Court Opinion

ID: 9609434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:27:02.096234+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:50.489294
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur in Division 2 and with the conclusion in Division 1 that defendant was unconstitutionally restrained. It was not shown that, in order for security to be maintained, defendant had to be restrained at trial with leg irons and a handcuff on the hand he would not need for writing. There is nothing in the record to show that these measures were minimized in any way in front of the jury, such as keeping defendant seated with the leg irons out of view in the jury’s presence. Nor is it shown that a handcuff was necessary. There is nothing in the record indicating that the presence of guards would not be sufficient to assure order and security, which of course the court has the power to preserve and enforce. OCGA § 15-1-3 (1).
Although defendant had a long record, including aggravated assault and battery on officers (one lost two fingers in 1986 and one was stabbed in 1985), had struck an officer with his fist in 1989, had set fire to his prison bed in 1986, damaged his jail cell that same month, and had once escaped from jail in 1985 or 1986, some six years previously, the partiality created by his appearance in leg irons and handcuffs in this case outweighed the perceived need which the record does not substantiate insofar as his potential behavior at trial is concerned. There was no recent or immediate behavior by defendant which created the “good and sufficient cause” found present in, e.g., Dennis v. State, 170 Ga. App. 630, 632 (3) (317 SE2d 874) (1984), and none of his violence had occurred in court. Neither had the escape been from court. Nor does the record show that order and security could not have been assured by some other less restrictive means which would have protected the presumption of innocence. The leg irons and handcuffs were silent but strong inference-producing evidence against it.
The circumstances here, at least as developed in the record, do not constitute the good and sufficient cause which in this writer’s opinion were present in Reid v. State, 210 Ga. App. 783, 788 (437 *492SE2d 646) (1993) (Beasley, P. J., concurring specially).
Decided March 17, 1994.
Cowart & McCullough, Hugh J. McCullough, for appellant.
Dupont K. Cheney, District Attorney, J. Thomas Durden, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.