Court Opinion

ID: 9540190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:13:31.857876+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:41.697911
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I agree with the majority but do not believe that Gunn provides the full answer because in the current case the repealed act was substantially re-adopted less than a year later.
The law, i.e., Gunn and the lack of a saving clause in the repealer, put an end to the first prosecution because the statute was repealed before final judgment.
The general rule would be that the new law (or re-enacted law, if perceived in that fashion) had prospective effect only. That is, it applied to acts committed only on or after the date of its effectiveness. OCGA § 1-3-5; Winston v. State, 186 Ga. 573, 574 (198 SE 667), disapproved on another ground in Todd v. State, 228 Ga. 746, 749 (187 SE2d 831). See Hahn v. State, 166 Ga. App. 71, 74 (303 SE2d 299); Akins v. State, 231 Ga. 411 (1) (202 SE2d 62). Otherwise there would be a lack of due process because the person committing the act would not have been forewarned that his contemplated act was a crime.
If the legislature intended a departure from this general rule, that this re-enactment was to cover acts within the statute of limitations retroactively except for the period when the repealer was in effect, it should have said so. It did not. What is more, it did not even provide that the statute be effective upon passage in March but simply allowed it to become effective at the generally effective time, in July. So the legislature took no pains to specify that the statute was to cover acts which had occurred before the repealer.
In my opinion, we cannot guess at what the legislature meant. Nor can we say what it likely intended or what it is unlikely to have intended. If the new statute was to correct an earlier inadvertent omission, an oversight, and if it was further intended to apply retroactively, nunc pro tunc as it were, the legislature should have said so, particularly since this would be out of the ordinary. The statutes passed should be clear enough so reasonable men do not differ about their meaning.