Court Opinion

ID: 9569940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:18:46.62065+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:04:19.887332
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
While concurring fully with what is said in all three divisions of the majority opinion, with regard to the latter division, it is appropriate to observe that there are two seemingly inconsistent lines of cases regarding the status of a witness’ testimony over whether another person was under the influence of intoxicants. Authority under the first cases indicates that what the witness states is only an opinion, while the other cases hold that it is a fact.
Supporting the former position (“an opinion”) are cases such as Choice v. State, 31 Ga. 424 (1860); Durham v. State, 166 Ga. 561 (144 SE 109) (1928); Harris v. State, 97 Ga. App. 495 (103 SE2d 443) (1958); Lawrence v. State, 157 Ga. App. 264 (277 SE2d 60) (1981). Those cases supporting the latter position (“as a fact”) are Johnson v. State, 69 Ga. App. 377 (25 SE2d 584) (1943); Donley v. State, 72 Ga. App. 429 (33 SE2d 925) (1945); Wells v. State, 110 Ga. App. 507 (139 SE2d 151) (1964); Garrett v. State, 146 Ga. App. 610 (247 SE2d 136) (1978). This court has no choice but to follow Choice v. State, supra, in which the Supreme Court clearly states at 424 (3): “Witnesses other than experts may give their opinions as to sanity or insanity, provided they be accompanied by the facts upon which they are founded. Nor is it wrong for witnesses to state that the prisoner ‘appeared to be drinking.’ ” (Emphasis supplied.)
In Choice v. State, supra, Justice Lumpkin, while considering Judge Bull’s charge to the jury, observed that drunkenness is “easy of detection and difficult of explanation,” and expounded provocatively on the questions at issue: “It may be, that, owing to the accident of 1850, the defendant was not only more easily affected by liquor, but, also, that he had less power to control his appetite for drink. Still *808this, if true, would not excuse him. A man may have partial or general insanity, and that, too, from blows upon the head, yet if he drink, and bring on temporary fits of drunkenness, and, while under the influence of spirits, takes life, he is responsible. ‘There are men,’ says Mr. Justice Story, ‘soldiers who have been severely wounded in the head especially, who well know that excess makes them mad; but if such person wilfully deprive themselves of reason, they ought not to be excused for one crime, by the voluntary perpetration of another.’ [Cits.]” Id. at 480. Justice Lumpkin further cautioned: “On the trial of Kleim, before Judge Edmonds, of Spiritual Rapping notoriety, in 1845, we find the first clear legal recognition of this moral insanity doctrine — a doctrine which destroys all responsibility to human and Divine law; and one originating, as I verily believe, in an utter misconception of man’s moral and physical nature; an offshoot from that Bohon Upas of Humanism, which has so pervaded and poisoned the Northern mind of this country, and which, I fear, will cause the glorious sun of our Union to sink soon in the sea of fratricidal blood!” Id. at 474.
In New v. State, 171 Ga. App. 392 (319 SE2d 542) (1984), this court attempted to overrule Garrett, Donley, Harris, and possibly Johnson, wherein the latter cases indicated the witness’ testimony was “a fact,” but this was an aborted effort as three judges cannot overrule a case. When a proper objection is made in a future case, our whole court should then, in my opinion, consummate the worthy goal sought in New, supra. However, this endeavor must wait another day.