Court Opinion

ID: 9592767
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:16:56.069282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:08:43.476048
License: Public Domain

Pope, Judge,
dissenting.
In this case the defendant, knowing his wife was watching, coml mitted a crime in front of her and concealed the evidence of the criml in a bag in her apparent possession. I can only conclude that defen ant acted in reliance upon the confidential relationship between hui band and wife and that the wife’s knowledge of the crime was a< quired in confidence. Thus, the wife’s testimony concerning what s learned from defendant’s acts should have been excluded by the prhl *191ilege afforded in OCGA § 24-9-21 (1).
The acts in question here are not routine daily activities which were engaged in without regard to the presence of defendant’s wife, which would be non-privileged pursuant to the holding in Georgia Intl. &c. Co. v. Boney, 139 Ga. App. 575 (228 SE2d 731) (1976). Neither were they acts which were merely circumstantial evidence of the crime with which he was charged, as were the acts witnessed and testified to by the defendant’s spouse in State v. Hannuksela, 452 NW2d 668 (Minn. 1990), cited in the majority opinion. “[A]ny knowledge acquired by the wife on account of the trust confided in her by her husband of any fact whatever should be excluded, whether the husband told it to her out of his mouth or showed it to her in a letter, or pointed it out with his hand, or locked it up and gave to her lone access to it by entrusting her with the key.” Georgia Intl. &c. Co. v. Boney, supra at 578. Here, defendant not only committed an illegal act in the presence of his wife but entrusted her with possession of the contraband. (Although the testimony did not expressly establish the wife was in possession of the infant’s diaper bag, we must assume it was in her possession because defendant was waiting to be called as a witness in a criminal trial and, undoubtedly, did not take a diaper bag with him to the witness stand.)
Defendant could not have more directly communicated to his wife the fact that he committed the crime than by committing it in [her presence. I conclude that the wife’s knowledge of the defendant’s |illegal act arose from the confidential relationship between spouses land therefore was privileged and should have been excluded. Cf. Jones v. Dept. of Human Resources, 168 Ga. App. 915 (2) (310 SE2d 1753) (1983) (where a minister and his wife were allowed to testify concerning a parishioner’s conduct because there was no showing that the Observations of said conduct arose from spiritual counseling or the profession of religious faith, as described in OCGA § 24-9-22, the stat-lite which grants a privilege to such communications).
I Even though evidence was presented that defendant made a formal confession of the crime and also made a voluntary admission to In officer while he was incarcerated, we could not hold that the admission of the privileged testimony was harmless error. Defendant lestified it was his wife who took the contraband from the evidence labinet and that he made the confession to protect his wife from a •riminal charge after the interrogating officers made an offer to “turn ■him] loose” if he would confess and then serve as an informant in a ■ertain pending investigation. He denied making the statement attributed to him in jail. We cannot second guess whether the jury would convict him if the only evidence against him had been these ■onfessions and defendant should have a new trial.
| I am authorized to state that Chief Judge Sognier, Judge Carley *192and Judge Cooper join in this dissent.
Decided March 15, 1991
Thomas A. Brown, pro se.
Darrell E. Wilson, District Attorney, H. Gray Skelton, Jr., Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.