Court Opinion

ID: 9586803
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:15:20.679958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:52.472137
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur.
What we have here is basically a question of statutory use of words describing conduct. It is a matter of communication, not only the legislature communicating to the court which must construe the statute but more importantly to the members of the public who must govern themselves within its confines and to criminal defendants who must prepare defenses to charges that they engaged in prohibited conduct, and to public prosecutors who must fashion the particular charge which the defendant must answer. See DePalma v. State, 225 Ga. 465, 469 (3) (169 SE2d 801) (1969); Walker v. State, 146 Ga. App. 237 (246 SE2d 206) (1978).
In this case we have a problem of focus. The state chose to focus on the verb “to alter” and not the verb “to interchange.” The legislature made both activities criminal and made them both categories of theft by shoplifting, which itself is a type of theft. Each describes a method, or manner, or way, of behaving so as to constitute shoplifting. The focus is different in the use of each verb. It is a matter of emphasis; which part of the person’s behavior is complained of as being criminal by this indictment? This selected emphasis can materially affect the defense, its theory, its preparation, its rationale.
By creating this list of expressly defined methods, the legislature has made each mutually exclusive of the others, insofar as the legal description of the behavior is concerned. That is not to say that the total behavior of a person does not overlap from one description into *532another. He might in fact use both prohibited methods. But that is overlap of fact and not overlap of legal description. The components of the person’s total activity may be comprised of one or more of the statutory focuses. If that occurs, the prosecutor can charge all of them, leaving to the jury which one to convict of. While the legal descriptions are mutually exclusive, the total act may not with mutual exclusivity be forced into only one of the legal descriptions.
As shown in Hickey v. State, 125 Ga. 145, 147 (53 SE 1026) (1906), if the act in fact constitutes both descriptions or definitions of a multi-method crime, the state need charge only one. The presence of the other as well does not require a charge of both. The implication is that the statutory descriptions themselves are mutually exclusive.
The question in this case is whether the components of defendant’s total act in fact constituted “alter” as well as the statutorily mutually exclusive “interchange.” They did not, because there was not a factual basis fitting the statutorily-described act of “altering” in addition to a factual basis fitting the statutorily-described act of “interchanging,” a different method.