Court Opinion

ID: 9588681
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:36:52.714835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:41:12.383242
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur fully except as to Division 3. In that regard I agree that allowing the State to introduce the private investigator’s test results was not error because disclosure to the State had not been prohibited in the first place.
The “same facts” evidentiary rule, however, does not apply to this evidence. The fact that the police expert tested defendant’s fingerprints and concluded they matched the print on the car is not the same body of facts or information which was established by the private investigator, except for the ultimate fact. The facts he testified to were that he conducted a separate and independent test himself, the results of which prompted his opinion that the fingerprint on the car was defendant’s. Proof that a second test, by the defendant’s witness, corroborated and so enhanced the credibility of the first test results, reached by the State’s witness, is not proof of the same facts.
The fact of concern in Frink v. State, 177 Ga. App. 604, 606 (1) (340 SE2d 631) (1986) was that the child was not in the home. The court held that since that fact was elicited by defendant from other witnesses several times, it was harmless even if error for the State to elicit it indirectly from Mrs. Frink. The rule did apply there because it related to various ways and instances in which the same fact was made a part of the composition of evidence.