Brown v. Egleston Children's Hospital

564 S.E.2d 810, 255 Ga. App. 197, 2002 Fulton County D. Rep. 1336, 2002 Ga. App. LEXIS 562
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedApril 30, 2002
DocketA02A0400
StatusPublished

This text of 564 S.E.2d 810 (Brown v. Egleston Children's Hospital) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Brown v. Egleston Children's Hospital, 564 S.E.2d 810, 255 Ga. App. 197, 2002 Fulton County D. Rep. 1336, 2002 Ga. App. LEXIS 562 (Ga. Ct. App. 2002).

Opinion

Blackburn, Chief Judge.

In this medical malpractice action, Neata and Reginald Brown appeal the denial of their motion for new trial, contending that the trial court erred by rejecting their challenge to the jury composition pursuant to Batson v. Kentucky.1 For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

[198]*198The record shows that the Browns, who are African-Americans, brought this action against Egleston Children’s Hospital and two Caucasian physicians for negligent treatment of their son. The jury panel comprised thirteen African-Americans, ten Caucasians, and one prospective juror who was neither African-American nor Caucasian. During jury selection, each side used all of their respective peremptory strikes to remove prospective jurors whose race was different from that of their clients. The final composition of the jury was seven African-Americans and five Caucasians. Following the jury selection, the Browns challenged defense counsel’s peremptory strikes, arguing that they were made solely on the basis of race.

In Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co.,2 the U. S. Supreme Court extended the decision in Batson to civil cases. Parties are forbidden by these cases from striking prospective jurors solely on the basis of race. In a Batson challenge, “[t]he trial court’s factual findings must be given great deference and may be disregarded only if clearly erroneous.” (Punctuation omitted.) Holt v. Scott.3

Batson challenges are analyzed by a three-prong test: (1) the opponent to the peremptory challenge must establish a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination by demonstrating that the totality of the relevant facts gives rise to an inference of discriminatory purpose; (2) the proponent of the challenge is then required to articulate a concrete, tangible, race-neutral rationale for the strike; and (3) the opponent must carry the burden of showing that the rationale is merely a coverup to purposeful racial discrimination. Purkett v. Elem;4 McKenzie v. State.5

1. During the Batson motion, the trial court did not specifically rule that the Browns had made out a prima facie case, but by its actions it acknowledged a prima facie case had been made. The trial court recognized the Browns’ assertion that all of defense counsel’s peremptory strikes were used to challenge African-Americans and asked the defendant to respond to the Browns’ claims of discrimination as to Jurors 1, 2, 5, 7, and 19.

Defense counsel provided the following rationales for these challenges. Juror 1: She was totally unresponsive. She has no children or experience with children. This prospective juror showed a lack of life experiences in response to all questioning. Also she was a postal worker. Juror 2: She had a terrible experience at a hospital emergency room relating to her child “under very and apparently grueling circumstances, some eight hours of what she considered to be either [199]*199improper or at least politically incorrect questioning from a physician.” Juror 5:

I took Number Five basically because of her absence of responses. And, number two, my personal predilection that . . . anybody that works for the federal government or the United States Postal Service is not the kind of person I want on the jury. And it’s a government-like position. They expect lots of perks and benefits. I just simply don’t like, in considering damage awards if they reach that far, to have such a worker on this jury.

Juror 7: She was a plaintiff in a lawsuit, and even though she won, she had a bad experience. Juror 19: She had a bad experience with a doctor. She had claims of whether that doctor was competent.

The court provided the Browns’ counsel an opportunity to respond to defense counsel’s reasons for the strikes. Counsel provided these specific responses for Jurors 1 and 19. Juror 1: The prospective juror was not specifically asked if she had children or where she worked. Employment alone is not a sufficient race-neutral ground. There were other nonAfrican-Americans who had no children that were not stricken. The prospective juror’s only individual verbal response was she took a child to the emergency room. Juror 19: Defense counsel was mistaken. She did not verbally respond to a question concerning a bad experience. The prospective juror did respond by raising her hand to a general question of the panel from defense counsel about whether the juror or someone close to them had a bad experience with a doctor or hospital.

Defense counsel made no further response to the Browns’ assertions, choosing to rely on his earlier stated reasons. After hearing the argument, the court made an explicit finding on the record that “the reasons stated for the strikes, some more obvious than others, some more compelling than others, each appears to have a race neutral underpinning.”

After review, we do not agree that the Browns’ arguments were sufficiently persuasive to find that the trial court was clearly erroneous in its determination that the strikes were not pretextual. “The trial court’s decision rests largely upon assessment of the attorney’s state of mind and credibility; it therefore lies peculiarly within a trial judge’s province. The trial court’s factual findings must be given great deference and may be disregarded only if clearly erroneous.” (Punctuation omitted.) Norfolk Southern R. Co. v. Perkins.6

[200]*200As to the Browns’ assertions related to Jurors 1 and 5: First, the Browns claim that defense counsel could not gauge responsiveness since he asked either few or no questions of these jurors. However, the record shows that these two jurors were asked a number of questions either generally or individually upon which defense counsel could base his observation. In Trice v. State7 Thompson v. State,8 and Evans v. State,9 a lack of responsiveness was upheld as a race-neutral challenge. Additionally, unresponsiveness was only one of defense counsel’s multiple reasons given for his strike. Perkins, supra at 554 (1) (b).

The second claim by the Browns was that employment is not a racially neutral reason for the strike. Government and postal office employment has previously been determined to be a racially neutral rationale. Gilbert v. State10 (postal worker); Johnson v. State11 (same); Hinson v. State12 (government employee).

Lastly, the fact that prospective Juror 1 had no children is racially neutral. Herrin v. State.13 Although the Browns point out that Juror 1 was not asked a specific question about children, the record shows that both parties prior to trial had received copies of the juror questionnaires that included basic information including marital status, number of children, and employer of each juror. Questionnaires are generally used to provide a more efficient and speedy voir dire process. We find no reason why the defense counsel cannot rely on information from the questionnaire. In

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Related

Batson v. Kentucky
476 U.S. 79 (Supreme Court, 1986)
Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co.
500 U.S. 614 (Supreme Court, 1991)
Purkett v. Elem
514 U.S. 765 (Supreme Court, 1995)
Johnson v. State
470 S.E.2d 637 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1996)
McKibbons v. State
455 S.E.2d 293 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1995)
Evans v. State
359 S.E.2d 174 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1987)
Gilbert v. State
486 S.E.2d 48 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1997)
Trice v. State
464 S.E.2d 205 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1995)
Herrin v. State
471 S.E.2d 297 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1996)
Lingo v. State
437 S.E.2d 463 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1993)
McKenzie v. State
490 S.E.2d 522 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1997)
Hinson v. State
515 S.E.2d 203 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1999)
Thompson v. State
390 S.E.2d 253 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1990)
Holt v. Scott
487 S.E.2d 657 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1997)
Stephens v. Ivey
442 S.E.2d 248 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1994)
Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. Perkins
481 S.E.2d 545 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1997)

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Bluebook (online)
564 S.E.2d 810, 255 Ga. App. 197, 2002 Fulton County D. Rep. 1336, 2002 Ga. App. LEXIS 562, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/brown-v-egleston-childrens-hospital-gactapp-2002.