Thomas v. Whitworth, 96-8482

• Decision Date: 05 March 1998
• Docket Number: No. 96-8482,96-8482
• Citation: 136 F.3d 756
• Parties: 11 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 1100 Albert G. THOMAS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Bobby R. WHITWORTH; Lanson Newsome; Allen L. Ault; Tony Turpin, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 756

136 F.3d 756

11 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 1100

Albert G. THOMAS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Bobby R. WHITWORTH; Lanson Newsome; Allen L. Ault; Tony Turpin, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 96-8482.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

March 5, 1998.

Susan W. Cox, Claude M. Kicklighter, Jr., Edenfield & Cox, Statesboro, GA, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Wilson Randolph Smith, Sherri Lynn McDonald, Newton, Smith, Durden, Kaufold & Rice, Vidalia, GA, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

Before TJOFLAT, BIRCH and MARCUS ^*, Circuit Judges.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-Appellant Albert Thomas filed this lawsuit seeking damages and injunctive relief for alleged civil rights violations and other allegedly unlawful acts by the Defendant-Appellees. After the completion of discovery, the case was set for jury trial before the presiding district court judge. Over Thomas's objection, a United States Magistrate Judge supervised the jury selection process and selected a panel of jurors to hear the case. That jury eventually returned a verdict in favor of the Defendants. In this appeal, Thomas argues that a magistrate judge cannot preside over the jury selection process in a civil action where one of the parties has indicated his objection to this practice and unequivocally stated his desire to have the entire lawsuit tried before a district judge. Thomas also suggests that, under these circumstances, a new trial must be provided, since his inability to pinpoint any tangible prejudice flowing from the magistrate judge's supervision of voir dire does not make the error harmless. For the reasons stated below, we agree that a new trial is warranted.

I.

Thomas is a prisoner in a Georgia state penitentiary. On June 29, 1992, he filed a 38-page pro se complaint against Appellees Whitworth, Newsome and Thomas, officials in the Georgia prison system, seeking relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and other provisions for a series of alleged civil rights violations relating to his confinement. Appellee Ault was subsequently added as an additional Defendant. When the case was trial-ready, the district court, on January 26, 1996, directed Thomas to indicate, no later than February 5, 1996, whether he consented to trying the case before a magistrate judge. On February 2, 1996, Thomas advised the district court that he did not consent to a magistrate judge trial. Nevertheless, on February 22, 1996, the case was called for jury selection by the appointed magistrate judge, in accordance with the district judge's wishes. ¹ Before the selection process got underway, Thomas reiterated his objection during a sidebar colloquy with the magistrate judge:

MAGISTRATE: You know you've got a right to have your case heard by a District Court Judge, and have a District Court Judge try your case?

THOMAS: Yes, sir.

MAGISTRATE: You've also got a right to have a District Court Judge preside over jury selection in your case.... Now, you've got a right to have him preside over everything, including jury selection ... [I]f you have any objection to me presiding over the jury selection, then we will not select the jury on this case today, and Judge Moore will have to schedule the trial at a later time when he can come and have a jury selected and try the case then.

THOMAS: I'd like for Judge Moore to handle the whole proceeding.

MAGISTRATE: You want him to handle the whole proceeding?

THOMAS: Yes, sir.

MAGISTRATE: So you do not agree for me to preside over the jury selection?

THOMAS: No, sir.

At the conclusion of this sidebar conversation, the magistrate judge supervised the jury selection process in several other lawsuits. Disregarding Thomas's objection, he then proceeded with jury selection in the case at bar. The magistrate judge approved a panel of jurors to hear the case, and sent the panel home, advising them to contact the Clerk of Court concerning their duty to report for jury service on March 19, 1996, the anticipated date of trial.

On March 6, 1996, Thomas filed with the district court an application entitled "Plaintiff's Objections to Magistrate Judge Selection of Jury on February 22, 1996." Thomas did not suggest that the magistrate judge conducted the selection process improperly; nor did he interpose an objection to the composition of the panel. Rather, he argued that he did not consent to the magistrate judge's supervision of the voir dire, and therefore a "new jury should be [s]elected by a judge." The district judge denied this motion in an order dated March 6th, stating that he was "satisfied that the jury selection was properly designated to and conducted by [the] Magistrate." The trial commenced on March 19, 1996. At the start of trial, Thomas orally renewed his objection to the magistrate judge's supervision of the jury selection process. Thomas also requested that the jury be dismissed and the case be tried to the court, although the district judge denied this application based on the Appellees' unwillingness to consent to a non-jury trial. The jury was sworn, the trial began and a verdict in favor of the Appellees was returned two days later. The verdict was reduced to judgment on March 21, 1996. Thomas moved for a new trial on March 29, 1996, restating his objection to the district court's use of a magistrate judge to supervise jury selection. The motion was denied in an order dated April 5, 1996. Thomas filed a notice of appeal on April 17, 1996. He has been supplied with counsel for the sole purpose of addressing the propriety of the magistrate judge's handling of the jury selection process.

II.

This appeal raises questions of law that must be examined de novo. The first issue for review requires us to ask if a magistrate judge may preside over jury selection in a civil case despite the properly preserved objection of one of the parties. Magistrate judges do not share the privileges or exercise the authority of judges appointed under Article III of the United States Constitution; rather, magistrate judges draw their authority entirely from an exercise of Congressional power under Article I of the Constitution. Consequently, magistrate judges may not act contrary to the limitations prescribed by the national legislature. See, e.g., NLRB v. A-Plus Roofing, Inc., 39 F.3d 1410, 1415 (9th Cir.1994) (stating that "federal magistrates are creatures of statute, and so is their jurisdiction. [Courts] cannot augment it [and] cannot ask them to do something Congress has not authorized them to do"). The jurisdiction and duties of federal magistrate judges are outlined principally in section 636 of Title 28 of the United States Code. The statute, among other things, grants district judges the authority to assign certain pre-trial matters to the appropriate magistrate judge. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1). Section 636(b)(3) also permits a district judge to assign to a magistrate, with or without the consent of the parties, "such additional duties as are not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States."

The statute does not afford magistrate judges the right to preside over trials (except for the trial of misdemeanor criminal offenses in accordance with 18 U.S.C. § 3401). Section 636(c) does permit a district judge to designate a magistrate judge to "conduct any or all proceedings in a jury or nonjury civil matter," but only "[u]pon the consent of the parties." See Hall v. Sharpe, 812 F.2d 644, 646-47 (11th Cir.1987) (observing that section 636(c) authorizes a magistrate judge to conduct civil jury trials, but stressing that "[e]xplicit, voluntary consent is crucial to this procedure" in order to obviate concerns about constitutionality and protect against the wholesale delegation of certain classes of cases and litigants); see also Fowler v. Jones, 899 F.2d 1088, 1092 (11th Cir.1990) (adding that " 'valid consent is the linchpin of 28 U.S.C. § 636(c)' ") (citation omitted). The plain language of the statute establishes that if one of the parties in a civil lawsuit pending before a district court states his unwillingness to consent to a trial before a magistrate judge, the district court cannot designate a magistrate judge to preside over the trial.

The question becomes, therefore, whether the jury selection process can be parsed from other aspects of a trial, bringing the process of selecting a jury within the "additional duties" clause of section 636(b)(3). In Gomez v. United States, 490 U.S. 858, 109 S.Ct. 2237, 104 L.Ed.2d 923 (1989), the United States Supreme Court held that the "additional duties" clause does not encompass the selection of a jury in a felony trial where the defendant has refused to consent to the magistrate's exercise of power. The Court emphasized that voir dire is a "critical stage of the criminal proceeding," and specifically rejected the notion that Congress did not consider voir dire to be part of trial. 490 U.S at 873, 109 S.Ct. at 2246-47. Thus, "[t]he absence of a specific reference to jury selection in the statute, or indeed, in the legislative history, persuades us that Congress did not intend the additional duties clause to embrace this function." 490 U.S. at 875-76, 109 S.Ct. at 2248. In Peretz v. United States, 501 U.S. 923, 111 S.Ct. 2661, 115 L.Ed.2d 808 (1991), the Supreme Court held that the statute's "additional duties" clause constitutionally permits a magistrate judge to supervise jury selection in a felony trial where the parties state their consent. In so holding, however, Peretz reaffirmed the reasoning in Gomez, and added that, where consent is lacking, courts should be reluctant "to construe the additional duties clause to include responsibilities of far greater importance than the specified duties assigned to magistrates." 501 U.S. at 933, 111 S.Ct. at 2667. The principles adopted in these cases have been applied in this Circuit. See Grassi v. United States, 937 F.2d 578, 579 (11th Cir.1991) (per...