Court Opinion

ID: 9589112
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:41:27.783261+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:00.984595
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
While concurring fully with the majority opinion, I also concur specially to make the following observations.
1. Concerning the contention that the trial court erred in disallowing the appellant’s counsel during closing argument to highlight the facts of certain celebrated and historical cases reported in the news media, it should be noted that “[a]mple opportunity for full argument is certainly an important right to the parties, and if denied on the main trial of a case, civil or criminal, the denial would furnish sufficient reason, generally, for a new trial. ... In that stage of litigation, even where the merits are clearly against the losing party, he should have such mental satisfaction as he could derive from having finished his speech. He should not be slaughtered with his address warm in his bosom, alive and undelivered. His case being finally and forever lost, with his argument unheard, he would feel perhaps, and sometimes justly feel, that the outrage of deciding without hearing him was greater, far greater, than the calamity of the adverse decision itself. He might get justice, but with it a wound from the court more painful than any justice which the court could administer; for it is not impossible that a suppressed speech may occasion more mental torture than a lost case.” Early & Lane v. Oliver & Norton, 63 Ga. 12, 18-19 (1879).1
Nevertheless, the curtailment of closing argument still remains within the discretion of the trial court. For example, in Jordan v. State, 172 Ga. App. 496 (2) (323 SE2d 657) (1984), this court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the prosecutor to refer to some “Gracy fellow” case in Chicago. Similarly, the trial court’s disallowance of such an argument in this case was no abuse of the broad discretion possessed by the trial court. In any *86event, any error in the disallowance of the argument in this case surely would have to be classified harmless, as the evidence was overwhelming that the victim was chased, knocked to the ground, had her head beaten on the porch, and was sexually assaulted by the appellant.
2. The trial court also correctly admitted the evidence of similar acts attributed to the appellant to show his bent of mind, identity, intent, etc. The various acts of (1) making sexually suggestive phone calls, such as “hear my voice where he gets his balls off for the night,” (2) asking for a date, and (3) making a personal visit during which one asks for directions, a glass of water, and then attempts to get inside the house, are sufficiently similar to one’s seeking permission to use the telephone and then proceeding to make a sexual assault on the victim when he determined that she was alone.

 These, of course, are the words of the legendary Justice Logan E. Bleckley, whose bust appears in the rotunda of our State Judicial Building. Bleckley was perhaps Georgia’s most remarkable jurist, both physically and mentally. Standing six feet five inches tall, he had a long grey beard and almost shoulder-length hair; following his retirement from the bench, on one occasion he travelled to New York City to advise a conference of New York lawyers, who later exclaimed that he looked like Santa Claus but talked like Blackstone. See Grice, “The Tallest of Them All,” Georgia State Bar Journal, 39, 53 (August 1967). He lived to be almost 80 years old; at the age of 66 he remarried, with five children resulting from this marriage. (Five children were born of his first marriage as well.) He discharged his judicial duty with admirable fortitude, on occasion presiding in court while stretched out in pain on a cot, owing to a bad back. See Memorial of Honorable Logan E. Bleckley, 128 Ga. 849-864 (1907).