Meders v. State, S89P0175

• Decision Date: 28 February 1990
• Docket Number: No. S89P0175,S89P0175
• Parties: MEDERS v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 320

389 S.E.2d 320

260 Ga. 49

MEDERS v. The STATE.

No. S89P0175.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Feb. 28, 1990.

Reconsideration Denied March 29, 1990.

John W. Davis, Glynn County Public Defender Brunswick, Maloy & Jenkins, W. Bruce Maloy, James K. Jenkins, for Meders.

Glenn Thomas, Jr., Dist. Atty., Jesup and John B. Johnson III, Asst. Dist. Atty., Michael J. Bowers, Atty. Gen., Atlanta, Leonora Grant, Joseph L. Chambers, for the State.

CLARKE, Chief Justice.

The appellant, Jimmy Fletcher Meders, was convicted in Glynn County of malice murder and armed robbery. He was sentenced to death.

Meders spent the afternoon and evening of October 13, 1987, in the company of three other men: his employer, Randy Harris; Harris' cousin Bill Arnold; and a friend of the latter, Greg Creel. The four began drinking that afternoon and continued drinking into the evening. Harris eventually parted company with the other three to entertain a teenage girl in a motel room. Meders and the other two borrowed Harris' car and spent a few hours bar-hopping. At 2:30 a.m., Creel stated he was hungry. They stopped at a convenience store. Arnold stayed in the car, while Creel and Meders entered the store. Creel went to the back of the store to warm a package of sausage-biscuits in the microwave oven. Meanwhile, Meders made a small purchase. When the cashier opened the register, Meders shot him in the chest with a .38 caliber revolver. The victim hit the wall and fell to the floor. Meders then shot him again, in the head.

Creel ran out of the store to the car when the first shot was fired, leaving his food behind. After removing the money from the cash drawer (and triggering a silent alarm in the process), Meders joined the other two before they could leave without him. They drove to a trailer park, where Arnold and Creel got out. After offering the other two a share of the take--which they declined--Meders left them and drove to Harris' motel room. He woke Harris and told him he had "just blowed a man's head off over thirty-eight dollars."

Meders was soon arrested. Some of the "bait" money from the store, whose serial numbers had been recorded, was found in Meders' wallet after he was arrested. Seventeen food stamps were found in the pocket of his coat. The murder weapon was found under the mattress of his waterbed.

The evidence, reviewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, supports the conviction. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). ¹

1. Before trial, Meders' attorney filed a motion seeking funds for an examination by a "private psychiatrist, psychologist or other medical expert to determine his sanity at the time of the alleged offenses with which he is charged and his ability to aid his attorneys in his defense." Meders, testifying personally at the hearing on this motion, contended he had a nervous breakdown on November 12, 1988 (slightly more than a year after his arrest). He saw a doctor who prescribed medicine for depression and anxiety. He testified that he was worried about his wife and children and his personal life, and was concerned about "the circumstances of what I am facing ... I don't know what is going to happen in this case." He understood that the purpose of the hearing was to see if the judge was going to "grant a private or a state physician." He testified on cross-examination that he knew the difference between right and wrong and that he had no problem communicating with his attorneys. His cross-examination ended as follows:

Q. (By the State): ... I want to make sure I understand the position you are taking. The fact that you have been over to Mental Health and talked to those folks, that has helped you some, is that right, would that be fair to say?

A. Really the only way it has helped me is he give me a medication to make me sleep.

Q. Okay, and what you are asking the court to do is appoint a psychiatrist to treat you in terms of the depression you are having and the anxiety and you are asking for a private one rather than a state-sponsored one?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Okay, ... you are not incompetent, are you?

A. No, sir, not really.

The defendant was the only witness. Arguing that psychiatrists employed by the state are unfit, Meders' attorney asked the court to authorize a "private psychiatrist to conduct a diagnostic examination of the defendant." The court declined to award funds for a private psychiatrist but authorized an evaluation by "one of the psychiatrists on the state staff."

Nothing further was raised on this issue until after the jury was selected. During a Unified Appeal Procedure hearing before any evidence was presented, Meders' attorney reminded the court of his motion for psychiatric examination, and told the court he had not yet heard from the psychiatrist. Both the court and the state had received a copy of the psychiatrist's report. The court asked the defendant's attorney if he would "like to take a minute to read that right now?" The defendant's attorney responded:

Mr. Davis [for the defendant]: Well, I would just like to ask Mr. Johnson, it would serve, serve my purpose to just, if he would state in his place, does the copy state, or does the report, rather, state that the defendant is compos mentis, that he is, that he is able to stand trial?

Mr. Johnson [for the state]: As I understand the report, Your Honor, it does say quite a bit, but boiling it down to the, the two main points, it does say that he is competent to stand trial at this time and it appears that he was competent at the time the act was, that the act occurred. So, but I will, we have gone to have that xeroxed right now, and we will give it to Mr. Davis before we leave right now.

Mr. Davis: Well, that serves my purpose, Your Honor.

The foregoing is all the record shows about the contents of the report.

(a) Meders concedes he did not file a plea of incompetence to stand trial. See OCGA § 17-7-130. However, relying on such cases as Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 86 S.Ct. 836, 15 L.Ed.2d 815 (1966); Holloway v. State, 257 Ga. 620, 361 S.E.2d 794 (1987); and Baker v. State, 250 Ga. 187, 297 S.E.2d 9 (1982); he contends the trial court should have conducted a hearing sua sponte to determine his competence to stand trial. We do not agree.

The defendant's testimony and the court-ordered evaluation show that he understood "the nature and object of the proceedings against him and was capable of assisting his attorney with his defense." Brown v. State, 250 Ga. 66, 70, 295 S.E.2d 727 (1982). The trial court did not err by failing to conduct further investigation on this issue sua sponte.

(b) Meders also contends the trial court's refusal to grant funds for an independent psychiatrist was error. He relies on Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68, 105 S.Ct. 1087, 84 L.Ed.2d 53 (1985) to support his contention that he was entitled to an independent psychiatrist. This reliance is misplaced. Ake's pre-trial behavior was so bizarre the trial court ordered an evaluation sua sponte. The examining psychiatrist reported that Ake was delusional and was probably a paranoid schizophrenic. After further evaluation, it was determined that Ake was not competent to stand trial. However, after several weeks of treatment and medication, Ake stabilized enough that he was able to stand trial. Notwithstanding Ake's severe mental problems, the State of Oklahoma denied him psychiatric assistance on the issue of sanity at the time of the crime. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed his conviction, holding that Ake had demonstrated "his sanity at the time of the offense [would] be a significant factor at trial," and was entitled to independent psychiatric assistance.

In this case, by contrast, neither the defendant nor his attorneys reported any difficulty communicating with each other. The defendant himself testified that he was not incompetent, and although he was depressed at the prospect of being executed, nothing about his behavior could be characterized as bizarre. Unlike Ake, Meders was evaluated on the issue of sanity and the examiner found him to have been sane at the time of the crime as well as competent to stand trial. Nothing before the court reasonably indicated that Meders' sanity would be a significant factor at trial. Hence, the trial court did not err by refusing to provide funds for an independent psychiatrist. Thomas v. Jones, 891 F.2d 1500(C) (11th Cir.1989).

2. On December 14, 1981, the judges of the Brunswick Judicial Circuit approved and published a rule of court establishing a plan for the selection of jurors by electronic means pursuant to OCGA § 15-12-42. The plan set out the procedures to be followed by the jury commissioners and the clerk of court to compile the lists of grand and traverse jurors, to update the lists, and to draw grand jurors and traverse jury venires. The Data Processing Center of Glynn County was designated a "necessary component" of the plan and given the responsibility for storing the lists on "magnetic computer tape," for programming the computer to randomly select names from the lists when called upon to do so by a judge of the superior court, and for furnishing printouts of the lists and of the jurors selected from those lists.

On March 1, 1989, Meders filed a "motion to quash the indictment," alleging the indictment was null and void because the grand jury which returned it was not selected according to the 1981 rule of court establishing the plan by which jurors were to be selected.

The evidence presented on the motion showed that after February 1987, the Data Processing Center was relieved of its responsibilities for jury data storage and retrieval (for reasons not appearing on the record), its computer tapes were given to the clerk of superior court, and the data was programmed into a UNISYS computer system that was set up in the clerk's office. Although the Data Processing Center no longer played any role in the maintenance of the jury lists...