Sinkfield v. State

• Decision Date: 17 May 2021
• Docket Number: S21A0298
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: SINKFIELD v. The STATE.

311 Ga. 524

858 S.E.2d 703

SINKFIELD

v.The STATE.

S21A0298

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: May 17, 2021

Shayla Joy Galloway, 4206 Terrace Court, Smyrna, Georgia 30082-0000, Christina Paige Rudy, Metro Capital Defenders Office, 270 Washington Street, Suite 5198, Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Christian Garfield Lamar, Metro Capital Defender, 104 Marietta Street, NW, Suite 630, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Leslie Anna Coots, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Paul L. Howard, Jr., 920 Dannon View SW, Suite 3202, Atlanta, Georgia 30331, Kevin Christopher Armstrong, Senior A.D.A., Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street SW, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Warren, Justice.

Charmon Sinkfield was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of Vernon Forrest.¹ On appeal, Sinkfield contends that the trial court erred when it denied his pretrial challenge to Fulton County's master jury list and that the "death qualification" process resulted in a jury that violated his fair cross-section rights under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.² Seeing no reversible error, we affirm.³

1. Sinkfield contends that the master jury list from which his grand and petit juries ultimately were selected was obtained in violation of the Jury Composition Rule (‘‘JCR’’).⁴ The JCR was promulgated by this Court to effectuate the Jury Composition Reform Act of 2011, Ga. L. 2011, p. 59, which was designed to replace the old "forced balancing" method of compiling jury lists with "a consistent methodology that produces lists of eligible jurors that are updated annually for each county and more accurately reflect each county's jury-eligible population." Ricks v. State , 301 Ga. 171, 173, 800 S.E.2d 307 (2017).⁵ See also OCGA § 15-12-40.1. One key provision of the JCR stated that

[e]ach county master jury list should be no less than 85% inclusive of the number of persons in the county population age 18 years or older as derived from the most recent decennial census or county population estimate (Table B01001 as of the date of this rule) from United States Census Bureau ("USCB") for the calendar year when the list is generated. ...

JCR ¶ 3 (a). The JCR also set forth detailed procedures for the Council of Superior Court Clerks to "convert the information gathered about potential jurors into jury lists." Ricks , 301 Ga. at 174, 800 S.E.2d 307 ; JCR Appendix A. The result of these procedures was a " ‘Statewide Master Jury List’ and ‘County Master Jury Lists’ for all 159 counties." Ricks , 301 Ga. at 178, 800 S.E.2d 307. Because the new regime "gave centralized responsibility for preparing each county's master jury list to the Council of Superior Court Clerks," local county officials retained only limited authority to deactivate jurors from that list. Id. at 173, 800 S.E.2d 307 ; see JCR ¶ 6.

In pretrial motions challenging Fulton County's 2015 master jury list, Sinkfield contended that the county violated the JCR by improperly removing or inactivating thousands of jurors from the jury list. To that end, a defense expert testified that he calculated the jury list inclusivity at 83.58%. After a hearing, the trial court denied Sinkfield's motions, finding that Fulton County's master jury list complied with the JCR and was "no less than 85% inclusive." About a year after the trial court's order, however, we issued our decision in Ricks , in which we concluded—at the pretrial interim review stage—that Fulton County's 2013 and 2014 master jury lists were altered at the county level in "clear violation" of the JCR.

Specifically, in Ricks , we determined that Fulton County (1) improperly allowed its vendor "to add names from its so-called ‘legacy data’ to the county master jury lists provided by the Clerks Council," (2) improperly used "the county's ‘legacy data’ to remove tens of thousands of names that were locally flagged as ineligible for jury service in prior years," (3) improperly allowed the vendor to use its own process to identify and eliminate potential duplicate records, and (4) improperly allowed the vendor to use "automated address screening" to inactivate potential jurors with "undeliverable" addresses. Ricks , 301 Ga. at 189-192, 800 S.E.2d 307. As a remedy for these violations, we remanded the case and directed the trial court to ensure that the prospective jurors for the defendant's trial were drawn from a list that complied with the JCR and the relevant statutory provisions. See id. at 194, 800 S.E.2d 307. And given that the case came before us on interim review, we expressly declined to address the question of whether the types of JCR violations at issue "actually would be deemed reversible or prejudicial error on appeal from a conviction." Id. at 194 n.22, 800 S.E.2d 307.⁶

On post-conviction appeal in this case, Sinkfield asserts that Fulton County mismanaged its 2015 master jury list in substantially the same manner, and using the same vendor, as the 2014 jury list at issue in Ricks . He therefore argues that the county's 2015 jury list continued to violate the JCR, leading to a master jury list that was less than 85% inclusive. Sinkfield contends that, because both his grand and petit juries were drawn from the non-compliant master jury list, this Court should reverse his convictions and quash his indictment (or at least grant him a new trial).

Sinkfield's enumeration of error fails because even if Fulton County's 2015 master jury list violated the JCR (an issue we need not decide here), he has not shown that he is entitled to a reversal of his convictions. To begin, in most cases, we would reverse a conviction only upon some showing of harm—that is, some probability that the error affected the outcome of the trial proceedings. See, e.g., Taylor v. State , 306 Ga. 277, 283, 830 S.E.2d 90 (2019) ("The test for determining nonconstitutional harmless error is whether it is highly probable that the error did not contribute to the verdict.") (citation and punctuation omitted). Here, the record does not show—and Sinkfield does not contend—that the alleged JCR violations had any effect on the outcome of his trial proceedings.

Because Sinkfield has not demonstrated harm, a reversal of his convictions would be warranted only if the violations at issue were akin to a "structural error"—that is, a "structural defect affecting the framework within which the trial proceeds, rather than simply an error in the trial process itself." See Arizona v. Fulminante , 499 U.S. 279, 310, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991) ; Berry v. State , 282 Ga. 376, 378, 651 S.E.2d 1 (2007) (defining structural error in the same way). See also United States v. Dominguez Benitez , 542 U.S. 74, 81, 124 S.Ct. 2333, 159 L.Ed.2d 157 (2004) ("It is only for certain structural errors undermining the fairness of a criminal proceeding as a whole that even preserved error requires reversal without regard to the mistake's effect on the proceeding.... Otherwise, relief for error is tied in some way to prejudicial effect.").

Structural errors usually are based on a violation of a constitutional right; a few examples include the failure to give a constitutionally acceptable jury instruction on the reasonable-doubt standard in a criminal case, Sullivan v. Louisiana , 508 U.S. 275, 281-282, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993) ; the improper denial of a right to self-representation, see Oliver v. State , 305 Ga. 678, 680, 827 S.E.2d 639 (2019) ; and the denial of a right to a trial by jury absent a valid waiver, Balbosa v. State , 275 Ga. 574, 575, (571 S.E.2d 368) (2002). See also Weaver v. Massachusetts , ––– U.S. ––––, 137 S.Ct. 1899, 1911-1912, 198 L.Ed.2d 420 (2017) ("This Court ... has granted automatic relief to defendants who prevailed on claims alleging race or gender discrimination in the selection of the petit jury ... though the Court has yet to label those errors structural in express terms[.] The errors in those cases necessitated automatic reversal after they were preserved and then raised on direct appeal.") (citation and punctuation omitted); Neder v. United States , 527 U.S. 1, 8, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 144 L.Ed.2d 35 (1999) (describing the "very limited class of cases" where the United States Supreme Court has determined "an error to be ‘structural,’ and thus subject to automatic reversal") (citations and punctuation omitted) (citing cases).

Similarly, this Court has suggested—without expressly using the term "structural error"—that automatic reversal may be warranted where an "essential and substantial" provision of a jury selection statute has been violated, thereby causing a discernible impact on the composition of the grand or petit jury, at least where such a claim is properly preserved and raised on direct appeal. As we have observed recently,

[i]n every case in which we have confronted a violation of a jury selection statute that impacted who was chosen for the array—that is, in every case in which there was good reason to doubt that a particular juror would have been selected for the array without the violation—we consistently have deemed it a violation of an "essential and substantial" provision of the statute and held that relief was warranted.

State v. Towns , 307 Ga. 351, 355, 834 S.E.2d 839 (2019) (emphasis in original) (affirming dismissal of the indictment where two grand jurors were chosen in violation of the randomness requirement in OCGA § 15-12-66.1 ). See also Harper v. State , 283 Ga. 102, 103-104, 657 S.E.2d 213 (2008) ("In this case ... the defect was not in complying with the statutory directives governing how the jury commission should select grand jurors. Instead, the alleged defect was that someone never...