Court Opinion

ID: 9851573
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:15:09.353378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:53.308993
License: Public Domain

Duckworth, Chief Justice,
dissenting. The majority I believe are making the mistake too often made by courts of relying upon decisions, sound upon their facts, but wholly inapplicable to the facts in the case being considered. They cite Shedden v. Stiles, 121 Ga. 637 (49 S. E. 719), and Strickland v. State, 167 Ga. 452 (6) (145 S. E. 879), and assert that, since *132both have the concurrence of all six of the Justices, they are binding and controlling here. Neither of those cases involved papers signed by the person against whom they were introduced. The present case does involve such a signed paper, and I wonder how the majority avoids the plain law on such a document. The object of all legal investigation is the discovery of truth, and the rules of evidence are framed with a view to this end, seeking always for the highest and best evidence. Code § 38-101. Following this precept, Code § 38-205 reads as follows: “Written evidence is considered of higher proof than oral; and in all cases where the parties have reduced their contract, agreement, or stipulation to writing, and assented thereto, it is the best evidence of the same.”
In the Shedden case, supra, the document sent out with the juiy was interrogatories, which, as all lawyers know, are simply testimony of a witness that can be introduced upon the trial only to the extent of reading it to the jury. The document is not introduced or allowed as evidence. That opinion states that to let them go out would be to allow repetition and emphasis of the testimony. In the Strickland case, supra, the document which was held to have been erroneously allowed to go out with the jury was a signed dying declaration. This court discussed the reasons why interrogatories should not go out with the jury, citing among others the decision in the Shedden case, and at page 461 said: “The principle announced by this court in Shedden v. Stiles, supra, is equally applicable to depositions; and we reach the conclusion that under that decision it is improper to permit depositions to go to the jury, for the reason that they, as well as interrogatories, may unduly influence the juiy in favor of the party introducing such evidence against the party whose testimony is entirely oral.” Then the opinion continues: “Does the written statement of a dying declaration, signed by the deceased, fall within this rule? It has been held that such a statement is in effect a deposition, because the solemnity of the circumstances in which the dying declaration is made and the writing containing the declaration is signed by ■the deceased is equivalent to the oath of a party to a deposition.” Thus we see where documents, not introduced as evi*133dence (interrogatories and depositions, and indeed inadmissible as evidence, but confined to being read in the hearing of the jury), were properly and soundly held in the Shedden case to be inadmissible, and that it was reversible error to allow them to go out with the jury. Then in the Strickland case that sound decision was stretched to apply to and control an entirely different factual case. The dying declaration there involved bore the signature of the deceased which, under all legal tests, was the highest and best evidence of what the deceased said where there was no rule requiring that it be read to the jury; yet, analogized to the interrogatories in the Shedden case and based thereon, it was ruled reversible error to allow it to go out with the jury. But this court plainly said that its ruling was predicated upon its construction that the solemnity with which it was executed amounted to an oath of the deceased. While I can not agree with -the reasoning by which this court reached its conclusion that the dying declaration was analogous to interrogatories, I can see that it was solely because of that conclusion that it was held error to allow it to go out with the jury, and I assume that, but for such conclusion, it would not have been so held.
In Smithwick v. State, 199 Ga. 292 (10) (34 S. E. 2d 28), this court unanimously held that, where confessions were admitted in evidence and no later objections made to their going to the jury, it was not error to let them go out with the jury. In Hall v. State, 213 Ga. 557 (6) (100 S. E. 2d 176), we held, with all the Justices concurring in this holding, that any evidence that is introduced is properly sent out with the jury. The same ruling was also held in Edwards v. State, 213 Ga. 552, 554 (100 S. E. 2d 172). To the extent that this full-bench decision conflicts with the ruling in Royals v. State, 208 Ga. 78 (65 S. E. 2d 158), that confessions allowed in evidence were erroneously allowed to go out with the jury, it controls and constitutes an overruling of the ruling in the Royals case which was concurred in by only four Justices.
While it is true that this court in Strickland v. State, 167 Ga. 452, supra, held that the written dying declaration was properly admitted in evidence, yet the further ruling there that *134it was error to allow it to go out with the jury because it was the equivalent of interrogatories shows that it was not introduced as evidence, but only that it was properly read to the jury as interrogatories are read. Thus neither is introduced as documentary evidence. Hence it is unrelated to the present case and all cases involving a written confession which is introduced as evidence solely for the consideration of the jury.
The majority in the present case can not claim any similar analogy of the signed confession here involved. There is neither the solemnity of an oath, as in the Shedden case, nor its equivalent as held in the Strickland case. Instead, it is simply the highest and best evidence since signed by the confessor of what he said. Code §§ 38-205, 38-302. No thinking person would accept for the truth what some witness testified that the defendant said rather than a writing expressing what he said bearing his own signature. In my opinion it is unfair to the decisions just discussed to extend to them meaning to. cover the present case to which they bear scant, if any, similarity. I know of no rule of law that would exclude a signed written statement from evidence against the person signing it. If such a signed confession of crime is excluded from the jury, then why allow a signed deed, note, contract or receipt to go before a jury against the person signing it? This court is not only not bound by Shedden v. Stiles, 121 Ga. 637, supra, and Strickland v. State, 167 Ga. 452 (6), supra, as the majority says in this case, but those decisions constitute no legal justification for the majority ruling here.
• I am authorized to state that Candler and Hawkins, JJ., concur in this dissent.