Court Opinion

ID: 9619641
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:30:50.865343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:43.066867
License: Public Domain

Marshall, Justice,
dissenting.
I must dissent to the majority’s indiscriminate application of the harmless error rule in this case.
This is a murder prosecution against a husband and wife, Tommy and Gail Gunter, for murdering the husband’s ex-wife, Betty Parsons. The evidence in the case consists almost exclusively of the testimony of an accomplice. The totality of the evidence does cast on the defendants a grave suspicion of guilt. However, the evidence that can be considered corroborative of the accomplice’s testimony must be viewed as slight. In fact, the corroborating evidence consists almost exclusively of evidence of prior threats by the defendants against the victim due to their annoyance at the husband’s having to pay child support to the victim after she had remarried. Evidence of these threats came through the testimony of five witnesses, three of whom testified to threats by Tommy only, one of whom testified to threats by Tommy and Gail, and one of whom testified to threats by Gail only. In addition, there was some documentary evidence (state’s Exhibits 42-51) of these threats. A majority of this court concludes that the erroneous admission of all of the documentary evidence (Division 5) and the erroneous admission of the hearsay testimony of the witness testifying to the threats by Gail (Division 8) was harmless error in view of the testimony of the other witnesses. This takes the harmless error doctrine too far for me.
It requires a liberal application of the corroboration requirement of Code § 38-121 to even find that there was adequate corroboration of the accomplice’s testimony, *664which, in itself and independently of the testimony of the accomplice, directly connects the defendants with the crimes and leads to the inference that they are guilty. E.g., Reaves v. State, 242 Ga. 542 (250 SE2d 376) (1978) and cits. Once it is determined in Divisions 5 and 8 that the evidence there should not have been admitted, the corroboration as to Gail is practically nonexistent. I cannot see how the majority concludes that the errors were harmless. I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Justice Hill and Justice Bowles join in this dissent.