French v. State

Arthur James Mosley, an elderly farmer, was found stabbed to death in his home in January 2008. Years later, DNA testing linked a partial profile from the victim's pants to Timothy French, and French was arrested and eventually convicted by a Lee County jury of malice murder and armed robbery, receiving a life sentence. On appeal, French argued the trial court wrongly rejected his objection to the prosecutor removing a Black woman from the jury pool, wrongly denied him money to hire his own DNA expert, and erred in denying a change of venue and a mistrial. The Supreme Court of Georgia reviewed each claim and found no error: the prosecutor gave a race-neutral reason (the juror's employment history at DFCS) for the strike, French's funding request lacked necessary detail, and his venue and mistrial arguments were abandoned because his brief did not support them with legal argument or citations as required by court rules. The court affirmed the conviction and sentence in full.

The trial court properly rejected the Batson challenge because the prosecutor gave a race-neutral reason (the juror's DFCS employment) and French failed to prove discriminatory intent; the court properly denied funds for a defense expert because French's request lacked required specifics; and French's venue and mistrial claims were abandoned for lack of argument and citation.

The ruling reinforces that prosecutors can strike jurors for job-related reasons without violating race-discrimination rules, and it signals to defense attorneys statewide that funding requests for experts and appellate arguments must be specific and fully supported, or courts will reject or ignore them.

Affirmed

1. The court applied the three-step Batson framework, which tests whether a peremptory juror strike was racially motivated: first the challenger must show a possible pattern of discrimination, then the striking party must give a race-neutral reason, and finally the judge decides if discrimination was actually proven.
2. Because the trial judge had already required the prosecutor to explain the strike, the first step was moot, and the court found the prosecutor's stated reason, the juror's employment history with the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), was race-neutral on its face and supported by his past courtroom experience.
3. At the final step, the court gave strong deference to the trial judge's credibility assessment and found no clear error in concluding French had not proven the prosecutor acted with racial bias, especially since French offered no factual rebuttal beyond disagreement.
4. On the expert-funds issue, the court applied the rule that indigent defendants seeking money for expert witnesses must specify with reasonable precision why the evidence is critical, what the expert would do, and the expected cost; French's motion for a DNA expert failed to identify a specific expert or any cost estimate, so denying funds was not an abuse of discretion.
5. For the venue and mistrial claims, the court applied Supreme Court Rule 22(1), which deems any claim abandoned if the brief lacks argument, legal citations, and record citations supporting it; because French's brief on those two issues offered only procedural history without analysis or authority, the court treated those claims as abandoned and did not review their merits.

• murder conviction
• Batson challenge
• jury selection
• DNA evidence
• expert witness funding