Court Opinion

ID: 9569230
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:11:39.345394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:50:39.860293
License: Public Domain

Hunt, Presiding Justice,
dissenting.
With the majority opinion in this case we have come, through a series of cases, to a position which is inconsistent with basic principles of evidence. Accordingly, I must respectfully dissent.
Uniform Superior Court Rules 31.1 and 31.3 govern situations in which the State seeks to introduce during trial evidence of similar transactions or occurrences. By “similar transactions,” the courts have meant independent crimes or occurrences which are unrelated or without connection to the crime with which the defendant is charged. Evidence of such similar transactions has been generally excluded because our system of jurisprudence requires a jury to determine the guilt or innocence of a defendant solely on the basis of evidence relevant to the crime with which he is charged rather on a belief that the defendant is a person of general bad character or a belief that because the defendant committed some other crime he must also have committed the crime with which he is charged. United States v. Fosher, 568 F2d 207, 212 (1st Cir. 1978). In other words, the state may not attempt to “show that, because of an unconnected act in the accused’s past, the accused should be convicted of the present charge.” (Emphasis supplied.) Barrett v. State, 263 Ga. 533, 535 (436 SE2d 480) (1993).
Of course, evidence of similar transactions has been deemed admissible when the purpose of its introduction was not. an attempt to establish the defendant’s guilt on the basis of general bad character or a propensity to commit crime. For instance, evidence of similar transactions has been held admissible when the purpose of introducing the evidence was to establish identity or motive, or to show lack of *848accident or the existence of a conspiracy.2 On the other hand, and quite naturally, where no similar transaction is involved, there has been no need to examine the evidence under the rules dealing with independent crimes. Thus, evidence of prior difficulties between a defendant and a victim has been admitted, not under the rule governing similar transactions, but as evidence of the relationship between the defendant and the victim. Rainwater v. State, 256 Ga. 271 (347 SE2d 586) (1986). The reason for this is that prior difficulties between a defendant and the person who eventually becomes his victim, forming as they do a part of the relationship between these same people, are, of necessity and by their nature, connected or related events and cannot logically be considered independent actions or occurrences.
The error into which the majority in this case has fallen finds its beginnings in our holding in Loggins v. State, 260 Ga. 1 (388 SE2d 675) (1990). In Loggins, this Court held that USCR 31.1 “applies to acts which are categorized as similar transactions, as well as those acts or occurrences which are categorized as prior difficulties.” (Emphasis supplied.) 260 Ga. at 2. That case involved an attempt by the state to introduce in evidence the defendant’s conviction for the aggravated assault of a third party and the revocation of the defendant’s probation because of a second aggravated assault on a third party. The application of USCR 31.1 was proper in that case given the fact that evidence of the crimes or transactions which the state sought to introduce involved a third party, the crime against whom was unconnected to the crime against the victim, and did not involve the victim or cast light on the relationship between the defendant and the victim. The error to which Loggins has led, however, springs from the use of the term “prior difficulties” in referring to incidents which involved a third party. Such incidents are evidence of difficulties between the defendant and the third party, but are not “prior” as the crime was not committed against the third party. To be accurate, the term “prior difficulties” should only apply to incidents involving the defendant and the victim which are prior to the crime committed against the victim with which the defendant is charged. This accurate use of “prior difficulties” makes clear that the incidents are indeed connected.3
The inaccuracy which crept in imperceptibly in Loggins was exacerbated by our holding in Maxwell v. State, 262 Ga. 73 (414 SE2d 470) (1992). In that case, the holding in Loggins, based as it was upon *849an inaccurate use of “prior difficulties,” was broadened so as to require the state to comply with USCR 31.1 when it intended to present evidence of prior difficulties between the defendant and the victim. In supporting this position, the Court, citing Williams v. State, 261 Ga. 640 (409 SE2d 649) (1991), stated:
because the general character of an accused is inadmissible unless the accused chooses to put his character in issue, we prohibit the admission of evidence of distinct, independent, and separate offenses or acts where there is no logical connection between the crime charged and those independent offenses or acts.
262 Ga. at 74-75. In Maxwell, the state sought to introduce evidence of incidents between the defendant and his wife, of whose murder he was found guilty. Those incidents were, despite the citation from Williams, neither evidence of general character nor separate offenses with no logical connection to the crime charged, but rather evidence of specific behavior directly relevant to the relationship between the defendant and his wife. Similarly, in the present case, involving as it does a defendant’s threat, four days before the murder, to kill the victim, the direct and logical connection between the threat and the murder is even more apparent; we are not dealing with separate, independent, extrinsic acts but with acts which are “inextricably intertwined.”4 Unlike the cases, which USCR 31.3 is designed to exclude, where the state pursues the prohibited purpose of using evidence of similar transactions to establish a general character or propensity which will supply the missing element of motive or intent in the crime charged, the present case involves a threat which is an expression of a specific intent to commit the charged crime. The threat and the final act against the victim are part of a single fabric, the initial act leading inevitably, as it proved, to the fatal conclusion. There can be no doubt that the evidence of the threat against the victim is relevant evidence, and evidence, if relevant, is not rendered inadmissible because it places the defendant’s character in issue. Richie v. State, 258 Ga. 361, 362 (369 SE2d 740) (1988).
What is true in this case is generally true with all cases involving *850prior difficulties between a victim and a defendant. The history of their relationship is of whole cloth woven of the many threads of dependent, connected actions and incidents that occurred between them. In short, evidence concerning prior difficulties they have experienced in their relationship is relevant. Further, these prior difficulties bear no resemblance to the similar transactions that USCR 31.3 was intended to cover.5 I respectfully dissent in the hope that we will, as Justice Carley proposed in his special concurrence in Barrett, supra, overrule Maxwell and restore the better rule concerning prior difficulties between a defendant and the victim which we had followed in our earlier cases.
Decided February 14, 1994
Reconsideration denied February 25, 1994.
Gilbert J. Murrah, Ronnie Joe Lane, for appellant.
J. Brown Moseley, District Attorney, Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, Susan V. Boleyn, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Rachelle L. Strausner, Staff Attorney, for appellee.
I am authorized to state that Justice Hunstein and Justice Carley join in this dissent.

 For a fuller discussion, see McCormick on Evidence (4th ed.), p. 797, § 190.

 As Justice Carley points out in his special concurrence in Barrett, supra, after the decision in Loggins, we followed Rainwater in holding that evidence of a defendant’s prior difficulties was admissible as evidence of the relationship between the defendant and the victim and did not fall under USCR 31.1 and 31.3 governing proof of independent crimes.

 The federal cases which have dealt with evidentiary challenges on the basis of Federal Rule of Evidence 404 (b), the federal rule dealing with similar transactions, have found the rule inapplicable where the “other act” is not extrinsic to the crime. “An act cannot be characterized as an extrinsic act when the evidence concerning that act and the evidence used to prove the crime charged are inextricably intertwined.” United States v. Aleman, 592 F2d 881, 885 (5th Cir. 1979). In this case, Stewart could have been charged in the indictment with the violation of OCGA § 16-11-37 (terroristic threats); that such a charge could have been made seems to illustrate forcefully the connection between the threat and the murder.

 See Abraham P. Ordover, Balancing the Presumptions of Guilt and Innocence: Rules 404(b), 608(b) and 609(a), 38 Emory L.J. 135, 156-157. In summarizing the problems presented when the state attempts to present evidence of similar transactions, Ordover reminds the reader that
[i]t must be emphasized that we are not concerned with evidence of other crimes that are somehow connected to the crimes in the indictment. Instead, we are dealing with a completely unconnected, but arguably similar, occurrence as probative of the intent to commit the specific crime now at issue.
Similarly, USCR 31.3 should not be interpreted to apply to “prior difficulties,” a term which, as we have used it in this dissent, is properly applied only to difficulties between a defendant and a victim, because such prior difficulties are not completely unconnected, though arguably similar, occurrences.