Court Opinion

ID: 9604815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:26:58.388496+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:23.273680
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent as to Division 2, although I concur in Divisions 1 and 3.
Although the appellate courts have allowed prior incidents of 11 years distance from the crime on trial to be introduced, they recognize that time span is a factor to take into account in weighing the probative value of the evidence of the incident against the prejudice created by revealing these prior incidents to the jury, which is to try only the present case. “The general rule is that evidence of an independent crime is never admissible unless the prejudice it creates is outweighed by its relevancy to the issues on trial.” Hicks v. State, 232 Ga. 393, 397 (207 SE2d 30) (1974).
Thus the negative reflection on character, which prior convictions darkly cast on a defendant and which present him to the jury not merely as a defendant but as a criminal, render them inadmissible unless they are relevant to an issue before the jury. They must meet other threshold hurdles as well, but we are not concerned with those' here. See Stephens v. State, 261 Ga. 467 (6) (405 SE2d 483) (1991); Williams v. State, 261 Ga. 640 (409 SE2d 649) (1991).
The issue in this burglary case was whether defendant intended to commit a theft when he broke into the Vocational Rehabilitation Center. He presented no evidence, and his defense was that at most *662he committed criminal trespass, which does not require such an intent. The court charged the elements of both crimes (OCGA §§ 16-7-1 (a) and 16-7-21 (a) and (b) (1)), so it was up to the jury to decide whether defendant committed the felony or the misdemeanor or neither.
The two burglaries over a decade earlier resulted in pleas of guilty, which the later crimes did not. They constituted formal admissions to the court that defendant had entered two other commercial establishments with intent to commit thefts. In the form petitions to enter guilty pleas, which bear appellant’s signatures, appellant acknowledged that he knew that the maximum punishment for each offense was 20 years and that, if he was then serving another sentence, the sentence in each of the two new crimes could be imposed to follow that sentence.
Appellant specifically but unsuccessfully objected to these petitions because of the irrelevancy and prejudice which much of this material introduced. From it the jury could infer that he was already serving a sentence when he pleaded guilty in 1978. Since the sentences on those two burglaries were not in evidence and the third burglary occurred less than two-and-one-half years later, the jury could also infer that defendant either received very short sentences for those crimes or was released before his sentences expired. The knowledge of these guilty pleas, along with the inferences deducible from them, were highly inflammatory when the jury was deliberating on whether defendant had committed the fifth burglary.
The remoteness of the two 1978 burglaries becomes a particularly significant factor weighing against admission when it is considered that evidence of two later burglaries was admitted (also over objection, although this is not pursued on appeal). They were admitted for the very same purpose of showing, as the court instructed the jury, “the defendant’s state of mind” or “mental state or intent” with respect to the incident on trial. They increased the ingredient of prejudice on the one side of the scale without adding significantly to the issue of intent on the other side of the scale. Besides, there was evidence of intent in the circumstances of the break-in on trial. Valuable property was contained in the building, and defendant had rifled a desk drawer before he exited the premises with his injured hand, leaving a trail of blood behind.
The introduction of the four earlier convictions consumed a large portion of the entire trial. Two of the five witnesses were called to describe the two later burglaries, and the many documents introduced as to all four of them comprised the entirety of the exhibits except for some photographs of the burglarized premises. Thus the former convictions were not incidental to defendant’s trial and the probative value of these two early burglaries was minimal, whereas their *663prejudice was great.
Decided February 3, 1992.
H. Bradford Morris, Jr., for appellant.
C. Andrew Fuller, District Attorney, William M. Brownell, Jr., Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
The jury could have convicted this appellant of criminal trespass because he was apprehended when he emerged from the building without any burglary tools, without having taken anything, and smelling strongly of an alcoholic beverage. Consequently, I cannot conclude as a matter of law that, despite the strength of the circumstantial evidence of intent and thus of burglary, it is highly probable that the admission of the prior convictions did not contribute to the jury’s verdict. Johnson v. State, 238 Ga. 59 (230 SE2d 869) (1976).