Court Opinion

ID: 9580426
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:04:49.778283+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:16.294154
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The appellant contends this case cannot be distinguished from Robinson because the indictment accused Barrett of bringing into this State and being in actual possession of more than 400 grams of “a mixture containing cocaine.” However, this argument misses the whole point that while the prosecution in Robinson was abated, the one in this case was not. Therefore prosecution of this appellant, who was indicted under the law in effect at the time of the act, was proper. The appellant has got the cart before the horse. Prosecution of an offense under the law in effect at the time of the act is not, as a principle, unjust or offensive by itself. A repeal abates such a prosecution only because it is presumed the legislature “by repealing the law making the act a crime, did not desire anyone in the future whose conviction had not been reduced to final judgment to be punished under it,” but intended to pardon and forgive them. Sekt, supra. This presumption assumes that the conduct is no longer a crime. Robinson clearly fell within the ambit of that assumption; this case does not. As we said, the conduct in this case has never been decriminalized. The simultaneous repeal and reenactment of laws making this conduct a crime, and increasing of penalty, forbid us to conclude, much less to presume, that the legislature meant by the repeal and reenactment to pardon and forgive the conduct as proven in this case. With the clear demonstration of legislative intent (Pipefitters Local Union No. 562) that this prosecution not abate, the prosecution was properly pursued under the law then existing and under the indictment tracking the *737language of that law. See generally Moran v. State, 170 Ga. App. 837, 841-842 (318 SE2d 716).
Decided June 25, 1987
Rehearing denied July 16, 1987
Lillian L. Neal, for appellant.
Robert E. Keller, District Attorney, Clifford A. Sticker, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
If the State had not proved the amount of pure cocaine in the mixture, or if there had been a material dispute in the evidence as to how much cocaine was in this 428-gram mixture, so that it could not be determined whether the jury, in finding appellant guilty, found he possessed such quantity of cocaine as has continued to be trafficking in this State, then undoubtedly we might conclude this case falls within the ambit of conduct involving an undetermined and perhaps infinitesimal amount of cocaine, which the 1985 repeal abolished as “trafficking” in this State.