Court Opinion

ID: 9618345
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:11:09.323403+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:28.966774
License: Public Domain

Carley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur with the result reached by the majority and I agree with the reasoning set forth in the majority opinion. However, initially, I am constrained to state that I am in total sympathy with the purposes and objectives underlying Presiding Judge Deen’s dissenting opinion because I cannot help but believe that to the victim of a robbery, a replica of a weapon having the appearance of the genuine article is just as “offensive” as would be a functional gun. Prior to 1968, the General Assembly also apparently agreed with this analysis. See Ga. L. 1957, p. 261. Nevertheless, our function is one of judicial interpretation of the statutes enacted by the legislature and it is not within our power to rewrite the acts of the General Assembly in a manner which we think would be more prudent. The criteria by which the judiciary must be guided in construing statutes is that “[i]n all interpretations, the courts shall look diligently for the intention of the General Assembly, keeping in view, at all times, the old law, the evil, and the remedy . . .” Code Ann. § 102-102 (9).
It is true that for the interpretation of Georgia statutes, unlike the enactments of the U. S. Congress, there is not always available a complete “legislative history” whereby a full and comprehensive day-by-day analysis may be reviewed in order to ascertain the underlying purposes and objectives of legislation. Nevertheless, my review of the “legislative history” of Code Ann. § 26-1902 that is available indicates that—whatever the motivating reason may have been — the General Assembly as a body intentionally rather than inadvertently effected a change in the preexisting law with respect to the use of an “offensive weapon” in armed robbery. When the bill to establish the 1968 Criminal Code (House Bill 5) was adopted by the House of Representatives, Code § 26-1902 read as follows: “A person commits armed robbery when, with intent to commit theft, he takes property of another from the person or the immediate presence of another by the use of an offensive weapon or a replica, article, or device having the appearance of such a weapon. A person convicted of armed robbery shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for life, or by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than 20 *10years.” (Emphasis supplied.) Ga. House Journal Reg. Session 1968, pp. 63-64, and pp. 171—179. However, in the Senate the bill was amended so as to change § 26-1902 as follows: “in the first sentence, place a period after the words ‘offensive weapon’ and strike the remainder of that sentence.” Ga. Senate Journal Reg. Session 1968, pp. 2008, 2018. The House of Representatives agreed to all of the Senate amendments including the revision to Code § 26-1902. Ga. House Journal Reg. Session 1968, pp. 3293—3307. Taking into consideration this analysis of the journey of House Bill 5 through the two houses of our General Assembly until it was enacted as Ga. L. 1968, pp. 1249, 1298, I feel that we have looked “diligently for the intention of the General Assembly, keeping in view, at all times, the old law, the evil, and the remedy,” and that we have no alternative but to conclude that the legislature intended that the term “offensive weapon” in the armed robbery context should not be applied to a toy gun. If, as the dissent so logically implies, the “evil” is not in the “old law” but in the new, the power to remedy the 1968 “remedy” is vested only in the General Assembly.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge McMurray, Presiding Judge Shulman and Judge Pope join in this special concurrence.