’Absurd.’ Angry judge cancels second Macon murder trial after jurors fail to show up
In May, Superior Court Judge Howard Z. Simms was forced to postpone the trial of a Macon man accused of gunning down two convenience store clerks in 2018 after three jurors failed to return for opening arguments.
Tuesday was a case of odd deja vu: only 36 of 200 county residents decided to show up for jury selection in a murder trial for a different man — Arie Calloway — charged in the same crimes, forcing Simms to postpone the trial.
“We have not had enough jurors show up for us to pick a jury,” the judge said. “As absurd as that sounds, it is just a fact. So all of these cases that are ready for trial can’t be tried.”
Calloway and Jeremy Jerome Kendrick Jr. are accused of killing Alpeshkumar Prajapati during a 2018 robbery of the Gulf Food Mart and killing Waqar Ali during a stickup at Market Place at the corner of Vineville and Holt avenues a week later.
Simms was not pleased that, for the second time this year, a Macon murder trial had to be pushed back because residents refused to fulfill their civic duty.
“The sheriff is going to have to go out and start picking people up and dragging them down here and find out why in the hell they aren’t here for jury duty,” he said. “Everybody complains about crime but when they get a jury summons they either ignore it or immediately start calling somebody to help them get out of it.”
There are currently more than 80 people in the Bibb County jail charged with murder. Simms said a trial backlog has already put a burden on the courts after they were shut down for most of 2020. With jurors not showing up, that backlog of cases continues to grow, as Macon is on pace to eclipse last year’s record of 51 homicides.
Attorneys object to state jurors
Simms pushed for the court to use jurors summoned for state trials, but both the defense team and prosecutor Greg Winters objected. Simms said that the jury pool is the same for both courts.
“They are all pulled from the exact same well,” Simms said. “Maybe I am just dense but I can’t figure out in my mind how the title of the court on the summons has anything to do with that juror’s ability to serve.”
The state court had eight extra jurors that could have been added to the 36-person pool, although Simms acknowledged, even with the additions, it was possible there weren’t enough potential jurors to move forward.
Simms plans to order the use of state court jurors and will let the attorneys on both sides appeal that ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court.
Simms said if there aren’t enough warm bodies in the jury box, then he and those in the courtroom aren’t able to do their job.
“We can just retire and go fishing and turn it into... anarchy. Because we can’t get people down here,” Simms said. “Something has got to be done.”
This story was originally published June 15, 2021 at 5:10 PM.