LINCOLN COUNTY • An unusual Lincoln County court policy that allowed people to dodge jury duty by paying $50 and performing community service has sent a drug case back for retrial and could affect about 20 other cases.

State appellate judges on Tuesday overturned an Elsberry man's 2007 drug conviction on grounds his jury may have been tainted by the now-discontinued court policy.

"We're going to have to retry this case and look and see what other cases are out on appeal," prosecutor John Richards said.

Richards said he had been frustrated with the jury selection practice and knew of no other county in the state with similar guidelines. St. Louis, St. Louis County and St. Charles County have no such policy.

The drug case appeal focused on Lincoln County's "Court Alternatives Program" in place under Presiding Circuit Judge Dan Dildine. In addition to allowing potential jurors to avoid duty by paying $50 and performing six hours of community service, the program's other primary function was to help people on probation fulfill community service obligations.

In Tuesday's decision, the state's Eastern District Court of Appeals said Lincoln County's jury selection policy was at odds with state law.

"We find no statutory or judicial authority suggesting that an individual may be permitted to choose a nonattendance penalty up-front rather than face potential jury service," appellate Judge Kurt S. Odenwald wrote in the opinion. The policy was "a fundamental and systemic failure to comply with the statutory jury selection requirements."

Dildine could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Officials said Dildine helped develop the policy to accommodate people significantly inconvenienced by having to serve.

In the drug case, Donald W. Preston, 44, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in August 2007 after a jury found him guilty of running a methamphetamine lab out of a vehicle. Police said they found Preston and two other men with chemicals and paraphernalia used for making meth during a traffic stop in Elsberry in November 2005. One of the other men pleaded guilty; the other's charges were dropped.

At Preston's trial, seven jury candidates in a pool of hundreds traded jury duty for the $50 payment and community service. Preston's lawyer argued that if those seven people had not been allowed to opt out, the list of qualified jurors would have been larger.

Preston has been at the Jefferson City Correctional Center and will return to Lincoln County for retrial. His lawyer, Mark Grothoff, said he was pleased with Tuesday's decision.

The jury program was adopted in March 2006 and suspended at the end of 2008 after a public defender questioned the practice during jury selection in the murder trial of a man later convicted of killing Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt in 2001, officials said. That jury was picked in Lincoln County because of pretrial publicity in Columbia, Mo.