Court Opinion

ID: 9576911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:29:58.672048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:09:32.772422
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with everything that is contained in the opinion except that I do not find evidence sufficient to support the armed robbery convictions of these two men with respect to victims Ballieu and Tarrer. While there is ample evidence of robbery, OCGA § 16-8-40, there was no evidence that they took the property “by use of an offensive weapon, or any replica, article, or device having the appearance of such weapon.” OCGA § 16-8-41.
As to Ballieu, the majority states that she was struck on the head with her assailant’s fist. I find in the record only the following two relevant portions of evidence, which was her testimony. First, when one man entered her back door, “he grabbed me and he grabbed me by the top of my head and forced me down on the floor of the kitchen *301where I had to lay face down.”
Decided March 20, 1987.
William H. Hedrick, for appellant (case no. 73582).
Carl A. Bryant, for appellant (case no. 73719).
Hobart M. Hind, District Attorney, Melodie B. Swartzbaugh, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
Second, when she was taken from the kitchen to the bedroom: “he pulled me off the floor and led me, after they had tied my head with several scarves and some pantyhose into my room and laid me down across my bed. At this time, he tried to take my clothes off, and I resisted, and he struck me at least two times on the side of the head here (indicating) and told me to shut up. . . .”
As to Tarrer, she testified, beginning with the rape episode: “all the while, they had stuffed a pillow over my face and I couldn’t breathe very well and I sort of pushed up at the pillow to get it a little bit where I could breathe, and I had a view like this (indicating). . . . [W]hen they were through sexually assaulting me, they rolled me up in a sheet as if they were tying me up and they kept the pillow in my face all the time and then they went back toward my kitchen and I could hear them banging around in there and it sounded like they were looking in drawers to see what they could rob or whatever. . . .”
I am of the opinion that this evidence does not support the finding in each case of the use of “an offensive weapon,” which element is essential to raise robbery to the more severe crime of armed robbery. Robbery by force, or robbery by intimidation, by the use of threat or coercion, or by placing the victim in fear of immediate serious bodily injury does not become armed robbery unless an offensive weapon is used.
To find armed robbery of Ballieu and Tarrer on the evidence here is to blur any meaningful distinction between the two crimes.