Court Opinion

ID: 9846914
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:50:23.895086+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:57.074037
License: Public Domain

SEARS, Presiding Justice,
concurring specially.
I agree with the judgment of the majority opinion and concur in all divisions thereof, with the exception of Division 2 (e). In that divi*755sion, the majority relies on State v. Belt10 for its holding that no reversible error occurred when the trial court omitted a portion of the pattern charge on similar transaction evidence in its final instructions to the jury. I conclude, however, that Belt is inapplicable to the present case. Belt establishes that a defendant has the burden to request a charge on similar transaction evidence, and that in the absence of such a request, the defendant is procedurally barred from complaining on appeal that the trial court did not give such a charge.* 11 Belt should not apply when the trial court, as in this case, sua sponte instructs the jury on similar transaction evidence. In such a case, as Chief Justice Fletcher notes in his special concurrence, the trial court must charge accurately on the applicable law.12
Thus, the proper analysis here is simply whether the trial court’s instructions on similar transaction evidence were erroneous. In this regard, the trial court gave a complete and accurate limiting instruction on similar transaction evidence at the time that evidence was admitted.13 In addition to the contemporaneous instruction, the trial court gave an accurate but incomplete limiting instruction on similar transaction evidence in its final charge to the jury. Significantly, the limiting instruction given in the final charge did not contradict the complete and accurate contemporaneous instruction. Because jurors are presumed to follow the instructions of the trial court, because the trial court’s contemporaneous charge was complete and accurate, and because the limiting instruction in the final charge did not contradict the contemporaneous instruction, I conclude that the charge as a whole adequately informed the jury of the relevant principles concerning the similar transaction evidence.
For these reasons, I specially concur in Division 2 (e) of the *756majority opinion. I am authorized to state that Justice Carley joins in this special concurrence.
Decided October 15, 2002
Reconsideration denied November 22, 2002.
Brian Steel, for appellant.
J David McDade, District Attorney, James E. Barker, Assistant District Attorney, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, Ruth M. Bebko, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

 269 Ga. 763 (505 SE2d 1) (1998).

 Belt, 269 Ga. at 764 (“It follows that, having failed to request a limiting instruction, defendant cannot assert that the trial court erred because it did not give such an instruction.”).

 See People v. Key, 203 Cal. Rptr. 144,151 (Cal. App. 4th Dist. 1994) (“[A]lthough there is no sua sponte duty to give limiting instructions to tell jurors the precise purposes for which the evidence of prior criminal misconduct may be used, . . . when a trial court does give such an instruction specifically calling their attention to the significance of this substantially prejudicial evidence, it should do so accurately.”).

 Regarding the subject of contemporaneous limiting instructions, see United States v. Mark, 943 F2d 444, 449, n. 2 (4th Cir. 1991), and United States v. Hernandez, 921 F2d 1569, 1583 (11th Cir. 1991), which note that a contemporaneous limiting instruction may have a more beneficial impact than a limiting instruction in a final charge; United States v. Foster, 939 F2d 445, 455-457 (7th Cir. 1991), which held that a contemporaneous limiting instruction was a sufficient instruction to the jury on how to consider evidence of prior crimes; and United States v. Butler, 102 F3d 1191, 1196-1197 (11th Cir. 1997), and United States v. Ashby, 864 F2d 690, 694 (10th Cir. 1988), which hold that when a trial court gives a contemporaneous limiting instruction, it is within the trial court’s discretion whether to repeat the instruction in the final charge to the jury.