Jun 3, 2013 2 min read

A Commonwealth Court judge heard testimony Friday in the Pennsylvania State Association of Jury Commissioners’ attempt to have declared unconstitutional a recently enacted law that again gives county commissioners the option of abolishing the elected office.

Washington County Jury Commissioner Richard Zimmerman, an appellant in the case, was one of 10 such officeholders who attended the morning-long proceeding in Harrisburg before Judge P. Kevin Brobson.

“We were spread out across the Commonwealth from Beaver County to Montgomery County,” he said Monday.

Both Washington and Greene county commissioners exercised their option in May to again abolish the office of jury commissioner.

Larry Thompson, a former jury commissioner in Butler County and current president of the association, and Indiana Jury Commissioner Mary Jane Dellafiora testified.

“Pennsylvania jury commissioners will not stand idly by and allow the executive and legislative branch of county government to embark on this type of political aggression against an elected office of the people,” Thompson said after the hearing.

The jury commissioners allege that Act 4, signed last month by Gov. Tom Corbett, is in violation of the separation of powers doctrine embodied in both the United States and Pennsylvania constitutions because the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1968 placed them in the judicial branch of government.

Samuel Stretton, lead counsel for the jury commissioners, offered oral argument in support of the association’s petition for preliminary and permanent injunctive relief that would allow the office to appear on the Nov. 5 ballot.

The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania opposed the granting of an injunction, as did the state attorney general’s office and the Republican leadership of the state House and Senate, said Douglas E. Hill, executive director of CCAP.

“There are 11 counties right now that select juries without the use of jury commissioners, and some of those go back to the 1970s with the adoptions of home rule charters that don’t neccesitate an elected office be part of the process,” Hill said Monday. “There’s been no hint of a problem or impropriety and there’s been no lack of efficiency in those counties.”

State appellate courts’ previous action kept the office of jury commissioner off the May 21 primary ballot in the 42 counties where county commissioners voted to abolish the office.