Court Opinion

ID: 9581813
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:19:01.842843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:15.935520
License: Public Domain

Quillian, Justice,
dissenting. I am constrained to dissent from the holding made in Divisions 11 and 4 of the majority opinion and the judgment of affirmance. Division 11 contains the complaint that the instruction to the jury, “I charge you also that the testimony of one accomplice if satisfactory to the jury is sufficient corroboration of another accomplice in a felony case,” was erroneous for the reason there was not any testimony by one accomplice corroborating the testimony of another accomplice.
*221I have very meticulously reviewed the evidence submitted upon the trial of the case and find that the charge excepted to was not authorized by the evidence. The only accomplices who testified at the trial were Wade Truett and Alex S. Evans. Truett testified in minute detail to every facet of the gruesome murder and there was, while very meager, barely enough evidence of other facts and circumstances to corroborate his testimony in the main. However, Evans did not, in any legal sense, corroborate Truett’s testimony. The only circumstance that appears to even approach similarity in the evidence given by Truett and Evans is this: Truett testified that when the officers, shortly to be victims of murder, arrived at the scene of the homicide Evans “talked to the police officers like he knew them, I mean, he would call them by name.” Evans denied that he had been at the scene of the tragedy, but did testify that he, having previously been a deputy sheriff, knew the officers “real well.” So, in this circumstance, the court is of the opinion, may be found corroboration of the accomplice Truett’s testimony on the part of the alleged accomplice Evans.
Here several principles of evidence are applicable. One is: “An instruction unauthorized by the evidence is improper, and, if it is not apparent that the jury could not have been misled thereby, is cause for new trial.” Citizens & Southern Nat. Bank v. Kontz, 185 Ga. 131 (6) (194 SE 536); Reeves v. State, 196 Ga. 604, 614 (27 SE2d 375), where it was held that “instructions, even though abstractly correct, should not be given unless authorized by the evidence, or in criminal cases by the evidence or by the statement of the defendant.”
In Price v. State, 208 Ga. 695, 696 (3a) (69 SE2d 253), this court held: “The rule is well established that, to sustain a conviction in a felony case upon the testimony of an accomplice, there must be corroborating facts or circumstances, which, in themselves and independently of the testimony of the accomplice, directly connect the defendant with the crime, or lead to the inference that he is guilty, and more than sufficient to merely cast on the defendant a grave suspicion of guilt.” “In every case the corroborating circumstances must connect the defendant with the crime independently of the testimony of the accomplice, and this *222requirement is not met by merely corrobrating the accomplice as to time, place and circumstances of the transaction, if there bé nothing to connect the defendant therewith.” Lanier v. State, 187 Ga. 534, 539 (1 SE2d 405), and cases therein cited.
If an accomplice’s testimony does not corroborate the testimony of another accomplice as to more than mere time, place and circumstances of the transaction, but as here falls short of corroborating any fact that connects the defendant with the commission of the crime, in the contemplation of the law, it is no corroboration of the testimony of another accomplice. The testimony of Evans that he knew the officers is not corroborative of any testimony of Truett that he was at the scene of the homicide or that connected either Evans or the defendant with the murder. It was an independent circumstance that had no corroborating value in connecting the defendant with the offense.
In this connection, the holding of Allen v. State, 215 Ga. 455, 458 (111 SE2d 70), is factually similar. In the Allen case the facts, stated as appearing from the record, to corroborate the testimony of the accomplice Rothschild as to the defendant Allen’s connection with the crime were: “The testimony of Speer McElroy, a Winder policeman, that he saw the defendant Allen in front of Tomlin’s Drive-In, in Winder, Georgia (which is several miles distant from the scene of the killing near Jefferson), on the night in question, when he was called there to push off ‘a faded out, old model automobile’; that he knew the defendant Allen, but did not know the man Allen pushed off; that the defendant pushed the car off, it cranked, caught up, and went on down the highway toward Atlanta; that he' called the police station by radio and had the boy on the desk to call Allen to come and push the car off, and his testimony as to this call by the policeman was substantiated by the police department radio operator; the testimony of George Crane, the principal stockholder, and Joseph Howard Sims, an employee, of Sportsman’s Inc., of Athens, Georgia, that they handled and cleaned guns, and they knew Allen; that sometime during the year 1957 Allen brought them a very rusty 38 Smith & Wesson nickel or chrome plated pistol to be cleaned; the testimony of Deputy Sheriff J. R. Austin that, on the night of June 19, 1956, he had *223a road block set up at the intersection of Georgia Highways 53 and 11, one the Jefferson road and the other the Gainesville road, and that the defendant Allen came through that road block driving a Ford car, and that he saw a faded blue-colored Plymouth, driven by a white man whom he did not know, come from Winder towards Jefferson; that he did not motion this car through the road block, but that some other policeman might have done so; and testimony of Patterson, owner of the Plymouth car, who testified that he had communicated with Allen three or four times since the homicide at the instance of Rothschild; that he had relayed messages to him from Rothschild in the name of ‘Red,’ the name Rothschild told him Allen knew him by; that the first message was that it was too hot in this part of the country for Rothschild, and that he could not come back right away; and on another occasion that Rothschild wanted to know if everything was all right with him, and that Allen said, ‘Yes, it was.’ ” In addition, the record in the Allen case shows the officers found the “coveralls” at the place where Rothschild testified he left them when he and Allen were fleeing from the scene of the homicide. There this court held the corroboration of the accomplice Rothschild was not sufficient to connect Allen with the murder.
It will be noted that the undisputed proof of the State corroborated the accomplice Rothschild in saying that he knew Allen and “Allen pushed his car off,” on the afternoon of the homicide. The testimony of Speer McElroy clearly corroborated the accomplice Rothschild’s testimony that he knew the defendant Allen. Yet, this court held the corroborating of Rothschild’s testimony that he knew and associated with Allen was not a fact connecting Allen with the murder of Charles Drake, even though there were other circumstances related by another witness, Patterson.
Now, in the present case the charge was not simply that one accomplice could corroborate the testimony of another, but “that the testimony of one accomplice if satisfactory to the jury is sufficient corroboration of another accomplice in a felony case.” Thus, it is apparent to me that where there was in the record no testimony of Evans that the jury could accept as legally sufficient to corroborate the testimony of the accomplice Truett, the charge was not warranted by the evidence.
*224Division 11 did not deal with the question of whether there was evidence in the record corroborating the testimony of Truett, but simply whether the alleged accomplice Evans gave testimony that could be held sufficient for the purpose. The error was hurtful because the charge could confuse the jury. This is apparent because there were several other witnesses that the jury could have found were accomplices of the witness Evans, Truett and the defendant in other unlawful transactions, and their testimony may have been sufficient to corroborate the testimony of Truett, but they were not accomplices in the murder case, the case then on trial. The rule is that to be an accomplice of the defendant the witness must be an accomplice in the commission of the crime for which the defendant is on trial, not some other criminal transaction or transactions.
I can not agree with the pronouncement of the majority in Division 4 of the opinion. In view of the testimony of the juror J. H. Clack given in response to questions respecting his qualification as juror, it is my opinion that he was disqualified. He testified that he believed the newspaper report that the return of the indictment had solved the crime, for the commission of which the defendant was on trial, and that the defendant would have to produce evidence of his innocence in order for that to be overcome. The burden of proof was upon the State. Code §§ 38-103 and 38-110. The defendant was, under the law, presumed not to be guilty but innocent, Code § 38-118, and that presumption being in the nature of evidence is a valuable and vital right. In Sikes v. State, 120 Ga. 494, 495 (48 SE 153), it is held: “It is sufficient if [the defendant] create a reasonable doubt. He is not obliged to prove his innocence, but may rely on the failure of the State to establish his guilt.” King v. State, 163 Ga. 313 (136 SE 154). This court held in Fitzgerald v. State, 184 Ga. 19, 21 (190 SE 602): “Every person charged with crime is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty by competent evidence. Thigpen v. State, 11 Ga. App. 846, 850 (76 SE 596). The Constitution of this State insures to one charged with a crime against the laws thereof that he shall have a trial by an impartial jury. Code § 2-105. Therefore it is essential that the jury be not improperly influenced or prejudiced *225against the person on trial. It is a general rule that if the jury act from passion or prejudice against the accused in rendering their verdict against him, a new trial will be granted.”
I am aware the juror further swore that his mind was subject and receptive to the evidence in the case; that he was not predisposed against the defendant or.had not fixed in his mind that the defendant was guilty; that he could listen to the evidence fairly and properly construe the law as given in charge and could "do what is right” between the State and the defendant; that he had no reservations in his mind that he would not be a fair and impartial juror. This does not alter my opinion. In the first place, the burden was still placed, by the juror, upon the defendant to prove his innocence. Further, it is extremely difficult for a juror to decide whether a former opinion has been eradicated by evidence. It is an extremely delicate sense of psychological balance that enables one to determine whether he is influenced by pre-trial impressions amounting to an opinion so strong that it must be overcome by evidence, or whether the evidence adduced upon the trial provided the conclusion in his mind of the defendant’s guilt. Such a juror, in my opinion, is not impartial.
In the case of United States v. Wood, 299 U. S. 123, 145 (57 SC 177, 81 LE 78), there is sound legal reasoning by Chief Justice Hughes: “Impartiality is not a technical conception. It is a state of mind. For the ascertainment of this mental attitude of appropriate indifference, the Constitution lays down no particular tests and procedure is not chained to any ancient and artificial formula.” In Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U. S. 717, 727 (81 SC 1639, 6 LE2d 751), where some of the jurors had admitted preconceived opinions of the defendant’s guilt, but on voir dire claimed they could be impartial, the observation is made: “With such an opinion permeating their minds, it would be difficult to say that each could exclude this preconception of guilt from his deliberations.” In United States v. Denno, 313 F2d 364, 372, is the pronouncement: “It is true that there was drawn from jurors, even those who stated that it would take evidence to alter their opinions of guilt, the statement that they felt they coúld act impartially. This, however, placed on those individuals a burden we think impossible to be borne, in the light of the nature *226of the publicity, the high proportion of jurors holding opinions of guilt, the length of time the opinions had been held and their persistence. ‘The influence that lurks in an opinion once formed is so persistent that it unconsciously fights detachment from the mental processes of the average man.’ Irvin v. Dowd, supra, at 727. . . Compare Beck v. Washington, 1962, 369 U. S. 541. . . . In the Beck case, all those who admitted bias or preformed opinion as to guilt or that they might be biased or might have formed an opinion were excused . . Here there were so few that had not formed an opinion that the inquiry was mainly whether the juror could ‘lay aside his impression or opinion and render a verdict based on the evidence presented in court.’ Irvin v. Dowd, supra, at 723. . . The difficulty in this situation has been described by the First Circuit in Delaney v. United States, 1st Cir., 1952, 199 F2d 107, 112-113, ‘One cannot assume that the average juror is so endowed with a sense of detachment, so clear in his introspective perception of his own mental processes, that he may confidently exclude even the unconscious influence of his preconceptions as to probable guilt, engendered by a pervasive pre-trial publicity.’ ”
For the foregoing reasons, I dissent.