Court Opinion

ID: 9596480
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:50:13.957745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:16.570935
License: Public Domain

BENHAM, Justice.
Tommy Lee Smith was charged by accusation with offenses including felony theft by shoplifting and misdemeanor theft by receiving. After arraignment, the State amended the accusation to change the name of the owner of the goods in one of the theft by receiving counts. At trial on the amended accusation, when the parties realized Smith had not been arraigned after the amendment, Smith moved for a mistrial and the State, after extensive colloquy between counsel and the trial court, moved to enter a nolle prosequi as to the original accusation and the amended accusation. Over Smith’s objection, the trial court permitted the entry of nolle prosequi and dismissed the jury. When Smith was subsequently indicted for the same crimes, he filed a plea of former jeopardy which the trial court denied. On appeal from that denial, the Court of Appeals held that Smith, by taking the position that the amended accusation was a superseding charging instrument, induced any error in the trial court. Smith v. State, 268 Ga. App. 231 (601 SE2d 708) (2004). Based on that holding, the Court of Appeals treated the amended accusation as a superseding charging instrument and ruled that since Smith had not been arraigned after the amendment, he was not put in jeopardy at trial. This Court granted certiorari, asking,
Did the Court of Appeals err in concluding that Smith induced the trial court to commit error in construing the amended accusation as a superseding charging instrument and by relying on Hubbard v. State, 225 Ga. App. 154, 155-156 (483 SE2d 115) (1997), to support the finding that jeopardy did not attach?
1. As background for the following discussion, we note that when a nolle prosequi is entered over the objection of a defendant after jeopardy has attached, a retrial on those charges is barred. Marshall v. State, 275 Ga. 218 (2) (563 SE2d 868) (2002). A superseding charging instrument is one which issues without the dismissal of a prior charging instrument. See Lopez v. State, 267 Ga. App. 178 (1) (598 SE2d 898) (2004). The relevance in the present case of the question whether the amended accusation constituted a superseding *397charging instrument is that the answer determines whether jeopardy attached prior to the entry of the nolle prosequi. If the amended accusation was a superseding charging instrument, jeopardy would not attach by virtue of trial without arraignment on that charging instrument. Hardwick v. State, 231 Ga. 181, 183 (6) (200 SE2d 728) (1973) (“Until arraignment or a waiver thereof there can be no jury impaneled and no placing of the defendant in jeopardy”). If the amendment did not create a new charging instrument, the previous arraignment was sufficient (Vanorsdall v. State, 241 Ga. App. 871 (2) (a) (528 SE2d 312) (2000)) and, therefore, jeopardy attached when the jury was impaneled and sworn (Laster v. State, 268 Ga. 172 (1) (486 SE2d 153) (1997)), before the nolle prosequi was entered.
2. The Court of Appeals pretermitted the question whether the amendment to the accusation created a superseding charging instrument by holding that Smith induced any error because he refused in mid-trial to waive arraignment and thereby “treated the amended accusation as a superseding charging instrument____” Smith v. State, supra, 268 Ga. App. at 232. However, Smith was not alone in treating the amended accusation as a superseding charging instrument since the trial court and the prosecution made the same assumption. The error, if any, was the entry of nolle prosequi over Smith’s objection, not the legal analysis of the effect of the amendment. The erroneous conclusion of the prosecution in a way that would prevent retrial was not induced by Smith who objected to it and, in fact, sought a conclusion to the trial which would not have barred retrial. Contrary to the holding of the Court of Appeals, the trial court’s action in permitting the entry of a nolle prosequi cannot be attributed to Smith.
The assertions by the dissent that Smith “played an instrumental part in the trial court’s treatment of the amended accusation as a superseding charging instrument,” that Smith “did not contend below that the amended accusation was not a superseding charging instrument,” that “the purported mischaracterization” of the amended accusation as a superseding charging instrument was “fostered by Smith,” and that “Smith urged that the amended accusation was a superseding charging instrument” are inventions without support in the record. The transcript does not contain the colloquy in which the trial court was informed that the accusation had been amended or the point in the trial when the trial court came to the mistaken belief that the amended accusation was a superseding charging instrument, and nothing in the transcript suggests that Smith was responsible for that mistaken belief expressed by the trial court and the prosecuting attorney. The dissent’s unfounded conclusion that Smith was the cause of the trial court’s misunderstanding of the effect of the amendment is no more likely, given the state of the record, than is the *398notion that defense counsel opposed that position, but having lost the argument, sought to defend Smith’s rights.
Contrary to the dissent’s mischaracterization, we do not hold in this case that the trial court did not err enough. All we hold is that the trial court erred in permitting the entry of a nolle prosequi in this case after jeopardy attached and that Smith, in light of his objection to that course and his request for a remedy to the generally, but mistakenly, perceived state of the case that would not have resulted in an acquittal as a matter of law, cannot be held to have induced the trial court’s error. The dissent unfairly puts on Smith full responsibility for keeping his own prosecution on track when the prosecuting attorney and the trial court also misunderstood the status of the case and the trial court insisted, over Smith’s objections and the stated misgivings of the prosecuting attorney, that nolle prosequi be entered as to both the original and the amended accusation. The error in the trial court was made by the trial court, not Smith.
3. The Court of Appeals relied on Hubbard v. State, 225 Ga. App. 154, 155-156 (483 SE2d 115) (1997), for the proposition that since Smith had not been arraigned on the amended accusation, he was not placed in jeopardy by being brought to trial on that accusation, and the entry of nolle prosequi over his objection did not, therefore, bar retrial. Whether the Court of Appeals’ reliance on Hubbard was proper in this case depends on the answer to the question which the Court of Appeals pretermitted, whether the amendment to the accusation created a superseding charging instrument necessitating a new arraignment.
“Prior to trial, the prosecuting attorney may amend the accusation, summons, or any citation to allege or to change the allegations regarding any offense arising out of the same conduct of the defendant which gave rise to any offense alleged or attempted to be alleged in the original accusation, summons, or citation.” OCGA § 17-7-71 (f). Since such an amendment does not constitute the commencement of a new prosecution (Prindle v. State, 240 Ga. App. 461 (1) (523 SE2d 44) (1999)), the amendment of the accusation in this case did not create a superseding charging instrument, which is as noted above, a new charging instrument issued without dismissal of a prior charging instrument.
The State and the dissent argue that because the accusation included one felony count, OCGA § 17-7-70.1 (the statutory authority for charging certain felonies by accusation rather than indictment) prevented amendment of one of the misdemeanor counts because an indictment cannot be similarly amended. The cited Code section does not expressly forbid the amendment of such accusations, but the State and the dissent rely on language in the Code section providing “defendants shall be tried on such accusations according to the same *399rules of substantive and procedural laws relating to defendants who have been indicted by a grand jury [and,] . . . [a]ll laws relating to rights and responsibilities attendant to indicted cases shall be applicable to cases brought by accusations signed by the district attorney.” Our reading of the statute persuades us that this language refers to the trial of the case brought by accusation, not to the process by which the accusation is produced and the defendant is brought to trial. See Lynn v. State, 236 Ga. App. 600 (1) (512 SE2d 695) (1999), noting that the statute guarantees a “regular judicial trial that is conducted precisely as in cases where the defendant was indicted,” citing Lamberson v. State, 265 Ga. 764, 766 (1) (462 SE2d 706) (1995).
Were the strained interpretation put on the statute by the State and the dissent to be the law, it would undo the good done by the enactment of OCGA § 17-7-70.1 in 1992 to give district attorneys authority to charge certain felonies by accusation rather than by indictment. The streamlined charging process, which this Court found in Lamberson v. State, supra, to afford due process to those charged by accusation with the felonies enumerated in the statute, would be thwarted by imposing on that process, by use of guarantees relating only to the trial of cases, all the formalities the statute sought to obviate. Such an unreasonable result would be particularly absurd in the context of the present case where the amendment to the accusation related solely to one of the misdemeanor counts and did not affect the felony count of the accusation at all. We conclude, therefore, that OCGA § 17-7-70.1 does not import into prosecutions based on accusations all the procedural rules applicable to indictments, as the State and the dissent argue, and that the amendment of one of the misdemeanor counts, permissible under OCGA § 17-7-71, was not forbidden by OCGA § 17-7-70.1.
Since, as noted above, amendment of the accusation did not constitute the commencement of a new prosecution {Prindle v. State, supra), the previous arraignment was sufficient (Vanorsdall v. State, supra) and jeopardy attached before the nolle prosequi was entered over Smith’s objection. Consequently, prosecution of the offenses charged in the accusation is barred by former jeopardy. Marshall v. State, supra. The trial court’s denial of Smith’s plea of former jeopardy was error and the affirmance of that denial by the Court of Appeals must be reversed.

Judgment reversed.

All the Justices concur, except Carley, J., who dissents.