Court Opinion

ID: 9595014
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:34:54.933946+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:25.775464
License: Public Domain

Fletcher, Justice,
dissenting.
For the reasons set forth below, I respectfully dissent to Divs. 2, 3, and 4 of the majority’s opinion.
1. While I agree with Div. 2 of the majority’s opinion that the *251trial court erred in overruling Medlock’s objections to the state’s cross-examination of Medlock’s character witnesses, I would reverse the conviction rather than remanding as we did in Christenson v. State, 261 Ga. 80, 90 (8) (c) (402 SE2d 41) (1991).
Where the defense calls a witness to testify as to the general character and reputation of the accused, the state is permitted to cross-examine that witness concerning whether he has heard that the accused has been charged with or convicted of specific offenses in order to test the witness’ credibility and the parameters of his definition of good character and good reputation. However, the state is not permitted to cross-examine the accused’s witness concerning:
unproved crimes or other acts of violence which are inflammatory, prejudicial, and suggestive of facts not in evidence[.]
Hudson v. State, 163 Ga. App. 845, 848 (295 SE2d 123) (1982).
It is this basic rule of evidence which led to the Court of Appeals’ decisions that the majority cites in footnote 2 of its decision and to our decisions in Nassar v. State, 253 Ga. 35, 36 (315 SE2d 903) (1984); State v. Clark, 258 Ga. 464 (369 SE2d 900) (1988), and Christenson v. State, 261 Ga., supra. However, in all of those decisions except Christenson, the failure of the state to demonstrate that its questions concerning specific offenses “were asked in good faith and based on reliable information that can be supported by admissible evidence^]” has been held to be reversible error. State v. Clark, 258 Ga., supra.
We remanded Christenson rather than reversing the conviction because the error did not occur in Christenson until after the guilt-innocence phase of the trial and during sentencing phase. Thus, it was not necessary to reverse Christenson’s conviction to correct the error that had occurred during the sentencing hearing. If, on remand, the state had not been able to show that it had a good faith basis for each of the specific offenses about which it asked Christenson’s character witnesses on cross-examination, we would have been constrained to reverse the sentencing phase of that case. However, on remand of Christenson, the state was able to establish that it had had a good faith basis for all of the offenses about which it had inquired and we were able to affirm. Christenson v. State, 262 Ga. 638 (423 SE2d 252) (1992).
In the present case, the state has already admitted that it did not have a good faith basis for its question to one of Medlock’s character witnesses concerning a prior DUI and, in fact, admitted that Medlock had never been charged with or convicted of a DUI.6 As a result, the *252effect of the majority’s remand of the present case is the formulation of a new rule concerning the proper boundaries of cross-examination of a criminal defendant’s character witnesses: the state is no longer required to have a good faith basis for all of its questions concerning specific offenses but must only have a good faith basis for its questions concerning some of those offenses.
Finally, as is pointed out by the majority, the district attorney that tried the present case is the district attorney that tried the Christenson case. We decided Christenson, 261 Ga. 80, on March 15, 1991 and denied the motion for reconsideration in that case on March 27, 1991, nearly one year to the day prior to the trial of the present case. The authority we relied upon in deciding Div. 8 of Christenson was Nassar v. State, 253 Ga., supra, and State v. Clark, 258 Ga., supra. Neither of those cases were death penalty cases and one was decided seven years and the other three years prior to our decision in Christenson. There can be no question that the district attorney involved in the present case knew that he was required, upon objection from the accused, to demonstrate a good faith basis for his questions to the accused’s character witnesses concerning specific offenses of which the accused had been charged or convicted. This brings to mind the words of Justice Sutherland who, in defining the role of a prosecuting attorney, wrote:
The [District] Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor — indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.
Berger v. United States, 295 U. S. 78, 88 (55 SC 629, 79 LE 1314) (1935).
2. In Div. 4, the majority concludes that the following comment by the state, while improper, was not reversible error:
*253the Court’s ruled on the motion that there’s evidence before this jury that that child was murdered.
I disagree and would hold that such comment was reversible error. (a) OCGA § 17-8-57 provides that:
[i]t is error for any judge in any criminal case, during its progress or in his charge to the jury, to express or intimate his opinion as to what has or has not been proved or as to the guilt of the accused. Should any judge violate this Code section, the violation shall be held by the Supreme Court or Court of Appeals to be error and the decision in the case reversed, and a new trial granted in the court below with such directions as the Supreme Court or Court of Appeals may lawfully give.
The rationale for this statute is that such comment from the trial court introduces the trial court’s opinion concerning fact questions into the minds of the jurors and thereby invades the province of the jury and colors its deliberations.
Because it is improper for a trial court to:
express or intimate his opinion as to what has or has not been proved or as to the guilt of the accused[,]
OCGA § 17-8-57, it is also improper for the state to argue or comment so as to convey the impression that the trial court believes that there is sufficient evidence to establish the elements of the crime charged or that the accused is guilty. 90 ALR3d 822. Comment of this sort by the state is objectionable for the same reasons that such comment is objectionable when made by the court: it introduces the trial court’s opinion concerning fact questions into the minds of the jurors, thereby invading the province of the jury and coloring its deliberations.7
(b) OCGA § 17-8-75 provides, in part:
Where counsel in the hearing of the jury make statements of prejudicial matters which are not in evidence, it is the duty of the court to interpose and prevent the same.
*254(Emphasis supplied.) In taking no action in response to the state’s comment that the trial court had ruled that there was evidence that Medlock’s son had been murdered, the court, in effect, approved that comment and admitted that the comment correctly reflected its view of the evidence. In so doing, the trial court exacerbated the problem created by the state’s improper comment.
That the state’s improper comment came in response to an objection by defense counsel concerning another matter in no way justifies the improper comment. The fact that the state did not use the words “directed verdict,” “directed verdict of not guilty,” or could have been understood to have been referring to something other than the trial court’s ruling on the directed verdict motion does not alleviate the harm caused by the state’s improper reference to the trial court’s opinion concerning what had been proved by the state’s evidence.
3. Finally, in Div. 3 of its opinion, the majority concludes that it was not error for the trial court to permit the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on the child to testify that the manner of death in this particular case was homicide. I cannot agree.
(a) When the pathologist testified that the child died as a result of head trauma, described that trauma and testified as to the mechanism by which that trauma occurred, he was employing his medical expertise and was testifying concerning a conclusion that was beyond the ken of the average juror. However, when the pathologist went further and testified that, in a case such as the one he had described, the manner of death was homicide, he invaded the province of the jury by drawing a legal conclusion from the facts in issue, the drawing of which did not require that he utilize any of his medical skill, knowledge, or expertise.
(b) The pathologist’s conclusion that the manner of death was homicide was particularly harmful in the present case given the nature of Medlock’s defense and other testimony presented in the case by another of the state’s expert witnesses and by Medlock’s mother.
(1) Medlock’s defense was that he had not shaken the child and did not know what had caused the injury that resulted in the child’s death. Medlock acknowledged that he had dropped the child earlier in the evening when, as he was holding the child in his arms, the child kicked his legs against Medlock’s chest causing Medlock to lose his grip on the child. Medlock also testified that: he had calmed the child down, checked for external injuries, tested the child’s responses to assure himself that the child had not been hurt by the fall and was responsive and alert; Medlock then put the child to bed; when Medlock went to bed an hour or two later, he checked on the child, realized the child was having difficulty breathing and summoned his wife and mother.
One of the state’s witnesses was the child’s regular treating physi*255cian and that physician’s testimony indicates that the injury to the child may have occurred when Medlock dropped the child. The regular treating physician testified that when a head is in motion and hits an object like a floor, the brain will swing forward and hit the inside of the skull at the point of impact with the floor and then oscillate within its encasing dura causing the vessels that moor the brain to stretch and tear, resulting in intracranial bleeding.
(2) Medlock’s mother testified that, on the night of the child’s death, when it was first discovered that the child was having trouble breathing and, in initially trying to get the child to breathe, she shook the child. The state asked whether she had shaken “the baby hard enough to slam its brains backwards and forwards in its head” and she responded that she “shook the baby violently.” She also responded affirmatively when the state asked her whether, when she was shaking the baby, its “head [was] flopping back and forth.”
The testimony of the forensic pathologist indicates that the injury to the child may have occurred when Medlock’s mother attempted to resuscitate the child. The forensic pathologist testified:
This [the tearing of the blood vessels that run between the dura and arachnoid or between the arachnoid and the brain that the forensic pathologist had observed in the child] is a very typical finding in an infant, not an older child, but an infant who has been shaken. This occurs when the brain begins to move back and forth within the skull. The skull and the brain can really move a little bit apart from each other. The brain sits inside the skull cavity rather loosely. It’s not really attached down in many places except right at the bottom. When an infant is shaken, it has something to do with the fact they don’t have a whole lot of muscular support in their neck. Their necks aren’t as strong as older children and adults. The head begins to move in a whiplash-type motion. The brain and the skull actually begin to move a little bit apart from one another; and as this happens, these very thin, delicate blood vessels get torn and the blood collects.
As unpleasant as it is to contemplate other ways in which the child may have suffered the injuries to his head that the forensic pathologist concluded were the cause of the child’s death in this case, there was evidence in this case that those injuries may have occurred when the child fell from Medlock’s arms or when Medlock’s mother was trying to resuscitate the child. If either were indeed to be the case, there can be no question that the manner of the child’s death would not have been homicide. As a result, the forensic pathologist’s conclusion was particularly harmful in that he was permitted to ex*256press an opinion concerning the ultimate issue in the case, an opinion which was not the result of any medical knowledge on his part and about which there was conflicting testimony.
Decided June 28, 1993.
William J. Mason, for appellant.
Douglas C. Pullen, District Attorney, Murray J. Weed, Assistant District Attorney, Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, Susan V. Boleyn, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Peggy R. Katz, Staff Attorney, for appellee.
The majority agrees that the trial court erred in overruling Medlock’s objections to the state’s cross-examination of Medlock’s character witnesses; agrees that it was improper for the district attorney to refer to the fact that the trial court had ruled that “there’s evidence before this jury that that child was murdered”; and states “that it would be better practice if experts were instructed not to state a conclusion that death resulted from homicide, a conclusion which may often invade the province of the jury.” Having reached such conclusions, I find it difficult to understand the majority’s refusal to reverse this conviction and afford Medlock what he has been denied thus far: a fair trial.
I am authorized to state that Justice Benham joins in this dissent.

 The question concerning the DUI was particularly harmful because the state’s case was *252largely circumstantial and one of the circumstances that the state relied heavily upon was the fact that appellant had had two drinks of whiskey on the night of the child’s death.

 A corollary of this rule is that it is improper for the state to argue or comment concerning the fact that the trial court’s refusal to direct a verdict for the accused means that the court believes there to be evidence of the accused’s guilt or that the trial court would have directed a verdict of acquittal if there was not sufficient evidence to convict the accused. Hammond v. State, 156 Ga. 880 (120 SE 539) (1923); Washington v. State, 80 Ga. App. 415 (56 SE2d 119) (1949).