Strauss v. Grimes, 24391
| Decision Date | 22 November 1967 |
| Docket Number | No. 24391,24391 |
| Citation | 223 Ga. 834,158 S.E.2d 404 |
| Parties | Robert L. STRAUSS v. T. Ralph GRIMES, Sheriff. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court
The trial court properly denied the appellant's petition for habeas corpus claiming unconstitutional composition of the grand jury which indicted him.
Harold Karp, Atlanta, Arthur Cunningham, Philip Weinstein, Miami, Fla., for appellant.
Lewis R. Slaton, Solicitor Gen., J. Robert Sparks, Carter Goode, J. Walter LeCraw, Atlanta, for appellee.
Denial of a petition for habeas corpus, in which the petitioner claimed that the grand jury which indicted him was unconstitutionally composed, is the subject matter of this appeal. The petition was instituted by Robert L. Strauss against T. Ralph Grimes, as Sheriff of Fulton County, in the Superior Court of that county. Strauss had been indicted by the grand jury of the county for violation of the Georgia Securities Act, found guilty, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
Petitioner, insofar as necessary to recite here, asserted that he, a male white citizen, had not been accorded the type of grand jury to which the law entitles him in that it was not impartially selected from a cross section of the community. He claimed that it was drawn from a grand jury box illegally constituted because the jury commissioners used as their starting point a prior jury list from which Negro citizens of the county had been systematically excluded or disproportionately included, and also because the commissioners in completing the jury box used tax returns where taxpayers were segregated by race. He urged that this denied him due process of law and equal protection of the law, and that he had not waived his right to a constitutionally selected grand jury.
The respondent denied the essential allegations of the petition.
Upon the hearing the petitioner presented testimony as to the grand jury selection procedures and statistics with reference to numbers and percentages of white and Negroes, seeking to bring the case within the ambit of Whitus v. State of Georgia, 385 U.S. 545, 87 S.Ct. 643, 17 L.Ed.2d 599, and other such decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, upholding claims of systematic exclusion of Negroes from grand and petit juries. The jury commissioners in the case at bar explained the selection procedures employed in the situation here and denied any purposeful or intentional discrimination.
The trial court's judgment dealt adversely with each of the petitioner's contentions and remanded him to the custody of the respondent. The appeal is from that judgment.
Under our view of the case, we do not reach the claim of unconstitutional selection of the grand jury.
We do not believe that retroactive application of the Whitus case, 385 U.S. 545, 87 S.Ct. 643, supra, is required in the present case, where the grand jury indictment was returned December 22, 1964, and no challenge was made to the composition of the grand jury at the time of the trial, but was first made in a post conviction habeas corpus proceeding.
The Supreme Court of the United States has not made retroactive application of the Whitus principle to a situation where the attack on the grand jury was made after conviction. Those cases applying Whitus, Cobb v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 12, 88 S.Ct. 115, 19 L.Ed.2d 11; Jones v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 24, 88 S.Ct. 4, 19 L.Ed.2d 25; and Bostick v. South Carolina, 386 U.S. 479, 87 S.Ct. 1088, 18 L.Ed.2d 223, dealt with attacks made before trial.
Furthermore, that court has ruled that four other standards for criminal investigations and court proceedings, recently established for the first time by it, should not be applied retroactively. They relate to: (1) search and seizure in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S,. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081, held not retroactive in Linkletter v....
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Davis v. Smith
...in the State Courts. Despite the broad authority under the 1967 Act (see note 2, supra) the Supreme Court in Strauss v. Grimes, 1969, 223 Ga. 834, 158 S.E.2d 404, cert. denied, 391 U.S. 903, 88 S.Ct. 1651, 20 L.Ed.2d 417, held that in a pre-Whitus conviction4 in which no objection had been ......
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Peters v. Rutledge
...by presenting his contentions on direct appeal. 16 Compare Cobb v. Balkcom, supra, and Smart v. Balkcom, supra, with Strauss v. Grimes, 1967, 223 Ga. 834, 158 S.E.2d 404, and Clarke v. Grimes, 1967, 223 Ga. 461, 156 S.E.2d 17 Following the first sentence set forth in note 10 supra, § 50-127......
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Massey v. Smith
...the alleged unconstitutionality of the jury selection and composition based on race cannot be considered on this basis. Strauss v. Grimes, 223 Ga. 834, 158 S.E.2d 404, cert. denied, 391 U.S. 903, 88 S.Ct. 1651, 20 L.Ed.2d Furthermore, 'the defendant was a male white citizen. He does not sho......
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Ferguson v. Dutton, 71-1827 Summary Calendar.
...decisions of the Georgia Supreme Court foreclose such claims in the Georgia courts unless timely presented. Strauss v. Grimes, 1967, 223 Ga. 834, 158 S.E.2d 404; Brawner v. Smith, 1969, 225 Ga. 296, 167 S.E.2d 753; Cobb v. State, 1962, 218 Ga. 10, 126 S.E.2d 231." The short answer to this a......