Court Opinion

ID: 9613240
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:15:32.409611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:27.045401
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
As to the first part of Division 1, the cases cited do not seem to support all of the propositions advanced. It is important because these propositions form the underpinnings of the court’s conclusion with respect to what must be proved to constitute aggravated battery by rendering a member of a person’s body useless. It is also important *819because the majority concludes that reduced use (“real blurry vision,” in the victim’s words, and inability to read) constitutes the eye’s having been rendered “useless.” Since the court points to no cases which hold this more expansive and elastic meaning to be the proper one to apply to the Code’s “rendering a member of his body useless,” we should be aware of how the majority reached this construction. This is particularly true because if the unquantified term “useless” is to be defined by the relative term “reduced use,” the question arises whether any reduction or diminishing of sight would suffice.
Mitchell v. State, 238 Ga. 167, 168 (231 SE2d 773) (1977), apparently involves total and permanent loss of use of an eye, in that none of the description includes any limitation that would indicate otherwise. For example, “lost the sight in one eye” is how the victim’s testimony is paraphrased.
Jackson v. State, 153 Ga. App. 584 (1) (266 SE2d 273) (1980) involves an ear being rendered totally useless for all intents and purposes because all the victim could hear was a slight beep when she put on earphones in the doctor’s office for testing of hearing. That constituted “useless” as meant by the aggravated battery statute, the court said, but this is dicta because defendant was not convicted of aggravated battery but of aggravated assault as a lesser included offense. The loss of hearing was in fact total in the victim’s everyday life; it could hardly be argued that it was not “total” because she could hear a slight beep through a testing device in her physician’s office. Thus I find it hard to conclude from Jackson that “It is not necessary that the victim suffer the total loss of his member in order to be the victim of an aggravated battery.” It would appear from the cases that at least virtually total loss is what is meant. Although there is little doubt that what the victim suffered in the instant case was aggravated battery, the inquiry is whether it was “by rendering a member of his body useless,” which the state chose to charge and prove.
The final case relied upon is Collins v. State, 164 Ga. App. 482 (1) (297 SE2d 503) (1982). The majority in the instant case concludes that “implicit in (the Collins) holding is the conclusion that reduced use of a member was sufficient to render it useless.” That is not necessarily so, because the Collins court referred to the temporary total loss of use as well as to the permanent dimness and blurring of vision. Moreover, this was not the “holding” in the case, since Collins was convicted of criminal attempt and not aggravated battery. In addition, we do not know whether he was charged exclusively with the “rendering a member of his body useless” portion of the statute, as we have here, or whether it was an all-inclusive indictment. The Collins court expressed the opinion that the evidence would support a conviction of the latter.
*820Decided April 23, 1986.
William P. Bartles, for appellant.
E. Bryon Smith, District Attorney, Thomas R. McBerry, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
Also, the reference to that court’s statement that proof of “complete and permanent blindness” was not necessarily referred in context to criminal attempt, the crime there in question, not aggravated battery, as is before us. That is to say, the state need not prove the victim suffered complete and permanent blindness in order to support a conviction of attempt to commit aggravated battery.
“The loss of use” constitutes “rendering a ‘member of his body useless,’ ” wrote the Court in equating the two in Mitchell. There it traced the modern crime of aggravated battery to mayhem, and this portion of it to the specific type of mayhem designated as “putting out one eye.” If that is what it still means, and it would seem that it does because the legislature has not changed it to include “diminished” or “reduced” loss of use, then at least substantial or virtual loss of use would have to be proved. Analogous is the situation in Mathis v. State, 66 Ga. App. 111, 112 (17 SE2d 194) (1941), where the mayhem offense of “biting off the ear” was held to embrace biting off a “substantial part thereof.”
There was no direct evidence in the instant case that the victim suffered any permanent or temporary total loss of use of his eye,1 although the latter could be inferred from the testimony that it had to be operated on and that the doctor removed a piece of brown glass from under the eyeball in the emergency room. The victim testified from the witness box that he could see the jury but not the faces of the jury, that his sight was “real blurry,” and that he could no longer read although he could recognize his name on a piece of paper handed to him. He could not decipher a word pointed out to him, however, nor could he see the face of defendant seated at the defense table; instead, he identified defendant from that distance by his clothing.
Since the jury could conclude from this evidence that there was a substantial loss of eyesight, a substantial loss of the use of that eye, I would agree that the conviction should be affirmed.

 Pretermitting whether temporary total use would constitute the crime.