Court Opinion

ID: 9577008
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:30:50.020498+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:19:50.353232
License: Public Domain

Eldridge, Judge,
concurring specially.
As to Division 2,1 concur in judgment only.
1. The majority states: “a trial court must employ the three-step burden shifting inquiry announced in Purkett v. Elem, 514 U. S. 765 (115 SC 1769, 131 LE2d 834) (1995).” I cannot agree. A trial court does not engage in the analysis announced in Purkett and which formed the basis for reversal in that decision.
As I explained in Gardner v. State, have stressed repeatedly thereafter, and will continue to stress: The Purkett analysis does not apply to the trial court.1 Purkett applies to appellate analysis: “The Court of Appeals erred by combining Batson’s second and third steps into one, requiring that the justification tendered at the second step be not just neutral but also at least minimally persuasive [to the Court of Appeals].” (Emphasis supplied.) Purkett at 839; compare Jackson v. State, 265 Ga. 897, 899 (463 SE2d 699) (1995).
In Purkett, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals conducted a de novo review of the step 2 reasons for striking, found the reasons “silly,” and reversed the trial court’s step 3 determination that the reasons were sound. The United States Supreme Court admonished the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to keep its appellate “hands off” the trial court’s step 3 credibility determinations: “[T]o say that a trial judge may choose to disbelieve a silly or superstitious reason at step 3 is quite different from [the Eighth Circuit] saying that a trial judge must terminate the inquiry at step 2 when the race-neutral reason is silly or superstitious.” (Emphasis in original and supplied.) Id. at 839. In plain language: a trial judge may choose to disbelieve a *625silly reason, but he does not have to, and an appellate court cannot make him just because the appellate court finds the reason silly.
The Purkett bottom line: In a Batson/McCollum review, the appellate courts cannot use step 2 reasons which are race-neutral on their face in order to reverse a trial court’s step 3 credibility decision.2
2. The majority states: “Indeed, this same problem [failure to determine explanations’ race-neutrality before persuasiveness] resulted in a reversal in Purkett and was the subject of much of the dissent’s opinion in that case. (Cit.)” Purkett did. not reverse a trial court on this basis.
Purkett was reversed because the appellate court (not the trial court) “combined” steps 2 and 3 by analyzing, de novo, the step 2 reasons for striking, instead of deferring to the trial court’s step 3 determination that the reasons were acceptable. The race-neutral reasons, themselves, obviously provided no basis for reversing a trial court’s decision to believe them.
3. In Purkett at the trial level, the Batson procedure went as follows: explanations were offered under step 2; and immediately thereafter, the trial court, without explanation (as in this case), overruled respondent’s objection and empaneled the jury under step 3.3 Id. at 838. That was all. And neither the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals nor the United States Supreme Court disapproved of or attempted to alter, expand, or illuminate this trial procedure. The entire Purkett opinion was directed to appellate errors in evaluating this proper trial procedure.
Accordingly, what can be gleaned from the procedural posture of Purkett at the trial level (and the fact that such procedure was left alone by the appellate courts) is that:
(a) A trial court is not required to “specifically rule on the racial neutrality of [the proffered] explanations” as urged by the majority.
(b) A trial court is not required to first “deem! ] race neutral” a reason that it has determined to be pretext, as has been held in Pickett v. State, 226 Ga. App. 743, 745-746 (487 SE2d 653) (1997); Leeks v. State, 226 Ga. App. 227, 229 (483 SE2d 691) (1997); and O’Neal v. *626State, 226 Ga. App. 224, 225-226 (482 SE2d 478) (1997).
Decided February 17, 1998
Robert S. Devins, for appellant.
Thomas J. Charron, District Attorney, Ann B. Harris, Debra H. Bernes, Nancy I. Jordan, Assistant District Attorneys, for appellee.
(c) A trial court is not required to first hear “rebuttal” of the explanations from the opponent of the strike as part of and prior to its step 3 determination as has been held in Gilbert v. State, 226 Ga. App. 230, 232 (486 SE2d 48) (1997).
(d) A trial court is not required to accept any reason as long as it is race-neutral on its face, as has been found in Malone v. State, 225 Ga. App. 315, 317-319 (484 SE2d 6) (1997), and Leeks, supra at 229; cf. McKenzie v. State, 227 Ga. App. 778 (490 SE2d 522) (1997).
(e) The record is not required to “show that the trial court considered each step of the three-step process separately” as has been held in Smith v. State, 229 Ga. App. 765 (494 SE2d 757) (1997), and Malone, supra at 318-319.
4. Our appellate interpretations of Purkett have had the effect of overruling Batson/McCollum in Georgia. Candidly, since our Supreme Court’s opinion in Jackson, which, in dicta, first applied the Purkett decision to the trial courts, as opposed to the appellate courts, Baston/McCollum jurisprudence in this State has been in turmoil. Language from Purkett such as “the second step does not demand an explanation that is persuasive or even plausible,” has been repeatedly applied in a direct appellate review of step 2, rather than in recognition of the correctness of the trial court’s Batson step 3 decision, as intended by Purkett. Trial courts are regularly being reversed by this Court on the basis of language in Purkett that was never meant to apply to the trial court’s Batson procedures. In short, we are engaging in the same errors in appellate analysis as did the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in Purkett.
A review of recent decisions from this Court makes it very clear that explicit guidance from our Supreme Court is needed on this issue, and very soon, in order to ensure that Batson and McCollum remain viable. Physician, heal thyself; otherwise, the evil against which Batson and McCollum were designed to protect, discrimination in the use of peremptory strikes, is back, in force, in Georgia.

 225 Ga. App. 427 (483 SE2d 912) (1997): a case whose length apparently precluded worth; see also McGlohon v. State, 228 Ga. App 726 (492 SE2d 715) (1997) (Eldridge, J., concurring specially).

 In a McCollum, appeal, such as in this case, the race-neutral aspect of the reasons provides no basis for reversal, because the trial court does not believe the explanations despite their race-neutral cast. The trial court’s step 3 credibility determination is then based upon factors other than the facially race-neutral reasons. Thus, the appellate inquiry in a McCollum claim is the mirror image of that of a Batson claim: whether anything in the record demonstrates that the trial court was clearly in error for disbelieving the race-neutral reasons.

 In Purkett, as in this case, the prosecutor offered explanation for his use of strikes following the initial objection, and a step 1 prima facie showing was not made. See, e.g., Lewis v. State, 262 Ga. 679, 680 (2) (424 SE2d 626) (1993).