Court Opinion

ID: 9565401
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:20:10.654211+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:36.669118
License: Public Domain

Hill, Justice,
concurring.
The defendant raises the constitutionality of the seventh aggravating circumstance of our death penalty statute, Code Ann. § 27-2534.1 (b) (7).
In Gregg v. Georgia, — U. S. — (96 SC 2909, 49 LE2d 859), the Supreme Court upheld the validity of Georgia’s seventh statutory aggravating circumstance against the challenge that its imprecision rendered our capital-sentencing system invalid under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments (see fn. 51).
There remains a question as to whether ground 7 might be so vague as to provide inadequate notice to the defendant. The statement of the question raises a question, which is: Where the crime (murder, in this case) is defined specifically, must the aggravating circumstances relating to punishment be just as specifically defined so as to put a person on notice as to both the crime and the punishment which may be imposed?
Because, in my view, ground 7 of our statute provides adequate notice, I do not find it necessary to resolve the intervening question posed above.
As applicable to this case, ground 7 provides as follows: "The offense of murder [Code § 26-1101] . . . was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim.” The words "torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim” *736are reasonably specific (aggravated battery is defined in Code § 26-1305).
In my view, ground 7 would be sufficiently specific, insofar as the requirement of notice is concerned, if it provided only that the offense of murder involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim. The addition of the adjective phrase ("outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman”) modifying the offense of murder operates in favor of the defendant and does not, in my view, render ground 7 unconstitutionally vague as failing to provide adequate notice of the sentence which may be imposed.
The legal question raised here is different from that raised in Arnold v. State, 236 Ga. 534 (7) (224 SE2d 386) (1976), and the facts presented here are different from those presented in Banks v. State, 237 Ga. 325, supra. I therefore concur in the opinion and judgment of the court.