Court Opinion

ID: 9863391
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 04:16:12.772988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:43:51.087749
License: Public Domain

DILLARD, Judge,
concurring fully and specially.
I concur fully with the majority opinion and write separately only to further address Judge Boggs’s argument that the court in the case sub judice was open and that the majority’s holding “will result in challenges to the open-court rule based upon claims by lawyers or members of the public who arrive at the courthouse minutes before they believe an indictment to be returned, only to be briefly detained by courthouse security or a crowded elevator.”
It is undoubtedly true that post-September 11, we live in a world of heightened security. But the reality is that such “inconveniences” are to be expected and anticipated and are now, unfortunately, almost as commonplace as the nuisance of a crowded elevator. Nevertheless, *286these situations can certainly be mitigated to some degree by proper planning and time management. Indeed, as the dissent implies, better planning and time management on the part of Brown’s attorney may have been warranted in this case. But ultimately, the punctuality (or lack thereof) of Brown’s attorney is beside the point, and does nothing to change the fact that the courthouse in question was not open to the public.
Indeed, the record reflects that Brown’s attorney required an escort to gain entry into the courthouse and was informed by the escort that the courthouse was not opening to the public until the following week. Additionally, the court administrator for the Cobb Superior Court testified that the courthouse was scheduled to open “for judges to conduct court in the new building” on January 10, 2010 (four days after the return of the indictment against Brown), and that the main exterior doors of the new courthouse were locked. And anyone who gained access to the new courthouse via the catwalk connecting it from the old courthouse would have passed through a standard security checkpoint for the old courthouse prior to reaching the separately guarded catwalk.
As to the specifics of who could access the new courthouse on the day in question, the Sheriff of Cobb County testified that arrangements were made so that “only the presentments” could be received in the new courthouse and that he instructed his staff “to allow anyone that wanted to come into this courtroom, if they had business in this courtroom[,] to come, to allow them,”13 and to provide an escort if necessary. The sheriff further corroborated testimony that the new courthouse was scheduled to officially open — and did officially open-— the following week, and that the main entrance to the new courthouse was closed on the day in question, with access limited to use of the guarded catwalk that, again, could be reached after passing through an earlier security checkpoint.
The sheriff agreed that a person, after having passed through the initial security checkpoint, could have gone anywhere else except the new courthouse without further checks. But upon reaching the catwalk to the new courthouse, a person would have been subjected to an inquiry as to what his or her business was in the new courthouse. And when asked if access would have been granted to a person who failed to articulate what business he or she had in the new courthouse, the sheriff testified that access would have been denied to such a person.
*287The sheriff further clarified that the reason for this was due to the presence of construction hammers and knives inside the new courthouse, and the sheriffs desire to limit the number of individuals who did not have “the proper badge and identification.” The sheriff went on to admit that he had expressed concerns to courthouse personnel that the new courthouse should not be opened when construction continued, that the push to open the courthouse was “moving too fast,” and that he could not allow the public to roam free inside the new courthouse due to the presence of dangerous construction tools. And although he testified that a person would have been admitted to the new courthouse if he or she had “stated that their business was they wanted to watch what was going on in the courtroom on January 6th,” the fact nevertheless remains that access to the new courthouse was limited and not available to the general public in the absence of having special knowledge and uttering the right “magic” words — which were not required to observe proceedings at the old courthouse.14 Thus, this presents a much different situation than that of temporary delay by using a crowded elevator or passing through metal detectors.
In short, however responsible the security measures to limit access to the new courthouse due to the presence of construction tools, the decision to conduct grand jury presentments under circumstances of such limited access directly contradicts our Supreme Court’s acknowledgment that “[i]t is a fundamental part of our judicial system that the general public be permitted to witness court proceedings sufficiently to guarantee that there may never be practiced in this State secret or star-chamber court proceedings, the deliberations of the juries alone excepted.”15 Additionally, our Supreme Court has noted that public officials “are made conscious of the duty to faithfully perform official acts when they are acting in the presence of the general public; and this fact causes the public to have confidence in the officials, and hence confidence in the governmental *288departments where such officials serve.”16 And here, the simple solution to comply with the open-court requirement was to conduct the grand jury presentments in the old courthouse — which was undoubtedly and undisputedly open to the general public without inquisition, subject only to standard security measures — for one additional week.
Accordingly, I concur fully with the majority opinion.

 (Emphasis supplied.)

 In this regard, we are unconvinced that the presence of some members of the media leads to a conclusion that the new courthouse was “open.” Indeed, a local reporter testified that he had been made aware that a presentment would he returned on the day in question, that he was escorted across the catwalk by the district attorney, that other members of the media knew about the indictment because he passed word through his assignment desk, and that he had a press pass to gain access into the courthouse.

 Zugar v. State, 194 Ga. 285, 289 (21 SE2d 647) (1942) (emphasis supplied); see also Cadle v. State, 101 Ga. App. 175, 180 (1) (113 SE2d 180) (1960) (“The judge is the court for the reception of indictments only when he is presiding in open court. There must he a judge presiding, the clerk must be present, and the place of the reception of the indictment must be one where the court is being held open to the public.”).

 Zugar, 194 Ga. at 290; see also Blevins v. State, 220 Ga. 720, 725-26 (4) (141 SE2d 426) (1965) (applying the reasoning in Zugar v. State to hold that “the requirement that juries must be drawn in open court... is procedure which enables the public to observe the conduct of the judge in drawing juries and thus prevent any possible corruption or suspicion of corruption in this vital part of our jury system”).