11-5-3 - Issue may be tried by a jury.
§ 11-5-3. Issue may be tried by a jury.
The chancery court, in a controversy pending before it, and necessary and proper to be tried by a jury, shall cause the issue to be thus tried to be made up in writing. The jury shall be drawn in open court from the jury box used in the circuit court, in the presence of the clerk of the circuit court who shall attend with the box for that purpose. The number drawn shall not exceed twenty, and the slips containing the names shall be returned to the box. The clerk of the chancery court shall issue the venire facias to the sheriff, returnable as the court shall direct. If there be no jury box the jury may be obtained as provided for in the circuit court in such case. The sheriff and jurors, for failure to perform duty or to attend, shall be liable to like penalty as in the circuit court. The parties shall have the same right of challenge as in trials in the circuit court, and the jury may be completed in the same manner. The chancellor may instruct the jury in the same way that juries are instructed in the circuit court, and the parties shall have the same rights in respect thereto; the instructions shall be filed in the cause and become a part of the record, and the chancellor shall sign bills of exceptions as in the circuit court, and the court may grant new trials in proper cases.
Sources: Codes, 1880, § 1836; 1892, § 507; 1906, § 558; Hemingway's 1917, § 318; 1930, § 364; 1942, § 1275.