Avery v. State

70 S.E.2d 716, 209 Ga. 116, 1952 Ga. LEXIS 402
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
DecidedApril 14, 1952
Docket17810
StatusPublished
Cited by44 cases

This text of 70 S.E.2d 716 (Avery v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Avery v. State, 70 S.E.2d 716, 209 Ga. 116, 1952 Ga. LEXIS 402 (Ga. 1952).

Opinions

Candler, Justice.

(After stating the foregoing facts.) 1. We will first consider and dispose of the questions raised by the defendant’s challenge to the array of grand jurors in Walker County.

(a) The Constitution of this State by article 6, section 16, paragraph 2, declares that “The General Assembly shall provide by law for the selection of the most experienced, intelligent and upright men to serve as grand jurors, and intelligent and upright men to serve as traverse jurors. Nevertheless, the grand jurors shall be competent to serve as traverse jurors. The General Assembly shall have the power to require jury service of women also, under such regulations as the General Assembly may prescribe.” Except as to the above last-quoted sentence, the Constitution of 1877 required and provided for the same. As its compliance with this constitutional mandate, the General Assembly has provided for the selection of grand and traverse jurors by a board of six jury commissioners in each county. [121]*121Code, § 59-101. These jury commissioners are required to revise the jury lists biennially, or, if the judge of the superior court shall direct, triennially on the first Monday in August, or within 30 days thereafter. They must select from the books of the tax receiver upright and intelligent men to serve as jurors, and from these they are required to select a sufficient number, not exceeding two-fifths of the whole number, “of the most experienced, intelligent and upright men to serve as grand jurors.” The entire number as first selected, including those afterwards selected as grand jurors, shall constitute the body of traverse jurors for the county. Code, § 59-106. The Constitution does not require that all upright and intelligent men shall be selected as jurors. It merely fixes the qualification of a juror, and leaves to the General Assembly the question as to whether all such persons or a lesser number shall be selected. The law passed by the General Assembly for the purpose of carrying into effect the constitutional provision respecting the selection of jurors does not require that all persons possessing the constitutional qualification shall be selected. It reposes in the jury commissioners not only the authority to determine what men have these qualifications,' but how many of such men shall be selected for jury duty in the county. Our constitutional demand is for a jury list composed of upright and intelligent men — not that every upright and intelligent man be included in the list — and from this list grand jurors must be selected. Accordingly, it cannot be held that Code § 59-106, which provides for the selection of grand and traverse jurors exclusively from the books of the tax receiver — -his tax digest — is violative of our Constitution because it does not also permit the board of jury commissioners to select grand and traverse jurors from among those men who make no tax returns. See, in this connection, Wilson v. State, 69 Ga. 224; Rawlins v. State, 124 Ga. 31 (52 S. E. 1); Davis v. Arthur, 139 Ga. 74 (76 S. E. 676), affirmed in 201 U. S. 638 (26 Sup. Ct. 560, 50 L. ed. 899, 5 Ann. Cas. 783); Cady v. State, 198 Ga. 99 (31 S. E. 2d, 38). Our statute, embodied in § 59-106 of the Code, does not, for the reason assigned, violate section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (25 L. ed. 664). In Strauder’s case the court said: “We do not say that within the [122]*122limits from which it is not excluded by the amendment, a State may not prescribe the qualifications of its jurors, and in so doing make discriminations. It may confine the selection to males, to freeholders, to citizens, to persons within certain ages, or to persons having educational qualifications. We do not believe the 14th Amendment was ever intended to prohibit this.” It is not contended in this case that the challenged grand jurors did not themselves possess the required constitutional qualifications.

(b) The Code (Ann.), § 59-101, provides: “There shall be a board of jury commissioners, composed of six discreet persons, who are not practicing attorneys at law nor county officers, who shall hold their appointment for six years, and who shall be appointed by the judge of the superior court. . . The judge shall have the right to remove said commissioners at any time, in his discretion, for cause, and appoint a successor: Provided, that no person shall be eligible or appointed to succeed himself as a member of said board of jury commissioners.” While conceding the constitutionality of this section of the Code, it is alleged and argued by the defendant that it has been unconstitutionally applied in the selection of the challenged grand jurors, since no negro has ever been appointed to membership on the Walker County board of jury commissioners, but negroes have been systematically excluded therefrom because of race and color. There is no merit in this. Otherwise, the Supreme Court of the United States would, for the same reason, be disqualified to review the defendant’s case should it ever reach that court.

(c) There is no merit in the contention that the challenged grand jurors were incompetent to serve as such because the clerk of the superior court failed to prepare and certify a proper jury list or the jury book which the statute requires him to make out and keep in his office. These grand jurors, presumptively, were drawn regularly from the grand-jury box. There is nothing in the record indicating anything to the contrary; and it is well settled in this State that jurors, legally selected and regularly drawn from the jury box, are not rendered incompetent to serve because of any irregularity in the preparation of jury lists or the keeping of a jury book. Carter v. State, 56 Ga. 463; Crawford v. State, 81 Ga. 708 (8 S. E. 445); Washington v. State, 122 Ga. 735 (50 S. E. 920).

[123]*1232. In his challenge to the array of traverse jurors in Fulton County the defendant made the same attack upon the constitutionality of Code § 59-106, the same charge respecting an unconstitutional application of Code § 59-101, and the same complaint respecting the preparation of jury lists and the keeping of a jury book as were made by him in his challenge to the array of grand jurors in Walker County. Those questions are fully dealt with and disposed of in the preceding division of the opinion adversely to the defendant’s present contention, and our rulings upon them need not be repeated, it being sufficient to say that they afford no sufficient ground of objection to the array of traverse jurors put upon the defendant in Fulton County. But, as to the remaining questions raised by the defendant’s challenge to the array of traverse jurors in Fulton County, we hold:

(a) There is no merit in the contention that the traverse jurors put upon the accused were incompetent to serve because the number of colored men selected for traverse jury service was excessively small, and because, in proportion to the numbers of white and colored taxpayers in Fulton County, the respective numbers of white and colored men selected for traverse-jury service were excessively disproportionate, and so much so as to show an arbitrary and systematic exclusion of upright and intelligent colored taxpayers from jury service because of race and color.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
70 S.E.2d 716, 209 Ga. 116, 1952 Ga. LEXIS 402, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/avery-v-state-ga-1952.