Congdon v. State, S92A1131
| Decision Date | 22 January 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. S92A1131,S92A1131 |
| Citation | 424 S.E.2d 630,262 Ga. 683 |
| Parties | CONGDON v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
David J. Dunn, Jr., John W. Davis, Jr., Gleason, Davis & Dunn, Rossville, for Edwin David Congdon.
Ralph Van Pelt, Dist. Atty., LaFayette, Michael J. Bowers, Atty. Gen., Atlanta, Mary H. Hines, Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, for the State.
Appellant was convicted of murder in 1989. After two prior appearances in this court, 1 the only issue remaining for adjudication is whether the trial court was correct when it determined that the State's explanation for its use of its peremptory challenges to remove all four black venirepersons was racially neutral. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986).
The district attorney stated that he struck all four black members of the venire at the behest of the county sheriff, who was the prosecuting and principal witness in the case. The sheriff had asked that the jurors be struck because each of them was a resident of Ringgold, Georgia, where the sheriff had been accused by black citizens of unprofessional and illegal conduct in his investigation of the unsolved 1988 murder of a black woman whose family resided in Ringgold. At the Batson hearing held in 1992, the district attorney described the black population of Ringgold as and stated that each of the jurors struck lived within a few blocks of the family of the 1988 murder victim. 2 The district attorney described the sheriff as "not comfortable" with any of the four black Ringgold residents serving on the jury. As a result, the district attorney used his peremptory challenges to remove them from the jury. 3 Several white Ringgold residents served on the jury.
In Lewis v. State, 262 Ga. 679, 424 S.E.2d 626 (1993), we held that a prosecuting attorney acts responsibly when he solicits or accepts input from others concerning the exercise of peremptory challenges, but that the decision to defer to another's desires concerning the exercise of the peremptory challenges does not constitute the required racially neutral, case-related explanation of the exercise of the challenged strikes. In that appeal, we remanded the case to the trial court to permit the prosecutor to present, if possible, the racially neutral, case-related reasons underlying the decision of the person to whom the prosecutor deferred with regard to the exercise of the challenged strikes. In the case at bar, we already have the rationale behind the decision of the sheriff, the person to whom the district attorney deferred. Therefore, it is now incumbent upon us to determine if the trial court correctly ruled that the reason enunciated was racially neutral and related to this case.
The venire members were peremptorily struck because they were black residents of Ringgold and unnamed black residents of Ringgold had harshly criticized the sheriff for his handling of another case. None of the persons struck was asked about his or her knowledge of or participation in the criticism of the sheriff, or about his or her relationship with the family of the victim of the unsolved and unrelated murder. Citing United States v. Williams, 936 F.2d 1243 (11th Cir.1991), the State maintains that membership in a discrete community, when residence in that community bears a relationship to the case, is an acceptable, racially neutral reason for striking prospective jurors. In Williams and the cases cited therein, the federal appellate courts upheld the peremptory strikes of black jurors who lived in or had a connection with a geographic area that was related to the case being tried. The Williams court described this "associational link" as "particularly problematic [raising] serious concerns about the potential for cloaking discriminatory motives in only marginally neutral justifications." Id., at 1247. In the case at bar, the venirepersons were struck for no reason other than that they were black citizens of Ringgold.
Mere place of residence, or any other factor closely related to race, should not be regarded as a legitimate basis for exercising peremptory challenges without some corroboration on voir dire that the challenged venirepersons actually entertain the bias underlying the use of that factor.
Lynn v. Alabama, 493 U.S. 945, ----, 110 S.Ct. 351, 352, 107 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989) (...
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King v. State
...was shown to have specific personal acquaintances that might have tended to make her sympathetic to the defense. Congdon v. State, 262 Ga. 683, 424 S.E.2d 630 (1993) (quoting Lynn v. Alabama, 493 U.S. 945, 947, 110 S.Ct. 351, 107 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989)) (Marshall, J., dissenting). This Court ha......
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...explanation of the exercise of the challenged strikes" in step two of the Batson analysis. (Emphasis supplied.) Congdon v. State , 262 Ga. 683, 684, 424 S.E.2d 630 (1993). Following the United States Supreme Court's decision in Purkett , however, the Georgia Supreme Court disapproved statem......
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Barnes v. State
...at 1866.23 See Purkett, supra.24 See Jackson, supra.25 See Lewis v. State, 262 Ga. 679(2), 424 S.E.2d 626 (1993); Congdon v. State, 262 Ga. 683, 684, 424 S.E.2d 630 (1993).26 Compare Williams v. State, 262 Ga. 732(1), 426 S.E.2d 348 (1993) (reversible error where the state used 9/10 perempt......
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Thorson v. State, No. 96-DP-00144-SCT
...not motivated by race in order to survive a Batson challenge. Lewis v. State, 262 Ga. 679, 424 S.E.2d 626, 628 (1993); Congdon v. State, 262 Ga. 683, 424 S.E.2d 630 (1993); Covin v. State, 215 Ga.App. 3, 449 S.E.2d 550 (1994); State v. Adams, 307 S.C. 368, 415 S.E.2d 402 (1992). The cases w......