Court Opinion

ID: 9613301
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:16:00.386334+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:27.623035
License: Public Domain

Smith, Justice,
concurring.
I feel compelled to voice my vigorous disagreement with Justice Weltner’s special concurrence. In my opinion Justice Weltner’s scheme elevates judicial economy above personal rights and that is abhorrent to me. Judicial economy should never defeat the constitutional and statutory rights of an accused.
I agree that there are certain situations in which it is appropriate to remand a case to a lower court. Such as remanding a case for a hearing to determine the voluntariness of a confession, Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368 (84 SC 1774, 12 LE2d 908) (1964); a suppression hearing, Waller v. Georgia, 467 U. S. 39 (104 SC 2210, 81 LE2d 31) (1984); a hearing to supplement the record of what occurred at the trial level, State v. Pike, 253 Ga. 304 (320 SE2d 355) (1984) and Dunn v. State, 251 Ga. 731 (309 SE2d 370) (1983). But there is an enormous difference between sending a case back to a lower court for the judge to make a factual finding after an accused has been properly indicted by a properly constituted grand jury and somehow holding a void conviction in limbo until a second indictment is returned which miraculously resurrects the fallen conviction. We might as well let the government go back and get a valid warrant when a case is reversed because the warrant was insufficient, and thus cure a void conviction!
This proposal provides absolutely no incentive for the government to strive to have properly constituted grand juries. Although the scheme calls for an elaborate system to prevent the district attorney from formally advising the grand jury of the prior proceedings there is no way that a grand jury in Mitchell County, for example, would be unaware of the previous indictment and conviction. No matter how faithful the grand jurors may be in trying to make an impartial decision of whether or not to indict, whether to charge a greater or lesser offense, whether to charge numerous counts or a single count, and *117whether it is a capital or non-capital offense, it would prove a difficult task for the strongest of personalities to argue for a no bill, lesser offense, or anything other than what they know was already decided by an earlier grand jury followed by a conviction.
When an indictment is found to be void, the issue is not whether the accused is deprived of a fair trial, the issue is whether the accused is deprived of a two-step process: 1) grand jury hearing, and 2) trial. The grand jury step of the process historically has been thought of as the primary security to the innocent against “hasty, malicious and oppressive persecution; it serves the invaluable function in our society of standing between the accuser and the accused, whether the latter be an individual, minority group, or other, to determine whether a charge is founded upon reason or was dictated by an intimidating power or by malice and personal ill will. [Cit.]” Wood v. Georgia, 370 U. S. 375, 390 (82 SC 1364, 8 LE2d 569) (1962). In the most recent case from the United States Supreme Court, the Court held that a subsequent conviction cannot cure the error of systematic racial exclusion in a grand jury. The court in Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. __ (106 SC 617, 88 LE2d 598) (54 USLW 4068, January 14, 1986) recognized that the discrimination could “impermissibly infect the framing of the indictment and, consequently, the nature or very existence of the proceedings to come.” Id', at 4071. Either step in the process may have the effect of impermissibly infecting the framing of the indictment.
We cannot use judicial economy to chip away at the foundation of the protections our forefathers provided for us. Certainly it is expensive for counties to have to retry an accused, but in the long run it is far more expensive to errode our rights. After all, the protection of our individual rights is paramount to judicial economy.
There is a way we can have judicial economy and also protect our rights in future cases. We can require the trial courts to hold hearings after the first indictment, not the second as Justice Weltner suggests, to be certain that the grand jury was properly constituted. If the grand jury is found not to be so, it can be corrected at that time, prior to trial. If the grand jury is properly constituted, the hearing will foreclose future challenges to the array that involve many hours spent in the higher courts trying to determine whether or not the accused was denied any rights. This way we encourage counties to have proper grand juries, we protect our rights, and have judicial economy all at the same time.
“[T]he return of an indictment by the grand jury [is] a necessary prerequisite to the jurisdiction of the courts of this State to try a person charged with a felony. [Cits.]” Roberson v. Balkcom, 212 Ga. 603 (94 SE2d 720) (1956); Nelms v. State, 132 Ga. App. 689, 690 (209 SE2d 110) (1974), overruled on other grounds. A conviction is void *118where there is no jurisdiction and we cannot breathe new life into a void conviction by remanding the case for a new indictment. The Court may not willy-nilly acknowledge or ignore the concept of jurisdiction upon personal whim.