Court Opinion

ID: 9610335
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:39:51.848238+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:28.010855
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
In two of the cases cited in the majority opinion, one judge concurred in the judgment only (J/O). Those two cases are Stola v. State, 182 Ga. App. 502 (356 SE2d 222) (1987), and Griffith v. State, 172 Ga. App. 255 (322 SE2d 921) (1984). A J/O is somewhere between a special concurrence and a dissent, and clips and consigns a case to a sort of no man’s land of case law. Like high blood pressure, it is a silent case killer or crippler, literally snuffing or sucking dry the spirit of all precedential life out of a case sub silentio, without any explanation. Although a J/O may be a handy widget for use as a convenient, quick, quasi-dissent, or case crippler, for busy judges, this writer believes that setting forth reasons in a special concurrence or dissent is more beneficial to the bench and bar. Otherwise, we should relegate most cases involving J/O’s to be unreported in order to lessen the possibility of reciting them in future cases.
Because of a total lack of factual exposition in Division 1 of this important case involving convictions for the serious offenses of DUI and the three counts of battery, I cannot concur fully with the majority opinion.