Ricks v. Georgia
Annotate this CaseOtis Ricks was indicted along with three other men for murder, armed robbery, criminal street gang activity, and related crimes in connection with the 2012 shooting death of Vanessa Thrasher at a lounge in Atlanta. The State notified Ricks it intended to seek the death penalty for Ricks and at least one of his co-defendants, Demario Carman. The defendants’ cases were severed for trial, although some of Ricks’s and Carman’s pretrial proceedings were conducted jointly. During the pretrial proceedings, Carman filed a motion asking the trial court to issue an order declaring Fulton County’s method of selecting trial jurors to be in violation of the Georgia Supreme Court’s Jury Composition Rule and directing that his jury be selected in a manner not violating the Rule. The trial court applied to the Supreme Court for review, asking whether it erred in denying Rick’s claim that the list from which the jurors were summoned was produced in a manner that violated the Jury Composition Rule. The Supreme Court concluded the trial court indeed did so err, and reversed and remanded for jury selection in a manner that complies with the Rule.
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