jury manager’s office before taking charge about two years ago, said she had never heard of this happening before, and intends for it never to happen again: She has arranged to track the USPS account herself, rather than rely on the postal service to keep up.
“I want to be able to check my own account,” she said.
Peters said that when he learned he could not hold a trial, he had to call Kibble into court to testify.
“I had to bring the jury manager in and put her on the record,” the judge said.
The court had to have an explanation for why the trial could not be held as scheduled, should the delay become an issue on appeal, he said.
“It was embarrassing,” Peters said, of Kibble adding, “But it was not our local manager.”
Kibble said she had anticipated that Peters would need at least 60 prospective jurors to select 12 plus alternates for his trial, and that Judge Gil McBride would need 40 more to pick jurors for a possible civil trial.
She typically summons about three times more than needed, because so many either don’t show up or have valid excuses not to serve, she said.
No trials are expected next week, so Kibble and her staff now will rush to see if they can summon enough jurors for three courts expecting trials on Nov. 28, she said.
For that week, she had asked for 550, again seeking three times more than needed, but now she will try to summon 1,000, she said: “I’m doubling what I tripled.”
The case delayed
The defendant set to go to trial in Peters’ court this week was Anthony Maurice Gates, accused of assaulting his girlfriend in front of their three kids before one of the children tried to shoot Gates with his own gun.
Instead, the then-6-year-old boy shot his mother in the head, police said.
They said Gates had grabbed the woman by the neck, held the gun to her head and told her that he should shoot her, but he couldn’t because of their children.
Then he put the gun on a bed, so he could choke her with both hands, and that’s when the child grabbed it and tried to shoot Gates, accidentally hitting his mother instead, investigators said.
The 27-year-old woman long was in critical condition at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, as Gates remained jailed for assault. He since has been released on bond, attorneys said.
Now Gates’ trial in Muscogee Superior Court will have to be rescheduled for a date when jurors are available to hear it.
He was 26 when the shooting happened on Oct. 4, 2019. Today he’s 29, and facing decades in prison if convicted on the allegations listed in his indictment:
- Aggravated assault with family violence for putting a gun to the woman’s head.
- Aggravated assault with family violence for choking her.
- Terroristic threats for threatening to kill her.
- Using a gun to commit a felony.
- Three counts of third-degree cruelty to children, for each child who witnessed the assault.
- Hindering a 911 call.
Police learned of the shooting around 2:45 a.m., when they were called to Piedmont Columbus Regional, where the woman was being treated in the emergency room.
She had been shot in her home at Alpine Apartments, off Cusseta Road at 4225 Alpine Drive, where she and Gates lived together with their children, the older two ages 10 and 11, officers said.
Arrested for aggravated assault on Oct. 7, 2019, Gates had a preliminary hearing in Columbus Recorder’s Court two days later, when Detective Kelly Phillips testified the children saw Gates choking their mother when the noise woke them up.
“They observed Gates in the bedroom with one hand on the victim’s throat and a gun to her head, telling the victim something to the effect of ‘I should kill you, but you’ve got kids,’” Phillips said.
When the woman gave her cell phone to a daughter and told the girl to call 911, Gates grabbed the phone and smashed it, the detective said. Then he set the gun on the bed and started choking his girlfriend with both hands, Phillips said.
“At this point the 6-year-old child, watching his mother actively being strangled by Gates, picked up the firearm, pointed it at Gates, and pulled the trigger, unfortunately striking his mother,” the officer testified.
This story was originally published November 14, 2022 at 3:07 PM.