Court Opinion

ID: 9853657
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:51:46.184361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:58.459935
License: Public Domain

Head, Justice,
dissenting. As I construe the charge of the court dealt with in headnote 4, the right of the jury to recommend mercy was limited to “the laws and the evidence.” The opinion cites as authority for the ruling made, Wheat v. State, 187 Ga. 480 (3). The charge of the court in the Wheat case, on the right of the jury to recommend mercy, was as follows: “Under the law of this state it is provided that the punishment for persons convicted of murder shall be death, but may be confinement in the penitentiary for life if the jury trying the case shall so recommend. . . And in determining, what punishment the defendant shall receive you gentlemen may consider all the facts and circumstances of the case as disclosed by the trial, by the evidence, and by the statement of the defendant. In all homicide *170cases it is the right and province of the jury, in the event they convict the defendant, to recommend that he be imprisoned for life, or to recommend him to the mercy of the court, which would mean that he would be sentenced for life. And the question of whether the jury will or will not recommend mercy or life imprisonment is a matter solely within the discretion of the jury, and is not limited or confined in any case. There is no rule of law governing the jury with reference to the exercise of its discretion upon this question. If you should decide for any reason satisfactory to yourselves, or without any reason, to recommend that the defendant be imprisoned for life, then that would be binding upon the court and that would be the sentence imposed upon the defendant. The court would have no discretion in the matter.” (Italics supplied.)
If the charge in the Wheat case was correct (and the writer so construes it), then the charge in the present case placed an undue limitation on the jury with reference to their right to recommend mercy.
If the case of Vann v. State, 83 Ga. 44, 56 (11), (9 S. E. 945), can be said to support the charge of the court in the present case, the Vann case must yield to the case of Hill v. State, 72 Ga. 131, which is a full-bench decision, wherein the court ruled: “The Code leaves it in the discretion of the jury as to whether they will recommend imprisonment for life in the penitentiary of a person convicted of murder; they are not limited or circumscribed in any respect whatever; nor does the law prescribe any rule by which the jury may or ought to exercise this discretion. Therefore, a charge that the jury, in considering the question of recommending to mercy, should not be governed by their sympathies, but by their judgments, approved by the evidence in the case and the law applicable to it, was error.” The rule announced by this court in the Hill case has not been overruled. See also Cohen v. State, 116 Ga. 573 (42 S. E. 781).
While there may be some conflict in the decisions of this court subsequent to the first act of the General Assembly vesting power in trial juries to recommend mercy (see Long v. State, 38 Ga. 491; Regular v. State, 58 Ga. 264; Shaw v. State, 60 Ga. 246), the Hill case was the first decision by this court rendered subsequently to the passage of our present law vesting in the trial *171jury the right to make a recommendation of mercy, and should be controlling upon this court.
In Mims v. State, 188 Ga. 702, 705 (4 S. E. 2d, 831), this court approved the charge of the trial judge that a recommendation of mercy “is a recommendation which you have a right to make and attach to your verdict, in the event you should find the defendant guilty of murder. You may decline this recommendation with or without a reason, and you may decline to do so with or without a reason; you may do so as a matter of public policy or out of sympathy for the prisoner, or you may decline to do so for reason of public policy or on account of absence of sympathy for the accused. The granting of it in case of conviction is a mere matter of grace that comes after guilt is established. The Code leaves it in the discretion of the jury as-.to whether they will recommend imprisonment for life in the penitentiary of a person convicted of murder; they are not limited or circumscribed in any respect whatever, nor does the law prescribe any rule by which the jury may or ought to exercise this discretion.”
Trial judges are not authorized to limit or restrict the right of the defendant to a recommendation of mercy. The charge as made in the present case had the effect of limiting the jury in their right to recommend mercy, and this limitation may have denied the defendant a substantial fight guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of this State. It makes no difference that the evidence may have been of such a character as to demand a verdict of guilty, since in no case can it be said that a general verdict of guilty, without a recommendation of mercy, is demanded as a matter of law. Glover v. State, 128 Ga. 1 (57 S. E. 101); Barfield v. State, 179 Ga. 293, 294 (175 S. E. 582); Carter v. State, 204 Ga. 242 (49 S. E. 2d, 492); Glenn v. State, 205 Ga. 32, 35 (52 S. E. 2d, 319); Jones v. State, 207 Ga. 379, 380 (62 S. E. 2d, 187). Substantial rights of a defendant should not be whittled away piecemeal because the evidence may lead the reviewing court to the inescapable conclusion that the defendant is guilty as charged.
For the foregoing reason I dissent from the ruling in headnote 4, and from the judgment of affirmance.