Court Opinion

ID: 9605133
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:30:38.697209+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:59.643291
License: Public Domain

Sears-Collins, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent to Division 2 of the majority opinion. While, I recognize that this court has continued to approve an instruction that a jury has the duty to convict where the evidence proves that a criminal defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, Miller v. State, 260 Ga. 191 (13) (391 SE2d 642) (1990), I believe that such a charge fails to inform a jury of its inherent power to find justice, particularly when it is repeatedly given by the trial judge, as in this case.
*183As noted by Justice Benham in the majority opinion, instructing the jury that it “would be authorized to find the defendant guilty” (emphasis supplied), is always the more sound approach. See Suggested Pattern Jury Instructions, Vol. II: Criminal Cases (2d ed. 1991).
There is a key definitional difference between the words duty and authority. Duty implies an obligatory task, mode of conduct, or service to be performed by those persons bound by the duty. It also implies that non-compliance will engender a penalty from a superseding entity with the power to command and to coerce obedience. But a jury always possesses the “de facto power to acquit the defendant, regardless of the strength of the evidence against him.” Cargill v. State, 255 Ga. 616, 642 (340 SE2d 891) (1986). This concept stems from shared notions of democracy and our trust of the citizenry to act, doing honor to their own interpretation of responsibility, fairness, justice and mercy.
Compare the noun, duty, to the verb, authorize. To authorize means to exercise the power “to give legality or effective force to (a power, instrument, order).” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. It is a discretionary function. How, then, may a jury possessed of the ultimate power of acquittal and its discretionary use, reconcile that power with a trial court’s instruction mandating a duty to convict? The answer is that it may not, at least, while still retaining any integrity, intellectual honesty, or logical consistency. This is the dilemma that we impose upon juries when we allow trial courts to give a charge that juries have the “duty to convict.”4
This problem may have its roots in Felker v. State, 252 Ga. 351 (13 b) (314 SE2d 621) (1984), where this court thought to resolve the inconsistency by attempting to distinguish duty from power. There we stated:
[A jury’s] duty is to apply the laws to the facts and to reach a verdict which speaks the truth. [Cits.] If, after considering all of the evidence, the jury finds that the state has carried its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt every essential allegation in the indictment, and is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of the defendant’s guilt of the crime charged, it should convict. (Emphasis supplied.)
However, the word should, being merely the past tense of the word *184shall, is mandatory.5 It does nothing to rectify the conflict between the jury’s supreme power to acquit and the implication that the power of acquittal is somehow subservient to a duty to convict.
Decided April 23, 1992.
Michael Mears & Associates, Michael Mears, for appellant.
Thomas J. Charron, District Attorney, Debra H. Bernes, Nancy I. Jordan, Assistant District Attorneys, Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, Mary H. Hines, Staff Attorney, for appellee.
Because Division 2 of the majority opinion reaffirms our approval of a misleading jury charge, repeated no fewer than five times by the trial judge, I must respectfully dissent. When the lives and liberty of men and women are at stake, words ought not pass from judges to juries too lightly.

 “Put simply, the right to be tried by a jury of one’s peers finally exacted from the king would be meaningless if the king’s judges could call the turn.” United States v. Spook, 416 F2d 165, 181 (1st Cir. 1969), citing Bushel’s Case, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006 (C.P. 1670).

 There is a possible reading of this holding which might comport with the distinction between duty and authority; that is if the word should is read to imply its archaic form, which means “might or could.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. However, our precedent has never acknowledged this possibility. Instead our cases on this point utilize should as a command.