Court Opinion

ID: 9597015
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:54:59.174943+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:41:25.654187
License: Public Domain

Stolz, Judge,
concurring specially.
The factual statements contained in the majority and dissenting opinions require no further elaboration. Suffice it to state that, at the conclusion of the defendant’s counsel’s questioning of the jurors, he made a motion for a mistrial, but he did not make a challenge to the poll of jurors. This was the defendant’s remedy in the situation with which he was confronted. Fields v. State, 190 Ga. 642 (2) (10 SE2d 33); Hill v. State, 221 Ga. 65 (1, 2) (142 SE2d 909); Hagans v. State, 77 Ga. App. 513 (48 SE2d 700). This remedy, like many others available to litigants in our courts, may be waived by failure to make a timely and proper assertion of the alleged wrong. The record reveals no such challenge. Lest we be found to be "strangling on technicalities,” we remind ourselves that the law itself is a collection of rules. The procedure provided for the trial of cases is to assure just, fair and orderly proceedings. The need for rules is perhaps best stated by the beloved late Chief Justice Logan Bleckley in Cochran v. State, 62 Ga. 731, 733: "Those who are impatient with the forms of law ought to reflect that it is through form that all organization is reached. Matter without form is chaos; power without form is anarchy. The state, were it to disregard forms, would not be a government, but a mob. Its action would not be administration, but violence. The public authority has a formal embodiment in the state, and when it moves, it moves as it has said by its laws it will move. It proceeds orderly, and according to pre-established regulations.”
*675The record reveals that the defendant’s counsel made a joint motion for mistrial and a continuance. "The time for making a motion for mistrial is not ripe until the case has begun, and the trial does not begin until the jury has been impaneled and sworn . . . Barbour v. State, 66 Ga. App. 498, 500 (18 SE2d 40). See also Peavey v. State, 153 Ga. 119 (1) (111 SE 420); Newsom v. State, 2 Ga. 60; Reynolds v. State, 3 Ga. 53 (2); Nolan v. State, 55 Ga. 521 (1) (21 AR 281); Doyal v. State, 70 Ga. 134 (3); Franklin v. State, 85 Ga. 570 (11 SE 876).” Ferguson v. State, 219 Ga. 33, 35 (131 SE2d 538). "Granting that the language in question was objectionable and would have been cause for a mistrial if uttered in the presence of the jury after the trial of the case had begun, we fail to see how, when spoken before the jury was selected, but in the presence of those who were summoned to serve as jurors, it could in any event constitute a ground for continuance. Under certain circumstances, improper rema'rks of counsel made in the hearing of prospective jurors might render it necessary for the trial judge, in order to assure a fair trial, to discard the panels of jurors already drawn and summon other panels from which to strike a jury. No request to this effect appears to have been made in the present case; so that we are not called upon to say whether or not the court erred in failing to adopt the course suggested. It is also unnecessary to decide as to the propriety of the remarks made by counsel to which objection was made; it is sufficient that under the circumstances they did not, even if improper, constitute a ground for a continuance.” Thompson v. O’Connor, 115 Ga. 120, 122 (41 SE 242). "While the words 'continuance’ and 'postponement’ may be virtually synonymous, a motion for a continuance generally implies a request that the case go over to another term, while the use of the word postponement implies a request that the case be adjourned to a later time during the same term. Black’s Law Dictionary, p. 1330. A motion for a continuance is addressed to the sound discretion of the trial court, and a ruling upon such a motion will not be disturbed by the appellate court unless it appears that the refusal to grant it was an abuse of the court’s discretion. Lowe v. State, 185 Ga. 113 (2), supra. No abuse of discretion is shown where it does not appear that *676movant invoked the explicit remedy to which he was entitled, to wit, a postponement of the trial to another day in the same term or until other panels could be drawn from which to select a jury.” Colonial Pipeline Co. v. Westlake Club, Inc., 112 Ga. App. 412, 413 (145 SE2d 669). See also Lowe v. State, 185 Ga. 113, 115 (2b) (194 SE 527); Bowling v. Hathcock, 27 Ga. App. 67 (1) (107 SE 384); Fievet v. Curl, 96 Ga. App. 535 (1) (101 SE2d 181).
Thus, while we deplore the factual situation presented, we do not reach the merits of the case. The defendant waived his remedy by failing to challenge the poll of jurors. Consequently, the matter is not before us for review, and we must concur in the judgment of affirmance.
I am authorized to state that Chief Judge Bell and Presiding Judge Deen join in this special concurrence.