Court Opinion

ID: 9781184
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:20:09.142014+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:20.335482
License: Public Domain

HUNSTEIN, Chief Justice,
concurring specially.
I write specially to point out that the holding in Division 5 in this case is inconsistent with the majority opinion in Manley v. State, 287 Ga. 338 (2), (3) (698 SE2d 301) (2010) regarding the permissible limits a trial court may place on the scope of defense counsel’s cross-examination of a co-indictee. Indeed, the inconsistency is so great that I can only conclude that the majority has overruled sub silentio the contrary holding in Manley. Having concurred specially in Manley to the majority’s unwarranted incursion on the broad discretion previously granted trial courts in regard to the scope of cross-examination, I agree with the majority that there was no abuse *628of that discretion in this case even though the trial court barred cross-examination that was far more pertinent to the bias of a co-indictee witness than in Manley.
In order to understand the inconsistency between this case and Manley, it is necessary to review the role each co-indictee played in his or her respective charged crimes and the nature of the topic upon which cross-examination was deemed duly (in this case) or erroneously (in Manley) limited.
In Manley, co-indictee Alexandria Phillips was a friend of the victim who told her co-indictees about the victim’s home recording studio and the cash the victim kept on hand. The others decided to rob the victim and, on the night of the crimes, called Phillips to get directions to the victim’s home. Phillips herself did not go to the scene; the evidence established that she only spoke on several occasions with co-indictee Allen about the victim’s movements and made, on behest of the co-indictees, one call to the victim that went unanswered because the victim was not at home. During the course of the armed robbery, the victim was shot and killed by the co-indictees.
In this case, co-indictee Robert Jones was an employee of Hampton and a friend of the man whose murder was the motive for the murder of the victim. Jones not only rented and had tinted the windows to the vehicle used to transport the shooter, Blackshear, to and from the crime scene, Jones personally drove the vehicle and waited within view as Blackshear approached the victim’s car, shot the victim repeatedly through the window of the car and then ran back to rejoin Jones who already had the vehicle in motion as they sped away from the scene. Although Jones denied it at trial, the police officer to whom Jones confessed testified that Jones indicated he had personally disposed of the murder weapon. When questioned by police investigators, Jones originally lied about renting the vehicle and claimed that his driver’s license had recently been stolen and that someone else must have used the stolen license to rent the vehicle.3 Based on these lies, Jones was arrested for giving a false statement to police but subsequently cooperated with the investigation, including taking officers to the location of the murder weapon. Jones’s assertion at trial that he did not know that he was driving Blackshear to the crime scene specifically to enable Blackshear to murder the victim was directly rebutted by co-indictee Venisee, who *629testified against Hampton on behalf of the State, and by the statement Hampton gave to police, in which he asserted that Jones “had to play his rol[e] in it” by identifying the murder victim to Blackshear.4
Phillips, for her actions in assisting the armed robbery plans of her co-indictees in Manley, was indicted for murder. Jones, for his actions in assisting Blackshear to murder the victim in this case, was originally arrested for murder and giving a false statement; however, the record establishes that he was actually indicted only on charges of tampering with evidence and hindering the apprehension of a criminal.
In Manley, Phillips testified against the defendants and readily admitted that she was doing so because her testimony was a condition of the deal she negotiated with the State to drop the murder charge (with its mandatory sentence of life in prison) in exchange for her guilty plea to a six-years-to-serve sentence for aggravated assault. Under the relevant statutes, Phillips would not have been eligible to be considered for parole until she served 30 years of a sentence on a murder conviction but would be eligible to be considered for parole — though, of course, by no means entitled to be granted parole — after two years of imprisonment under the plea deal on the aggravated assault. At trial, the defendants were allowed to ask Phillips about the length of her sentence and her reasons for testifying as a result of the deal but were not allowed to question her about her understanding of the parole eligibility differential.
In this case, Jones testified on direct examination that he was employed and currently “work[ing] at a tobacco warehouse in Huzlehurst [sic].” Despite his testimony on direct in which he admitted he rented the car, drove the shooter to and from the crime scene and knew where the murder weapon was hidden, Jones on cross-examination denied that he recognized the arrest warrants issued against him for murder and false statement and testified that he “ha[d] no idea” what criminal charges were currently pending against him. He acknowledged he was out on bond and, when asked “[w]hat charges are you out on bond for?” answered “I think it’s a murder charge.” But when defense counsel next asked Jones “[h]ow much is your bond?” the prosecutor objected on grounds of relevancy and the trial court sustained the objection.5 Defense counsel then *630turned to a different line of questioning.
In Manley the majority held that the trial court, despite allowing defense counsel to question the co-indictee fully about the plea deal that was her admitted reason for testifying, had nevertheless abused its discretion and committed error when it drew the line at cross-examining the co-indictee about her understanding of when she might possibly be considered for parole. In this case, the trial court allowed the jury to hear only the fact that a co-indictee intimately involved in the planned murder of the victim was walking around a free man on bond, yet the majority holds there was no abuse of discretion or error committed by the trial court’s ruling blocking cross-examination on the “marginally relevant” issue of the amount of Jones’s bond. That was because, according to the majority, the amount of bond by itself would not “indicate that [Jones] had any reason to testify ‘in an effort to please the prosecution.’ [Cit.]” Maj. Op. p. 626.
The majority in Manley, in holding that the trial court’s cross-examination limitation was error, relied on a special concurrence by the author of the majority opinion in this case, recognizing that the partiality of a witness is subject to exploration at trial and is always relevant as discrediting the witness and affecting the weight of his testimony, Manley, supra at 340 (2); that this principle is particularly important with witnesses who have substantial incentives to cooperate with the government, id.; and that defense counsel is entitled to a reasonable cross-examination on the relevant issue of whether a witness entertained any belief of personal benefit from testifying favorably for the prosecution. Id. Where a defendant is seeking on cross-examination to elicit “objective evidence” that the witness knows and understands that he or she has received a real, that is, concrete benefit that could influence his or her testimony, it is a legitimate subject for cross-examination that the defendant is entitled to make known to the jury. Id. at 340-342 (2).
The amount of bond that enables a co-indictee, despite his significant involvement in the actual commission of a murder, to avoid on-going incarceration unquestionably constitutes a concrete benefit that could influence his testimony and that would serve as objective evidence pertaining to the co-indictee’s potential bias in testifying favorably for the prosecution. This is particularly true if his freedom comes as the result of a reduced amount of bail that enables even a person of modest means to make bond. The immediate impact of the benefit provided by a reduced bond — financially *631enabling the co-indictee the freedom to live his life and maintain gainful employment — cannot reasonably be considered less influential or less significant to the legitimate subject of witness partiality than the bias stemming from the understanding of an incarcerated co-indictee regarding the possibility that she may be considered for parole years in the future.
Decided July 8, 2011
Reconsideration denied July 21, 2011.
Timothy L. Eidson, for appellant.
Denise D. Fachini, District Attorney, Cheri L. Nichols, Assistant *632District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, Mary Beth Westmoreland, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Sheila E. Gallow, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
*631Given that Manley found it an abuse of discretion for a trial court to limit cross-examination as to a co-indictee’s parole eligibility differential as an unquestionably real benefit that could influence a witness’s testimony, application of the Manley rationale here would seem to compel the same result, namely, that the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to allow Hampton to explore the amount of bond Jones paid to gain his freedom during the pendency of criminal charges against him because the amount set for Jones’s bond “might have provided [Jones] with bias in favor of or motivation to assist the State.” Manley, supra at 343 (2). Accordingly, under Manley, the trial court should be deemed to have erred by limiting Hampton’s cross-examination of Jones regarding the amount of bond, an error that might be deemed harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt. The majority, however, did not apply the Manley analysis but instead resolved the challenge to the trial court’s exercise over the scope of cross-examination in a manner completely consonant with the special concurrence in Manley, i.e., that there can be no abuse of the trial court’s discretion when it limits cross-examination on marginally relevant issues, such as the parole eligibility aspects of a plea agreement or, here, the amount of bond that allows a co-indictee to live the life of a free man. Id. at 349 (1) (Hunstein, C. J., concurring specially). I would hold that the majority is correct that the bond amount was indeed marginally relevant to the issue of the co-indictee’s potential bias, a finding which, although deemed by the majority in Manley to “def[y] reason” as to the tangential evidence of Phillips’ parole eligibility, id. at 344 (2), is as reasonable a finding here as it was in Manley. However, I would also recognize that the majority’s position in Division 5 is inconsistent with the holding in Manley and, given that it is authored by the same judge who authored the core analysis of Manley, this case must be construed as overruling Manley sub silentio, a result with which I heartily agree. It is for this reason that I concur in the majority’s holding and in its sub silentio overruling of Manley, supra.

 As the GBI special agent testified at trial, Jones did not correct his statement even after he was confronted with the fact that, in order to have completed the vehicle rental agreement form, the “someone else” would also have needed the name and address of Jones’s grandmother and Jones’s social security number, information that was not on Jones’s allegedly stolen current driver’s license.

 In fact, the record reveals that, less than two weeks before his trial, Hampton complained to two deputies that he (Hampton) should not be facing a life sentence when it was Jones who “should be in jail but instead [Jones] is out comforting [the victim’s mother].”

 Given that the trial court sustained the State’s objection on the basis that the bond issue was “irrelevant,” Hampton would have no legitimate reason to “try to ask Jones whether the State had agreed not to oppose his request for a bond or had sought a reduced bond for *630him,” as the majority in hindsight suggests. Maj. Op. p. 626. I thus cannot agree with the majority that the failure to ask such questions supports its holding.