Court Opinion

ID: 9617967
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:04:15.870073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:21.591391
License: Public Domain

Gregory, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the Per Curiam opinion and write to comment on the subject of sufficiency of the evidence of sanity in light of the guilty but mentally ill statute. OCGA § 17-7-131. Prior to the guilty but mentally ill statute a jury was faced with a choice between two states of mind, sane and insane. Assume these two mental states are placed on a continuum from zero to 100 with sanity concentrated at zero and ever so gradually transforming into insanity someplace along the continuum toward 100 where insanity is concentrated. There is no clear demarcation between the two, only degrees of each up and down the scale. A factfinder’s choice in any case above zero and below 100 is hard to refute. A reviewing court had to determine if a guilty verdict was supported by the evidence under the appropriate standard of review. This was often a difficult task but at least there were only two choices in this scheme of things. Now the statute has inserted on the continuum between sane and insane the category of mentally ill. Perhaps that is concentrated at about 75 on our scale. Where a jury has found the defendant mentally ill, but the defendant contends he was insane, a reviewing court has an even more difficult task because the separation between mentally ill and insane is less. A reviewing court is not as likely to overturn a verdict where the choice was between two categories more nearly aligned. We are faced with this latter choice in this case. As a juror I might have voted to find the defendant insane. But I am unwilling to overturn this fact issue under our standard of review. Brown v. State, 250 Ga. 66, 71 (295 SE2d 727) (1982).