Alien Sits on Local Jury

Now here is a question to be asked...

According to this Citizen-Tribune report, the woman in question claims to have a Green Card, which if true means that she is legally entitled to live and work in the United States of America, but is NOT a citizen of said United States, or of the State of Tennessee. As a non-citizen, this woman should not be voting.

Perhaps she isn't voting...but as a non-citizen, if she is not on the voter roles of Hamblen County, she should not have been summoned for jury duty.

How did she get a jury summons? It stands to reason that she is on the roles somewhere in the County, and we have no way to know if she is voting or not.

If she is, how many other non-citizens are illegally casting ballots and influencing the process of election that is reserved for sovereign citizens alone? How many illegal aliens are voting? Is it any wonder that members of a certain political party in Nashville oppose mandatory identification for voters, lest a part of their voter-base be suddenly ruled illegal?

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By Robert Moore, TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

The inadvertent inclusion of a non-U.S. citizen on a Hamblen County grand jury Thursday required an extraordinary legal solution Friday afternoon that averted a complete do-over, officials say.

What was at stake was the integrity of 124 cases against 56 defendants, not counting the secret indictments, which are called presentments.

Criminal Court Judge John F. Dugger resolved the matter and found that all of the indictments and all but one of the presentments the grand jury returned Thursday were valid.

Dugger says state law requires that only 12 votes are required to indict an individual for a crime. The 12-member grand jury also had a voting foreman, June Zeigler, who was sitting in for regular foreman Sam Moore.

After questioning Ziegler under oath, Dugger learned from the grand jury foreman that the votes on all the indictments were unanimous.

That means that even without the non-U.S. citizen’s vote, the district attorney’s office has the necessary 12 votes to proceed with the cases.

A grand jury will consider the presentment that didn’t get 12 votes at a later date.
At one point Thursday morning before an attorney located the 12-vote state law, court personnel feared that the entire day’s work would be lost.

The non-U.S, citizen, a woman with a Hispanic surname, reported that she has a "green card" and has been working legally in the United States for seven years, according to Kathy Mullins, Hamblen County Circuit Court clerk.

Mullins says the woman speaks English well, but apparently didn’t understand that by taking the oath to serve on the grand jury the woman was affirming that she is a citizen and a resident of Tennessee.

Potential grand jurors are randomly chosen from a list of licensed Tennessee drivers supplied by the state Department of Safety, not from voter-registration information.

The court clerk says there was no intentional deception, and the woman will face no charges. Mullins says this is the first and last time that a mix-up of this nature will occur while she remains in office.

"It won’t happen again because we will be more specific in the future," Mullins said. "It caused a great deal of pain because she didn’t say anything (Wednesday)."

What’s not clear, Mullins says, is how the woman learned that her residency status could impact grand jury results. The woman phoned the clerk’s office Friday morning and volunteered the information that she is not a U.S. citizen.