Thirty-six Summit County residents soon will have to go before a judge and explain why they didn’t show up for jury duty.
Their absence left a jury pool too small to pick from and forced a mistrial last week in the case of three men who are accused of gang-raping a 9-year-old girl at a Uintah County home in 2016.
Now, Utah court officials say, the 36 no-shows are each being served an order-to-show-cause summons, meaning they’ll have to go before a 3rd District Court judge and explain why they didn’t report for jury duty as required by law.
Court spokesman Geoff Fattah said Monday that the jurors can face a maximum penalty of being charged with a class C misdemeanor, which carries the potential of up to 90 days in jail. But the judge could also issue a fine or just give a harsh verbal warning.
The judge will ultimately decide what each juror does, Fattah said, but added the courts will likely take a “light approach.”
“We want people to be willing to serve on juries,” he said. “Taking a heavy-handed approach results in people becoming afraid of jury duty.”
Only 60 prospective jurors out of the 96-member selection pool showed up last week for the first day of the trial for the three men — Larson Rondeau, 38, Jerry Flatlip, 31, and Randall Flatlip, 27 — accused of gang-raping a 9-year-old girl in March 2016.
It’s rare for so many jurors to not show up in a single trial, Fattah said. About 6,000 jury duty summons are sent out a month in the 3rd District, he said, and only about six to eight people don’t show up and are served an order to show cause.
“This is highly unusual,” he said of the no-shows in the gang-rape trial. “It does concern us. We are concerned that a trial with serious allegations has to be put on hold until we can find jurors that can serve.”
The men face first-degree felony counts of rape of a child and sodomy upon a child on allegations they held down and raped the girl in a home near 1000 South and 2000 West in Vernal when her mother went to the garage to smoke methamphetamine.
After a mistrial was declared last week, 8th District Judge Edwin Peterson ordered a venue change to Salt Lake City. The case was originally filed in Vernal, but was moved to Summit County after the judge ruled the trio wouldn’t get a fair trial in Uintah County.
A new trial date has not yet been set.
