Court Opinion

ID: 9602849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:00:49.590565+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:41:16.983059
License: Public Domain

Hill, Justice,
concurring specially.
The per curiam opinion omits a critical fact. With that fact included, I believe the majority’s judgment is correct. Without it, I cannot agree that the trial court did not err in refusing to instruct on circumstantial evidence; i.e., "To warrant a conviction on circumstantial evidence, the. proved facts shall not only be consistent with the hypothesis of guilt, but shall exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused.” Code Ann. § 38-109.
Where a person is charged with being a party to a crime by having driven the car in which the actual perpetrator got away, there are at least three possible hypotheses: (1) that the defendant was not the driver of the car (nonpresence, mistaken identification),(2) that the defendant drove the car but was not aware that the passenger had planned and committed a crime during the stop (mere presence, no participation), (3) that the defendant aided and abetted the actual perpetrator in the commission of the crime (presence plus participation; i.e., the defendant was a party to the crime). That is two hypotheses of innocence and one of guilt. Under these circumstances the jury should be instructed as to *384circumstantial evidence and the reasonable hypothesis rule. Code Ann. § 38-109.
However, in the case before us the defendant testified that she was in Atlanta at the time of the robbery and was nowhere near the scene of the crime. Her testimony is critical to this decision because it eliminated hypothesis number 2 as being reasonable in this case, leaving only one possibility of innocence, to wit: mistaken identification, nonpresence. The jury was fully charged as to the main issue (alibi) and decided the identification question of presence/nonpresence against the defendant based on the testimony identifying the defendant in the car at the scene and about the time of the crime.
Hence, the defendant’s testimony eliminated one reasonable hypothesis of innocence, leaving only the one hypothesis of innocence as to which the jury was fully charged, and thus under the circumstances of this case it was not reversible error to fail to charge the reasonable hypothesis rule.