O.C.G.A.
O.C.G.A.

O.C.G.A. § 15-12-168 (2019)

Authority to call alternate jurors

✓ O.C.G.A. (archive.org 2024 item): print volumes of 2004-2024, per-volume vintage; older volumes partly replaced by 2019 Release 73 text; no 2025 or 2026 Acts
Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.
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Whenever in the opinion of a judge of a superior court any felony trial is likely to be a protracted one, immediately after the jury has been impaneled and sworn the court shall direct the calling of one or more additional jurors to be known as "alternate jurors."

History

(Ga. L. 1957, p. 466, § 1; Ga. L. 1968, p. 1225, § 1; Ga. L. 1976, p. 1043, § 1.)

Annotations

RESEARCH REFERENCES

C.J.S. - 50A C.J.S., Juries, §§ 28, 254 et seq., 526 et seq.

ALR. - Constitutionality and construction of statute or court rule relating to alternate or additional jurors or substitution of jurors during trial, 84 A.L.R.2d 1288; 15 A.L.R.4th 1127; 88 A.L.R.4th 711; 10 A.L.R. Fed. 185; 115 A.L.R. Fed. 381; 119 A.L.R. Fed. 589.

Substitution, under Rule 24c of Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, of alternate juror for regular juror before jury retires to consider verdict in federal criminal case, 115 A.L.R. Fed. 381.

Notes of Decisions
Cited in 3 cases, 1986–2019 · leading case: Howard v. State, 834 S.E.2d 11 (Ga. 2019).
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Howard v. State, 834 S.E.2d 11 (Ga. 2019). “The decisions cited by Howard therefore are inconsistent with Georgia’s statutory scheme for alternate jurors as laid out in OCGA § 15-12-168 et seq., particularly the provision that the trial court may for good cause substitute an alternate “whether before or after final…”
David Peek v. Ralph Kemp, 784 F.2d 1479 (11th Cir. 1986). “Georgia law vests discretion in the trial judge to call alternate jurors, O.C.G.A. § 15-12-168, to separately sequester an alternate after the jury retires, O.”
John Washington Hightower v. Derrick Schofield, 365 F.3d 1008 (11th Cir. 2004). “O.C.G.A. § 15-12-168 permits a trial court to seat “one or more” alternate jurors in any felony trial that "is likely to be a protracted one.”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.