Court Opinion

ID: 9852554
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:32:40.136011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:29.642254
License: Public Domain

MELTON, Justice,
dissenting.
This Court’s jurisdiction is strictly limited by our state’s constitution. In its opinion, the majority judicially rewrites our constitutionally-mandated jurisdiction to include the present case. Because this Court lacks the authority to edit our constitutional jurisdiction in this way, I must respectfully dissent, as I did to the original order which is now being vacated.7
The record shows that, on October 6, 2009, the trial court issued an oral order finding Assistant District Attorney Linda Dunikoski in contempt of court and ordering her to pay a $100 fine for violating certain agreed-upon rules of conduct in that particular courtroom. More specifically, the trial court found that Dunikoski disrespectfully argued with the trial court after it entered a certain ruling in a murder case Dunikoski was prosecuting. After discovering that Dunikoski had not paid the fine, apparently at the direction of the District Attorney, the trial court reduced the order to writing on November 12, 2009, ordering Dunikoski “to comply with [the] original order entered on October 6, 2009 by close of business on *261December 14, 2009.” The trial court also ordered that Dunikoski be taken into custody and set a $100 signature bond as part of the November 12, 2009 order. In response to this order, the District Attorney’s office filed the subject emergency motion for supersedeas in this Court.
Nothing in this factual scenario triggers this Court’s jurisdiction. “Cases involving contempt of court are not within this Court’s appellate jurisdiction.” Nowlin v. Davis, 278 Ga. 240, n. 1 (599 SE2d 128) (2004). This is true because “[ujnder article 6, section 2, paragraph 5, of the [Georgia] constitution . . . , the Supreme Court has jurisdiction of certain enumerated cases; and [a contempt action is] not. . . within such enumerated cases.” Vines v. State, 194 Ga. 442 (21 SE 853) (1942).
The mere fact that a finding of contempt is issued during a murder trial does not alter this constitutionally-imposed jurisdictional limitation. This is evident from this Court’s finding in Holmes v. State, 224 Ga. 553, 567 (24) (163 SE2d 803) (1968), that “[i]t is not necessary to consider [the] ground [that defense counsel had been held in contempt of court] because the contempt proceeding is separate from [the] appeal, which involves only the [murder] trial of the appellant.” As in Holmes, the trial court’s finding of contempt in this matter has no relation to the underlying murder case. Substantively and legally, it is a separate matter based on facts which have no bearing on the criminal trial during which Dunikoski’s behavior occurred. In fact, the contempt judgment in this case is a personal judgment against Dunikoski, and neither the State nor Murray are proper parties to this appeal. See note 7, supra. Therefore, this Court has no jurisdiction over this matter.8
None of the cases cited by the majority changes this result. As an initial matter, this case falls outside of the general rule that “the appellate court with subject-matter jurisdiction of the appeal from a judgment has appellate subject-matter jurisdiction of a contempt action in which enforcement of the judgment is sought.” Rogers v. McGahee, 278 Ga. 287, 288 (1), n. 1 (602 SE2d 582) (2004). All that is presently before this Court is a judgment of contempt against an Assistant District Attorney for which this Court does not have *262original jurisdiction, not a judgment of murder against a defendant or a pre-conviction appeal involving the crime of murder. For this reason, State v. Thornton, 253 Ga. 524 (1) (322 SE2d 711) (1984) (pre-conviction appeals in murder cases such as appeal of motion to suppress evidence must be reviewed by Supreme Court), has no application in this context.
Furthermore, the remaining cases cited by the majority are equally unpersuasive and easily distinguishable. The bulk of these cases deal with appeals in murder cases which directly affect the rights of the defendant and are, therefore, directly related to the murder trial. In both Waits v. State, 282 Ga. 1 (644 SE2d 127) (2007) and Langlands v. State, 280 Ga. 799 (633 SE2d 537) (2006), the defendants, who were charged with multiple crimes, received a new trial on their murder and felony murder charges, but not the remaining charges against them (such as aggravated assault). This Court found that it could consider appeals of the remaining charges because the murder charges remained pending below. In Sanders v. State, 280 Ga. 780 (631 SE2d 344) (2006), the State brought two murder indictments against the defendant, one which sought the death penalty and one which did not. The State subsequently entered an entry of nolle prosequi to the indictment not seeking the death penalty, and the defendant was allowed to appeal the propriety of the State’s action as it involved his indictment for murder. Again, this matter was directly related to the murder trial and the rights of the defendant. Therefore, a brief review of the facts in these cases, which the majority omits, shows that they simply have no application to this matter.
The majority’s reliance on In re Paul, 270 Ga. 680 (513 SE2d 219) (1999) and WALB-TV v. Gibson, 269 Ga. 564 (501 SE2d 821) (1998) is also misplaced for similar reasons. Both of these cases are based on the collateral order doctrine which allows the direct appeal of a collateral order “because the issue is substantially separate from the basic issues presented in the complaint, an important right may be lost if review had to await final judgment, and nothing further in the underlying action can affect the issue on appeal.” Paul, supra, 270 Ga. at 683. In Paul, a newspaper reporter had been subpoenaed to testify regarding unpublished information obtained during an interview with a defendant currently on trial for murder. The reporter asserted privilege under OCGA § 24-9-30, but the trial court ruled that the privilege did not apply. We allowed this ruling to be appealed as a collateral order based on the following findings:
Because of the collateral nature of the reporter’s privilege issue in most cases, we conclude that reporters who are not parties in the underlying action should not have to wait *263until the case is concluded before appealing an order that requires them to disclose information. The disclosure order typically is a final decision concerning the news reporter. In this case, for example, the order rejecting the privilege claim and compelling Paul to answer the interrogatories is a final order concerning him as a non-party, unlike the usual discovery order. Moreover, the issue of whether a reporter should be compelled to reveal information is separate from the principal issue in a criminal trial of whether the accused is guilty of the crime charged in the indictment. Furthermore, the public interest in a free press would be irreparably harmed if review of the order compelling disclosure had to await a jury verdict in the murder case. Either the reporter would have already revealed the information or been imprisoned for failing to obey the disclosure order. Therefore, we hold that non-parties engaged in news gathering may file a direct appeal of an order denying them the statutory reporter’s privilege under the collateral order exception to the final judgment rule.
Id. at 683. When the full holding of Paul is considered, rather than small excerpts, it becomes clear that it does not support the majority’s conclusions. It was necessary in Paul to consider the collateral order to prevent irreparable harm to the sweeping constitutional rights of the public to a free press. No such rights are involved in this contempt action imposing a $100 fine.
Likewise, WALB-TV, supra, involved a collateral order touching upon the rights of the public to a free press. Specifically, we considered as a collateral order the trial court’s ruling that a television station would not be granted access to a murder trial. These issues, of course, raise similar concerns for the constitutional rights of the public as in Paul. Moreover, in WALB-TV, “[t]he order at issue was entered in the context of a murder prosecution and the court below ruled that the defendants’ constitutional rights would be affected by the requested access.” (Emphasis supplied.) WALB-TV, supra, 269 Ga. 564, n. 2. Therefore, based on possible constitutional harm to the defendant, we found that the appeal was “properly before this Court pursuant to Ga. Const, of 1983, Art. VI, Sec. VI, Par. Ill (8).” Id. Again, a full review of the facts and holding in WALB-TV proves that the majority is citing it in a selective, out-of-context manner and, thereby, reaches an unwarranted and unconstitutional result.
For all the reasons set forth above, the majority now unnecessarily rewrites this Court’s constitutionally-imposed jurisdiction based on distinguishable case law. This Court has no authority to do *264so, and this case should be transferred to the Court of Appeals.
I am authorized to state that Justice Hines joins in this dissent.

 The style of this case (“S10M0390. THE STATE v. MURRAY”) belies the nature of this action, which was initially captioned as “In re ADA Linda Dunikoski.” The judgment of contempt at issue in this matter is a personal judgment against Dunikoski, and any ensuing litigation must be between the trial judge imposing the contempt and the attorney against whom the personal judgment has been entered. In fact, under OCGA § 5-7-1, the State has no right to appeal a contempt judgment against an assistant district attorney. Moreover, the trial court’s role in the litigation is illustrated by the rule that a trial judge who alleges an attorney is in criminal contempt for behavior in his or her courtroom must transfer the case to another judge to hear the charges if “the announcement of punishment is delayed, and [if] the contumacious conduct was directed toward the judge or .where the judge reacted to the contumacious conduct in such manner as to become involved in the controversy.” Dowdy v. Palmour, 251 Ga. 135, 142 (2) (c) (304 SE2d 52) (1983).

 As the concurrence points out, since 1983, our constitution has provided that this Court has appellate jurisdiction over “[a] 11 cases in which a sentence of death was imposed or could be imposed.” Ga. Const, of 1983, Art. VI, Sec. VI, Par. Ill (8). This provision, however, in no way supports the concurrence’s strained conclusion that this Court has jurisdiction over the present contempt action, as an action for contempt such as the one before us is simply not or incident to a murder case subject to possible punishment by death, whether pre-conviction or post-conviction. As a result, we lack jurisdiction under our constitution.