Court Opinion

ID: 9575354
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:13:15.747107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:48:09.086651
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
With respect to Division 2 of the Court’s opinion, I concur because the issue which appears to me to be crucial and which appellant attempts to present as part of his argument is not properly before us. He frames his enumeration of error by contending that the statute’s mandatory life sentence for second offenses violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. That is the same contention that he made in the trial court, which the majority quotes.
*351But there he did not state any grounds or explain why or how the statute’s mandate was constitutionally infirm. Nor did he describe what he meant by “these type of cases.” The most that can be comprehended from this, then, is that he simply attacked the statute’s mandatory life sentence as cruel and unusual punishment per se, which was an attack on the statute itself. He did not allege that, although it was a constitutional statute, its application to him under the circumstances of his case was unconstitutional. Thus the trial court could do no more than reject the challenge, because the Georgia Supreme Court had almost two years earlier affirmed the facial validity of the statute under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments in Grant v. State, 258 Ga. 299, 300 (2) (368 SE2d 737) (1988). No petition for certiorari was filed in the United States Supreme Court, so the Georgia Supreme Court’s ruling controls that issue. 1983 Ga. Const., Art. VI, Sec. VI, Par. VI.‘ Its transfer of Beasley’s case, which originally was filed in the Supreme Court, confirms that ruling and eliminates the challenge to the constitutionality of the law, which would have been within its exclusive jurisdiction. 1983 Ga. Const., Art. VI, Sec. VI, Par. II (1). (In Tillman v. State, 260 Ga. 801 (400 SE2d 632) (1991), decided subsequent to Beasley’s trial, the statute per se survived a constitutional due process challenge.)
Buried in appellant’s argument is a new ground, that the statute, as construed by the sentencing court to apply to his circumstances, violates the Federal Constitution. That is, if the word “second” in OCGA § 16-13-30 (d) can have been intended by the legislature to apply to all second convictions rather than only to convictions for offenses occurring after first convictions, it is unconstitutional under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. This new argument, that the legislature did not intend such an application as was made in his case, attacks the trial court’s judicial construction of the statute, not its facial constitutionality. He claims that under a proper construction, the statute’s mandatory life sentence would not apply to him.
The statute does say “second” offense. The conviction before us, and for which the trial court imposed the mandatory maximum, was not appellant’s second offense; it was the first. Analogous reasoning underlies Division 2 in Mitchell v. State, 202 Ga. App. 100, 101 (413 SE2d 517) (1991).
The mandate in OCGA § 16-13-30 (d) applies when there is a second conviction and it is for an offense which occurred after defendant committed an offense and was convicted of it. That is the plain language of the statute, which we are bound by. OCGA § 1-3-1 (b). “ ‘[T]he language being plain, and not leading to absurd or wholly impracticable consequences, it is the sole evidence of the ultimate legislative intent.’ ” Hollowell v. Jove, 247 Ga. 678, 681 (279 SE2d 430) (1981). The instant case involves Beasley’s first offense; he was not *352convicted in this case of again committing a violation of OCGA § 16-13-30 (b).
Decided November 27, 1991
Reconsideration denied December 19, 1991.
Hal T. Peel, for appellant.
Dupont K. Cheney, District Attorney, J. Thomas Durden, Jr., Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
I would disagree with the analysis and holdings in Divisions 2 and 3 of Mays v. State, 200 Ga. App. 457 (408 SE2d 714) (1991). Quoted in that case, supra at 461, is the statement in State v. Wiley, 233 Ga. 316, 317 (210 SE2d 790) (1974), that when first offender treatment is revoked, the defendant is subject to sentence “for the offense he has been found guilty of committing.” That offense was Wiley’s first.