Court Opinion

ID: 9460427
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:49:58.898786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:36.807704
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I respectfully dissent.
Park has twice run the gauntlet of Georgia trials and appeals involving a particularly heinous form of murder.
The sole issue for us, as a federal ha-beas corpus court, is whether Park has been denied the right of confrontation guaranteed by the United States Constitution. The majority opinion analyzes the factual issues and the inferences reasonably to be drawn therefrom [ordinarily the function of the trial jury] and concludes that Park was unconstitutionally deprived of confrontation.
In many respects, I disagree with the factual analysis and I respectfully disagree with the legal conclusion.
I think the evidence very clearly establishes a motive for Park wishing to get rid of the prosecutor, who paid with his life for his desire to enforce the law against a locally powerful liquor ring. In my view, the motive matches the reprehensible event. We should no.t consider Park’s activities as being somehow insulated or immutably partitioned off from each other. They were all part of a common fabric and they ought not to be thus dissipated unless we are to rewrite the law of conspiracy so as to exclude statements of co-conspirators, made outside the presence and hearing of others jointly indicted and jointly prosecuted. I specifically point out that the statements attributed to Park were made before the murder, not afterwards, as in Dutton.
Accordingly, I do not agree with what is being done in this case.