Court Opinion

ID: 9573612
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:57:13.974749+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:42:08.387392
License: Public Domain

Benham, Justice,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent and must write separately to point out how the majority opinion, by refusing to hold that race is an impermissible consideration in determining a person’s fitness for jury service, does unmistakably serious harm to the integrity of the jury selection process.
1. The majority opinion fails to take into consideration an almost unbroken chain of United States Supreme Court opinions leading to the abolition of race as a consideration for jury service: Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (25 LE 664) (1879); Swain v. Alabama, 380 U. S. 202 (85 SC 824, 13 LE2d 759) (1965); Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U. S. 522 (95 SC 692, 42 LE2d 690) (1975); Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (106 SC 1712, 90 LE2d 69) (1986); Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. — (111 SC 1364, 113 LE2d 411) (1991); Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 59 USLW 4574, decided June 3, 1991. It is evident from these opinions that in the area of jury service, the trend has been one of inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness.
In condemning racial discrimination in the jury selection process, *476the United States Supreme Court has highlighted not only the harm to the parties, but also the harm done to the jury selection process itself by the exclusion of prospective jurors on the basis of race. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority in Powers, supra, 111 SC at 1368, said that Batson “was designed to serve multiple ends.” One of those ends must be to allow ordinary citizens to participate in the administration of justice, which Justice Kennedy described as “one of the principal justifications for retaining the jury system.” Id. He went on to state the holding in that case:
the Equal Protection Clause prohibits a prosecutor from using the State’s peremptory challenges to exclude otherwise qualified and unbiased persons from the petit jury solely by reason of their race, a practice that forecloses a significant opportunity to participate in civic life. [Id. at 1370.]
The most recent case applying the principles which are apparent in this trend toward inclusiveness is Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., supra, which prohibited race-conscious jury strikes in civil cases. The focus of the court’s reasoning in Edmonson is on the harm done to jurors and to the justice system, and the court found that the harm was no less because the discrimination occurred in a civil case. Applying the same reasoning, it is obvious that the harm which racial discrimination in selecting a jury does to the integrity of the jury selection process is just as egregious whether it is done by the state or the defendant in a criminal trial or by the plaintiff or defendant in a civil trial.
2. While I would join Justice Fletcher’s dissent to the extent it says Edmonson requires racial neutrality in jury selection under the United States Constitution, I would go one step further and also address the issue of the applicability of our state constitution to racially motivated peremptory strikes.
An important question which was raised in the enumerations of error, and briefed and argued by the parties, but not addressed by the majority opinion, and which needs to be addressed here, is whether Art. I, Sec. I, Par. XI, of the Georgia Constitution, which guarantees every accused a trial by an impartial jury, also protects all citizens from racial discrimination in jury service even to the extent of curtailing a defendant’s use of racially-motivated peremptory strikes.
The majority’s view fails to take into consideration the dynamic aspect of constitutional jurisprudence. Justice John Marshall put the matter of dynamic versus static jurisprudence in proper perspective in McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U. S. 316, 407-415 (4 LE 579) (1819):
We must never forget that it is a constitution we are ex*477pounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.
Such a crisis was recognized in Batson v. Kentucky, supra, when the United States Supreme Court, considering the use of peremptory strikes by the state, employed the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution to forbid the use of racially-motivated strikes by the state, and put in place a legal mechanism for preventing future abuse.
Recognizing the literal correctness of the majority’s statement that the United States Supreme Court has not yet held that defendants in criminal cases are limited to race-neutral exercises of peremptory challenges, I believe it is incumbent on the highest appellate court in this state, in the exercise of our duty to defend and protect the integrity of the judicial process and, as a necessary part of it, the jury selection process, to look to our state constitution for the appropriate means of achieving that laudable goal. While state courts cannot afford less protection under the state constitution than is required under the United States Constitution, there is no prohibition against the states providing their citizens more protection under the state constitution than is provided under the federal constitution. Creamer v. State, 229 Ga. 511 (3) (192 SE2d 350) (1972). The authority to grant that protection in this case is found in Art. I, Sec. I, Par. XI, of our state constitution:
The right to trial by jury shall remain inviolate; ... In criminal cases, the defendant shall have a public and speedy trial by an impartial jury; . . .
The language of that constitutional provision does not lodge exclusively with the defendant the right to trial by jury. Since the right to a jury trial includes the right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community (Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U. S. 522 (95 SC 692, 42 LE2d 690) (1975)), then the right to fair and impartial jury selection belongs to the community as well as the defendant.
The harm from discriminatory jury selection extends beyond that inflicted on the defendant and the excluded juror to touch the entire community. [Batson, supra at 107.]
The injury [from discriminatory jury selection] is not limited to the defendant — there is injury to the jury system, to the law as an institution, to the community at large, and to the democratic ideal reflected in the processes of our courts. [Ballard v. United States, 329 U. S. 187, 195 (67 SC 261, 91 *478LE 181) (1946).]
Having both the duty and the authority to do so, we must declare it to be offensive to the Constitution of the State of Georgia for any party in a criminal proceeding to use race as a factor in determining a person’s fitness for jury service.
3. Whether considered under the Georgia Constitution or under the United States Constitution as applied in Edmonson, the majority’s conclusion that the right of a defendant in a criminal action to use peremptory strikes outweighs the right of prospective jurors to be considered for participation in the judicial system without consideration of race, is untenable. The unfettered exercise of peremptory challenges by either the defendant or the State to strike members of cognizable groups destroys the right to a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community. Peremptory challenges are not constitutionally protected fundamental rights — they are but one statutory tool in the effort to reach the constitutional goal of a fair and impartial jury.4 While OCGA § 15-12-165 itself places no restrictions on the right to peremptory challenges, this court has recognized that the right is not without limits: in Gamble v. State, 257 Ga. 325 (357 SE2d 792) (1987), this court adopted the reasoning of Batson, supra, and imposed a restriction of racial neutrality on the state in criminal cases. Although we have in the past given criminal defendants great deference in their use of peremptory strikes, that deferential treatment must be abandoned when it begins to erode the public’s confidence in the entire legal process. Racially motivated jury strikes are of such an egregious nature that the jury selection process will suffer irreparable damage if we fail to act.
The public interests in need of protection in this case are the integrity of the jury selection process, the very foundation of the truth-finding process, and the compelling need to encourage citizens to fulfill their citizenship requirements by freely serving on juries without the fear of having racial prejudice visited upon them.
If the courts allow jurors to be excluded because of group bias, be it at the hands of the State or the defense, they would be willing participants in a scheme that could only undermine the very foundation of our system of justice — our citizens’ confidence in it. [State v. Alvarado, 221 N.J. Super. 324 (534 A2d 440) (1987).]
Being convinced that the trial court erred in denying the State’s *479motion, I would reverse. Consequently, I must dissent to the judgment of affirmance.
Decided July 12, 1991 —
Reconsideration denied July 24, 1991.
Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, Harrison W. Kohler, Dep*480uty Attorney General, for appellant.

 “[T]here is no constitutional obligation to allow [peremptory challenges].” Edmonson, supra, 59 USLW at 4576.