Court Opinion

ID: 9609528
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:28:14.051266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:51.025860
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Presiding Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur fully in all but the first division of the majority opinion. I would not overrule the decisions which have established and refined the practice of permitting a defendant to acknowledge guilt, receive a sentence, and with the agreement of the State and discretionary approval of the trial court, reserve a particular issue or issues for appellate review. So long as this expeditious procedure is clearly followed in the trial court, as we urged in Springsteen v. State, 206 Ga. App. 150, 151 (424 SE2d 832) (1992), the parties, the witnesses, and the court should not be put to the expenditure of time and other resources just to preserve an issue which even the trial court considers worthy of our review.
There is an adequate safeguard against abuse in the requirement that the trial court approve the use of this procedure. It avoids the myriad potential missteps of a trial but still gets to the heart of what might be reversible error of constitutional magnitude.
Claffey v. State, 209 Ga. App. 455 (433 SE2d 441) (1993), and Claffey v. State, 211 Ga. App. 335 (439 SE2d 516) (1993), cited in the majority opinion, illustrate the efficacy of the procedure. Ms. Claffey pleaded guilty to separate drug charges in these cases, and the court permitted her to reserve the right to appeal constitutional issues which related to the searches and seizures of contraband. She appealed, we affirmed the court’s denials of the motions to suppress the evidence, and her convictions thereby became final.
The alternatives to this procedure would have been more time-consuming and required two considerations of each of the cases, both on the trial level and possibly before this court on appeal. If interlocutory appeal had been granted, affirmance of the trial court rulings would have required the trial court to pick up where it had left off and proceed either with a trial or a guilty plea. A hiatus of at least many months would have intervened. Defendant would have achieved a delay in his or her decision to plead guilty and in the court’s imposition of sentence. If the decision is to go to trial, witnesses’ memories will be dimmer and their availability may be in greater jeopardy. Legal issues arising in the trial, such as jury selection, admissibility of evidence, and jury instructions, may give additional bases for appeal. This would be the second appeal in the case. If, on the other hand, the defendant pleads guilty after an unsuccessful interlocutory appeal, he or she can still appeal questions such as the voluntariness of the plea and the legality of the sentence. Again, there would be two appeals.
*778Decided March 15, 1994
Reconsideration denied April 1, 1994.
Donald C. Turner, for Hooten.
Louise T. Hornsby, Solicitor, for State.
Banks & Stubbs, Rafe Banks III, for Beard.
D. Terry Stringer, Solicitor, James A. Ward, Assistant Solicitor, for State.
Another alternative is to proceed with the trial, after a motion to suppress is denied, and wait to challenge the denial until the direct appeal. But that requires the preparation and presentation of a trial when even the defendant agrees that he or she is guilty of the offense. This exercise, involving many people and much administration especially if a jury were involved, would be necessary just to preserve the one issue which defendant wishes to challenge. Of course, along this path, more issues may be created which would not materialize at all if Mims were followed.
The conditional pleas do not allow defendants to plead guilty and still contest their guilt. They are permitted only to contest some procedural aspect of the case which would affect the validity of a conviction based on a jury or bench trial. The pleas of guilty and sentences thereon, which are secured at a substantially earlier time than if the interlocutory route were the only one, are final immediately if the limited Mims appeal is unsuccessful.
The courts must find processes to achieve the “speedy, efficient, and inexpensive resolution of . . . prosecutions” if we are to abide by the spirit of the mandate in the 1983 Georgia Constitution, Art. VI, Sec. IX, Par. I. We have such a process here, and it precedes Mims v. State, 201 Ga. App. 277 (410 SE2d 824) (1991). See Daniel v. State, 199 Ga. App. 180 (404 SE2d 466) (1991). It is similar to paring down the issues in a civil case, which is one of the objectives of our Appellate Settlement Conference procedure set out in Rule 52. I cannot concur in the decision to abandon it.
I am authorized to state that Judge Blackburn joins in this opinion.