Court Opinion

ID: 9473096
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:19:11.400933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:19.008579
License: Public Domain

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the court’s opinion, though I would approach the question of the constitutional application of the death penalty in Georgia somewhat differently.' I would begin with the established proposition that Georgia’s capital sentencing model is facially constitutional. It contains the safeguards necessary to prevent arbitrary and capricious decision making, including decisions motivated by the race of the defendant or the victim. These safeguards are present in every stage of a capital murder prosecution in Georgia, from the grand jury indictment through the execution of the death sentence. Some of these safeguards are worth repeating.
At the indictment stage, the accused can insist that the State impanel a grand jury that represents a fair cross section of the community, as required by the sixth and fourteenth amendments, and that the State not deny a racial group, in violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, the right to participate as jurors. In Georgia this means that a representative portion of blacks will be on the grand jury.
The same safeguards come into play in the selection of the accused’s petit jury. In addition, the accused can challenge for cause any venireman found to harbor a racial bias against the accused or his victim. The accused can peremptorily excuse jurors suspected of such bias and, at the same time, prevent the prosecutor from exercising his peremptory challenges in a way that systematically excludes a particular class of persons, such as blacks, from jury service. See, e.g., Willis v. Zant, 720 F.2d 1212 (11th Cir.1983), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 104 S.Ct. 3548, 82 L.Ed.2d 851 (1984).
*905If the sentencer is the jury, as it is in Georgia (the trial judge being bound by the jury’s recommendation), it can be instructed to put aside racial considerations in reaching its sentencing recommendation. If the jury recommends the death sentence, the accused, on direct appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, can challenge his sentence on racial grounds as an independent assignment of error or in the context of proportionality review. And, if the court affirms his death sentence, he can renew his challenge in a petition for rehearing or by way of collateral attack.
In assessing the constitutional validity of Georgia’s capital sentencing scheme, one could argue that the role of the federal courts — the Supreme Court on certiorari from the Georgia Supreme Court and the entire federal judicial system in habeas corpus review — should be considered. For they provide still another layer of safeguards against the arbitrary and capricious imposition of the death penalty.
Petitioner, in attacking his conviction and death sentence, makes no claim that either was motivated by a racial bias in any stage of his criminal prosecution. His claim stems solely from what has transpired in other homicide prosecutions. To the extent that his data consists of cases in which the defendant’s conviction and sentence— whether a sentence to life imprisonment or death — is constitutionally unassailable, the data, I would hold, indicates no invidious racial discrimination as a matter of law. To the extent that the data consists of convictions and/or sentences that are constitutionally infirm, the data is irrelevant. In summary, petitioner’s data, which shows nothing more than disproportionate sentencing results, is not probative of a racially discriminatory motive on the part of any of the participants in Georgia’s death penalty sentencing model — either in petitioner’s or any other case.