Aug 1, 2013 3 min read

For the second time, jury commissioners lost a Commonwealth Court case they filed in an attempt to keep county commissioners from abolishing their jobs, but, as before, they are appealing the decision to the state’s highest court.

Washington County’s jury commissioners, Republican Richard Zimmerman and Democrat Judith Fisher, are among a long list of 17 individuals who are challenging the latest of two laws allowing county commissioners to eliminate their positions.

Their terms expire at the end of this year, and the state association of jury commissioners thus far has been unsuccessful at getting the office on the ballot pending the outcome of the court case.

Commissioners in both Washington and Greene counties have abolished the jury commissioners’ positions, although in Greene County, no one attempted to file petitions to have the office placed on this year’s ballot.

“This decision was not unexpected,” said Larry Thompson, immediate past president of the Pennsylvania State Association of Jury Commissioners, in a news release.

“From the beginning, we knew that the Commonwealth Court was a mere weigh-station on our way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the most prepared and experienced court in the commonwealth and the justices will have the final say on the complex constitutional issues in this case.”

Newly elected jury commissioners’ association President Clinton Bonetti of Butler County told association members last week that the association will continue to challenge all attempts to eliminate the elected position.

“We believe the Legislature is trying to usurp the power of the judiciary,” Bonetti said. “The just-passed law has a number of issues and we are confident the courts will rule unconstitutional this latest attempt to eliminate an elected office of public trust.”

The office of jury commissioner has existed in Pennsylvania since 1868, but in an opinion filed Wednesday, Commonwealth Court Judge P. Kevin Brobson disagreed that eliminating it violates the separation of powers defined in the state Constitution.

“The Judicial Code does not support the jury commissioners’ contention that the office of jury commissioner is a ‘judicial office,'” Brobson wrote, limiting its members to only judges, magisterial district judges and appointed judicial officers.

“The Judicial Code does not vest any powers or duties in an elected jury commissioner,” the judge ruled, calling a jury commissioner’s job “a county office created by statute and one that the Legislature, in its wisdom, is free to abolish.

“For a county where the governing body elects to eliminate the elected office of jury commissioners, we have confidence that the president judge, as the sole remaining member of the county jury selection commission, will ensure that the county continues to compile lists of potential jurors in a manner consistent with the Judicial Code.”

Brobson concluded that “it is foreseeable that some counties will choose to keep the office” despite a 2013 act that the governor signed into law after the Supreme Court threw out an earlier version in March.

The state’s highest court rejected a 2011 law that gave counties the option of doing away with the office of jury commission, basing its decision on the fact that the law was “log-rolled” or bundled with other legislation that obscured it.

The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania intervened in the case on behalf of its members.

In Washington County, where the jury commissioner’s office is part-time, officials have estimated that eliminating the office and allowing a computer database to perform its selection function will save taxpayers about $80,000 a year in salaries, benefits and other costs.