Greene v. State

722 S.E.2d 77, 312 Ga. App. 666, 2011 Fulton County D. Rep. 3782, 2011 Ga. App. LEXIS 1024
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedNovember 17, 2011
DocketA11A1067
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 722 S.E.2d 77 (Greene v. State) 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
Greene v. State, 722 S.E.2d 77, 312 Ga. App. 666, 2011 Fulton County D. Rep. 3782, 2011 Ga. App. LEXIS 1024 (Ga. Ct. App. 2011).

Opinion

Barnes, Presiding Judge.

Following a jury trial in the State Court of Henry County, Harry Greene was found guilty of DUI less safe1 and DUI per se.2 The trial court denied his motion for new trial, and Greene appeals, contending that the trial court erred in denying his Sixth Amendment fair cross-section claim, and erred in refusing to give his requested charge on circumstantial evidence. Upon our review, we affirm.

1. The record below shows that before Greene’s jury trial, he submitted a written challenge to the jury array in which he main[667]*667tained that the current jury list from which his array was drawn, of which 13.8 percent was African-American, is not a true representation of the voting-aged African-American population in Henry County. Greene contended that the composition of the jury list should reflect the more current population of African-Americans in the county of 31 percent, as found by the United States Census Bureau’s 2008 American Community Survey (“ACS”), rather than the 13.9 percent reflected in the 2000 census. The trial court proceeded with jury selection, but released the jury without swearing it in. It thereafter conducted an evidentiary hearing on the array challenge, and after denying the challenge, proceeded with Greene’s trial.

Under OCGA § 15-12-162,

[t]he accused may, in writing, challenge the array for any cause going to show that it was not fairly or properly impaneled or ought not to be put upon him. The court shall determine the sufficiency of the challenge at once. If sustained, a new panel shall be ordered; if not sustained, the selection of jurors shall proceed.

“[T]he Constitution does not guarantee that the jury impaneled in a particular case will be a representative cross-section of the community. The correct inquiry concerns the procedures for compiling the jury lists and not just the composition of a particular jury.” (Citations omitted.) Lane v. State, 239 Ga. App. 230, 231 (2) (b) (520 SE2d 705) (1999). In so inquiring, the party challenging the composition of a jury array bears the burden of showing that a distinct and identifiable group is significantly underrepresented in the array. Anthony v. State, 213 Ga. App. 303, 305 (2) (444 SE2d 393) (1994).

At the hearing, the clerk of the Henry County Superior Court, who is also the clerk of the county jury commission, testified that the commission compiles a master jury list every two years, composed of county residents with a driver’s license, a state-issued identification card, or who are registered to vote. See OCGA § 15-12-40 et seq.3 The commission determines how many grand and trial jurors the county courts should need for the next two years. It then draws that number of qualified jurors from the master list, using a formula so that the percentages of various cognizable groups — race, age, and gender — placed on the grand and trial jury lists match the percentages of [668]*668those groups reported in the most current census. In this case, the percentage of African-Americans in the master list was 36.9 percent, but the commission reduced the percentage of African-Americans on the grand and trial jury lists to 13.9 percent because that was the percentage of African-American Henry County residents reported in the 2000 census. As of the hearing, the commission had not yet received the 2010 census.

Greene presented data from the ACS, the United States Census Bureau’s annual estimate of local population statistics, which showed that in 2008, Henry County’s African-American voting age population was 31.03 percent. His expert, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at Georgia Tech, testified as to the veracity of the methodology and results of the ACS. The expert testified that the true proportion of Henry County’s African-American voting age population is at least fifteen percent higher than that reflected by the jury list, and was increasing by about two percent per year.

In its motion denying Greene’s challenge to the jury array, the trial court found that he had

introduced evidence from the jury commission and from the ACS to show the disparity between the proportion of African-Americans on the jury list and the proportion of African-Americans in the jury-eligible community at large is at least 17% . . . [and] therefore met [his] burden to prove the state-mandated procedure systemically excluded African-Americans from the jury array.

The trial court, however, concluded that, even though Greene had made a prima facie showing of a fair cross-section violation, the State demonstrated a significant state interest to rebut the prima facie showing, in that it “is justified in using the Decennial Census as part of the State’s significant interest in ‘obtaining comprehensiveness and objectivity’ in the jury array construction process.”

To make a prima facie claim of a fair cross-section violation, a defendant must show (1) that the group alleged to be excluded is a “distinctive” group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group [on the trial jury list] is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this under-representation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury selection process. A fair cross-section claim is “almost identical” to a claim raised directly under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, ‘ ‘with the one prominent exception being that the claimant need not [669]*669demonstrate any intent to under-represent a cognizable group. However, a prima facie showing of a fair cross-section violation can be rebutted if the State can demonstrate that “attainment of a fair cross section (is) incompatible with a significant state interest.”

(Citations and punctuation omitted.) Williams v. State, 287 Ga. 735, 737-738 (2) (699 SE2d 25) (2010).

Greene maintains that the trial court erred in finding that the State had rebutted his prima facie case by showing that it has a sufficient state interest in using the Decennial Census head count because the Unified Appeal Procedure (“UAP”) does not apply to misdemeanor cases. The UAP requires the trial court in a case in which the death penalty is sought to compare the percentages of cognizable groups on the grand and trial jury lists with the percentages of those groups in the population as measured by the most recent available census report; to certify there is no significant under-representation of any of those groups; and to correct any such significant under-representation. UAP II (C) (6); OCGA § 15-12-40; Ramirez v. State, 276 Ga. 158, 163 (3) (575 SE2d 462) (2003).

The UAP states that there should be no imbalances for cognizable groups greater than five percent, UAP II (E).4 In Williams, however, where African-American persons were under-represented by 17.49 percent, our Supreme Court held:

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
722 S.E.2d 77, 312 Ga. App. 666, 2011 Fulton County D. Rep. 3782, 2011 Ga. App. LEXIS 1024, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/greene-v-state-gactapp-2011.