Court Opinion

ID: 9851800
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:19:54.81737+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:15.493966
License: Public Domain

MELTON, Justice,
concurring.
I write separately to emphasize that the Uniform Superior Court Rules, of which the Unified Appeal Procedure (U.A.P.) is Rule 34, must be read in conjunction with substantive law, and, if a conflict occurs, the Rules must yield to substantive law. Russell v. Russell, 257 Ga. 177 (356 SE2d 884) (1987). In this case, the U.A.P. checklist states that the final calculation of any disparity in a given cognizable group “must be less than 5%.” However, our substantive constitutional law provides that “[a]s a general proposition, absolute disparities under 10% usually are sufficient to satisfy constitutional requirements.” Cook v. State, 255 Ga. 565, 571 (11) (340 SE2d 843) (1986). Furthermore, this Court has no inherent rule-making authority to create substantive legal standards that either supplement or contradict existing substantive law. The five percent requirement of the U.A.P. checklist directly conflicts with well-settled substantive law, and, as a result, the substantive law controls. Therefore, because the defendant in this case was not constitutionally entitled to an absolute disparity of less than five percent and did not otherwise shoulder his burden of supporting his due process and equal protection challenges to the composition of the grand jury, the trial court properly denied his motion to quash the indictment.
I am authorized to state that Justice Carley and Justice Thompson join in this concurrence.