Court Opinion

ID: 9588847
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:39:16.360675+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:00.486773
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I fully concur in Divisions 2, 3 and 4 of the majority opinion; I do not agree, however, that taking the plea of a co-defendant in the presence of the jury panel from which the jury was selected was reversible error. It is true that Gray v. State, 13 Ga. App. 374 (79 SE 223) holds that guilty pleas of jointly indicted defendants may not be admitted into evidence and that Code Ann. § 38-414 limits the admissibility of the confession of a joint offender or conspirator to use only against the confessor himself. Here however the guilty plea was not admitted into *749evidence and the confessed co-defendant was later called and testified for the state. The jury learned nothing more by overhearing the plea than it later heard when the confessor took the stand as a witness. While I agree that it was error for the trial judge to hear a guilty plea in the presence of the entire jury panel, I believe that it was rendered harmless when the confessor later became a witness for the prosecution. Gray v. State, 13 Ga. App. 374, supra. I therefore concur in Divisions 2, 3 and 4 of the majority and with the judgment of reversal but must dissent as to the finding of reversible error in Division 1.