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Law360 (April 12, 2021, 3:48 PM EDT) -- The New Jersey Supreme Court has pushed back the potential date for resuming in-person jury trials to June after assessing rising COVID-19 infection trends.
The new date, June 15, comes after the court originally set its sights on May 17 as the day in-person trials would possibly restart after being curtailed by the pandemic.
The state Supreme Court noted in its Monday order that "current COVID-19 trends indicate that it is too soon to expand on-site presence and in-person events, including for purposes of in-person jury trials."
"Public health indicators — including the millions of COVID-19 vaccines administered statewide — instead suggest that the Judiciary should be positioned to resume in-person jury trials on or after June 15, 2021," the court said.
In its initial order setting the May date for resuming in-person jury trials, issued on March 4, the state Supreme Court said that May 17 was only a "possible" date.
At the time, the judiciary noted that the downward trend in coronavirus cases was "encouraging," but said if the trends changed, the court would "adjust and instead assign jurors to fully virtual civil jury trials."
In its latest order, the state Supreme Court noted that the New Jersey Department of Health has been reporting an average of more than 3,000 new COVID-19 cases per day and rising hospitalizations over the last several weeks.
The Health Department's predictive models suggest that "COVID-19 trends may not improve for at least a few weeks," according to Monday's order.
Any potential jurors who may have been summoned to report for service before June 15 will be assigned to virtual jury trials, according to the order. All counties will continue to summon jurors for upcoming reporting dates and judges will adjust trial dates for in-person trials as necessary.
The court did find some indicators suggesting that in-person court operations may soon be able to expand.
The Health Department reported administering 5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, with about 2 million people now fully vaccinated. And despite the recent increase in hospitalizations, deaths from COVID-19 are continuing to decrease, according to the court.
Current public health data, though, did not call for an "immediate expansion of on-site presence or in-person court events," according to the court's notice.
When the state Supreme Court announced May 17 was a possible date for the resumption of in-person jury trials, the New Jersey State Bar Association, which has raised questions over the constitutionality of virtual jury formats, took the news with a grain of salt.
"We're not getting our hopes up yet," Kimberly A. Yonta, the association's president, told Law360 Pulse at the time.
--Editing by Jill Coffey.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
