Byrd v. State

314 Ga. 21

875 S.E.2d 643

BYRD

v.The STATE.

S22A0254

Supreme Court of Georgia.

June 22, 2022

Stephen Randall Scarborough, Office of the Public Defender, 100 Peachtree Street NW, Suite 1600, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Matthew Blackwell Crowder, Assistant Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Kathleen Leona McCanless, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Mathew Eli Plott, Assistant County Attorney, Office of the Fulton County Attorney, 141 Pryor Street SW, Suite 4083, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Warren, Justice.

After a jury trial, Andre Juvell Byrd was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of David McReynolds.¹ On appeal, Byrd contends only that the trial court erred by granting the State's challenge to his peremptory strikes of three prospective jurors and by reseating those jurors. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

1. The evidence presented at Byrd's trial showed the following. McReynolds, a disabled veteran well known in the Grant Park community, left a local corner store after buying lottery tickets. Byrd, Dedrick Hale, and Quinterious Hogans followed McReynolds and, when McReynolds was alone, demanded that he hand over any money he had. When one of the men thought McReynolds took too long to hand over the money, he shot McReynolds in the chest with a .38-caliber pistol. The three men fled the scene, and McReynolds died before paramedics arrived.

Surveillance video footage of Byrd following McReynolds from the corner store—which was also corroborated by eyewitness testimony—led to Byrd's arrest. The same eyewitness identified Byrd in a lineup as one member of the group of men who shot McReynolds, and Byrd ultimately incriminated himself by recounting the events surrounding McReynolds's murder to a detective in a custodial interview in which Byrd sought to cast blame on his co-indictees.

2. During jury selection for Byrd's trial, he exercised seven of his eight peremptory strikes against white jurors, including strikes against Jurors 3, 5, 19, and 24. The State objected to Byrd's use of peremptory strikes under Georgia v. McCollum , 505 U.S. 42, 112 S.Ct. 2348, 120 L.Ed.2d 33 (1992). The trial court ultimately agreed with the State as to four of Byrd's peremptory strikes and reseated Jurors 5, 19, and 24.² Byrd's sole enumeration of error on appeal is that the trial court's rejection of three of his peremptory challenges and its reseating of those jurors did not comply with McCollum . As explained below, we conclude that the trial court conducted all three prongs of the McCollum test before reseating Jurors 5, 19, and 24.

(a) In McCollum , "the test announced in Batson v. Kentucky , 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), forbidding purposeful racial discrimination in the State's use of peremptory strikes, was extended to peremptory juror challenges made by criminal defendants." Daniels v. State , 306 Ga. 559, 563-564, 832 S.E.2d 372 (2019). "When the State raises a McCollum objection, the trial court must engage in a three-step process to determine if the defendant's peremptory challenges were used in a racially discriminatory manner." Edwards v. State , 301 Ga. 822, 824-825, 804 S.E.2d 404 (2017).

First, the State is required to "make a prima facie showing of racial discrimination." Allen v. State , 280 Ga. 678, 680, 631 S.E.2d 699 (2006) (citation and punctuation omitted). Second, "the burden of production shifts to the proponent of the strike to give a race-neutral reason for the strike." Id. At step two, "the proponent of the strike need only articulate a facially race-neutral reason for the strike." Toomer v. State , 292 Ga. 49, 54, 734 S.E.2d 333 (2012). Step two "does not demand an explanation that is persuasive, or even plausible." Id. (citation omitted). Nor does step two require the race-neutral explanation to be "case-related" or "specific." Id. Third, "the trial court ... decides whether the opponent of the strike has proven discriminatory intent." Allen , 280 Ga. at 680, 631 S.E.2d 699 (citation and punctuation omitted). At step three, the trial court must "decide whether the opponent of the strike has proven the proponent's discriminatory intent in light of ‘all the circumstances that bear upon the issue of racial animosity.’ " Toomer , 292 Ga. at 55, 734 S.E.2d 333 (quoting Snyder v. Louisiana , 552 U.S. 472, 478, 128 S.Ct. 1203, 170 L.Ed.2d 175 (2008) ). Those circumstances may include "an evaluation of the credibility of the strike's proponent, which in turn may depend on the specificity and case-relatedness of the explanation for the strike given at step two." Toomer , 292 Ga. at 55, 734 S.E.2d 333. "Although the burden of production shifts to the defendant if the State makes a prima facie case, the ultimate burden of persuasion as to discriminatory intent rests with—and never shifts from—the State." Edwards , 301 Ga. at 825, 804 S.E.2d 404. "In reviewing a trial court's McCollum ruling, we afford deference to the trial court's findings and affirm them unless they are clearly erroneous." Dunn v. State , 304 Ga. 647, 649, 821 S.E.2d 354 (2018) (citation and punctuation omitted).

(b) The background relevant to jury selection at trial is as follows. After Byrd used seven of his eight peremptory strikes on white jurors and the State objected under McCollum , the trial court found that the State made a prima facie case of racial discrimination.³ Byrd's counsel responded that he would "give [the trial court] ... race neutral reasons" for exercising his peremptory strikes. Counsel asserted that Juror 5 had been a robbery victim and had previously served as a juror in a criminal burglary case. Counsel asserted that Juror 19 was "a lawyer at King and Spalding which is a large law firm" that "potentially tends to go right of center," and contended that Juror 19 would thus "lean conservative." When the trial court responded that Juror 19 was "a director of recruiting, which is different," counsel responded: "Big law firm." Finally, counsel explained that Juror 24 was a dentist and a small business owner, and contended that "being self-employed, a dentist, tends to be more conservative, tends to lean more toward the state."⁴ Byrd's counsel then concluded, "those are my race neutral reasons."

The prosecutor first responded by stating that "none of these jurors were really even asked questions by the defense." He further responded that just "because someone's been a juror before on a case and reached a verdict" when "we don't even know what that verdict was" is not "a legitimate reason to strike somebody"; read in context, this appears to have applied to both Juror 3 (whose re-seating is not challenged on appeal) and Juror 5. The prosecutor then expressed the "most concern" with the assertion that "Juror ... 24 is a dentist and they tend to be conservative," arguing that counsel's stated reason for the strike amounted to "characterizing and stereotyping that person based on characteristics that are apparent from the juror" and "that's an impermissible purpose to strike somebody." Byrd's counsel stated that his reason for striking Juror 24 was race-neutral because "dentists are not a particular protected class nor are small business owners," that striking Juror 24 based on his occupation would "not [be] based on race," and that the trial court does "not go behind the explanations as long as the attorney gives a race neutral basis."

After some additional discussion about jurors who were not reseated or whose reseating is not challenged on appeal, the trial court said:

Well, I'm trying to wade my way through this. This is never clear, but I'm analyzing your – looking at your race neutral – your – what you're claiming to be race neutral. And out of the seven, I find just looking at them all – and that's another way that I understand I can do this – and I find that four of them I don't find them to be race neutral. I don't find you to have a reason that's related to the case. And I can't imagine that you had any other basis for them based upon review of my notes and all and then what you stated as your reasons.

The trial court then stated that "out of your seven strikes, I've got four that I don't accept your race neutral reasons for" and "three that I do accept your race neutral reason for." Specifically, the court rejected the race-neutral reasons Byrd's counsel offered for striking Jurors 3, 5, 19, and 24.

The trial court continued:

All I can do is go over my notes ... and what I have in my classes and everything else. And one of the things is ... it's got to relate to the case to be tried. It's got to be legitimate. It's got to be clear and reasonably specific and evaluated in the light of other explanations. So what I do is once I find a prima facie case, I have to look at if there's some sort of pattern there. And the only way that I can try to rationally start looking at a pattern is kind of start seeing, you know, what I accept. I accept your race neutral on some of these folks. But on other folks, I don't think there is a race neutral reason. You can give any reason. And so I'm supposed to look at this and try to divine whether you're trying ... whether you had a legitimate reason or perhaps it was more the race than otherwise.

(c) On appeal, Byrd argues that the trial court erred because it did not perform a correct step-two analysis under McCollum and never performed a step-three analysis before concluding that Jurors 5, 19, and 24 were improperly stricken and reseating them.⁵ Specifically, Byrd argues that "the trial judge both remained in, and misunderstood," step two...