Court Opinion

ID: 9467132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:39:22.697001+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:10.718099
License: Public Domain

THOMAS A. CLARK, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the relief granted and all of the opinion except Part I which holds that there is no double jeopardy. It is my view that Stephens was placed in jeopardy for the offense of killing Asbill in Twiggs County under the holding of Potts v. State, 241 Ga. 67, 243 S.E.2d 510 (Ga.Sup.Ct.1978). In that case the court decided, under facts virtually identical to those in this case, that Potts could receive two death penalties, one in Cobb County for the kidnapping with bodily injury of Priest and one in Forsyth County for the murder of Priest. In refuting Stephens’ double jeopardy contention, the Georgia Supreme Court relied specifically on its holding in Potts.1
If Stephens had been tried in Twiggs County he could have received the death sentence in that county as well as in Bleck-ley County, where he was given the death sentence which is the subject of this appeal. The only difficulty Stephens has in asserting the bar of his prior conviction to the subsequent prosecution, however, is in the venue provisions of Georgia law, which purport to vest jurisdiction for criminal homicides in the county where the cause of death was inflicted. The majority concludes that these provisions, as construed by the Georgia courts, divested the Twiggs County court of jurisdiction over the offense for which he was later tried, and which Georgia law required to be tried only in Bleckley County. I do not agree.
It is clear that Stephens could have received the death penalty in Twiggs County for the offense to which he there plead guilty, the kidnapping-with-bodily-injury-resulting-in-death of Roy Asbill. Potts, supra, says so. It is equally clear that Stephens could not have received the death penalty for any offense, however Georgia defines that offense and wherever Georgia requires that offense to be tried, absent proof that the victim was killed in the commission of the crime. As I understand Georgia law, that state does not now impose the death penalty for any offense not resulting in the death of the victim.2 Since Georgia law does not recognize any jurisdictional limitations on a court’s power to punish as homicide a crime Georgia law does not call homicide, I do not feel any similar limitation on my duty to inquire whether the offenses are, within the meaning of the Constitution, the “same offense.”
If Stephens could have received the death penalty under his Twiggs County indictment, as Potts clearly held that he could, it could only have been upon proof of the killing of the victim. Likewise, his subsequent prosecution for murder, under any theory of either malice or felony murder, would require proof that the victim was killed.3 That death, by whatever name *408called, is the greater, greatest, and ultimate offense. And that single offense cannot be the basis for several offenses that would permit the state to seek a separate death penalty for malice murder, felony murder, kidnapping with bodily injury murder, ad infinitum. Such reasoning tortures the meaning of “same offense” and the intent of forbidding the placing of a person twice in jeopardy for that same offense.

. Stephens v. Hopper, 241 Ga. 596, 247 S.E.2d 92, at 95 (1978).

. Stanley v. State, 240 Ga. 341, 241 S.E.2d 173, 179-80 (1977). If a death penalty in Twiggs County could be said to be based solely on kidnapping with bodily injury not resulting in death, I think the penalty, as affirmed in Potts, would be unconstitutional under Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 97 S.Ct. 2861, 53 L.Ed.2d 982 (1977), and Eberheart v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 917, 97 S.Ct. 2994, 53 L.Ed.2d 1104 (1977), the latter of which set aside a death penalty for kidnapping with bodily injury as cruel and unusual punishment. A reading of the lower court opinion in Eberheart, 232 Ga. 247, 206 S.E.2d 12 (1974), does not make clear that he was charged with kidnapping with bodily injury, although there was a kidnapping and bodily injury. However, Justice Undercofler wrote the lower court opinion in Eberheart as well as the opinion in Collins v. State, 239 Ga. 400, 236 S.E.2d 759 (1977), where at 761, in referring to Eberheart, he recited that that earlier case had involved: “two death sentences for rape and kidnapping with bodily injury.”.

.In this respect it is immaterial that' Stephens received only a life sentence for that part of the kidnapping that occurred in Twiggs County, a *408punishment that might constitutionally attach to what happened in Twiggs County, taking no account of the killing that followed in Bleckley County. See note 2, supra. The fact remains that it was within the power of the Twiggs County court to punish for the Bleckley killing, with a sanction reserved exclusively for killing. Jeopardy had attached, therefore, for the Bleck-ley County homicide when Stephens was brought to answer for that act in Twiggs County. The state needn’t have more than one opportunity to punish for that killing, and the double jeopardy guaranty should prevent it.