Court Opinion

ID: 9588834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:39:11.889328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:00.368646
License: Public Domain

Bell, Chief Judge.
This appeal from a revocation of probation is controlled adversely to the appellant by Johnson v. State, *886214 Ga. 818 (108 SE2d 313) and by many cases which have applied Johnson such as Sellers v. State, 107 Ga. App. 516 (130 SE2d 790); Scott v. State, 131 Ga. App. 504 (206 SE2d 137) and Clackler v. State, 130 Ga. App. 738 (204 SE2d 472). It would indeed be ridiculous to hold (as appellant would have us do) that where an act on which the revocation is based is a felony, that it is erroneous for the hearing judge to have based the revocation on that accusation unless the accused shall have first been tried and found guilty of the criminal charge. To hold that would be to elevate a felony to a legal status more respectable than an ordinary and reasonable condition expressed in a probationary sentence, the violation of which would not constitute even a misdemeanor.
Submitted September16, 1975
Decided November 21, 1975
Rehearing denied December 4, 1975.
Johnson held: "That a probationer is not entitled to a trial by jury for determining whether the conditions of a probation order have been breached; a revocation hearing is not a 'trial’ to determine the guilt of a probationer for the commission of a misdemeanor or a felony; a hearing of this nature is not a trial on a criminal charge but is one to determine judicially whether the conduct of the probationer has conformed to the course outlined in the order of probation; and whether those conditions have been breached is to be determined by the court. To Johnson’s holdings the Court of Appeals has added other criteria such as that slight evidence is both essential and enough to authorize revocation, Sellers, supra; that it is not required that the court in order to revoke be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant has violated a condition of his probation. Adkins v. State, 134 Ga. App. 507 (215 SE2d 270).
In this case the evidence authorized the revocation. The evidence is far more than "slight,” that the probationer committed the felony of rape.
The judgment of the trial court revoking the probationary sentence of the appellant is affirmed.

Judgment affirmed.

Been, P. J., Quillian, Stolz and Marshall, JJ., concur. Pannell, P. J., Evans, Clark and Webb, JJ., dissent.

*887Ballard, Thigpen & Griffith, George W. Griffith, for appellant.
John Strauss, District Attorney, for appellee.