Court Opinion

ID: 9565303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:18:50.496064+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:32.198203
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
1. I concur in Division 1 of the majority opinion and so concur in *334reversing the conviction. However, I cannot concur in Division 2 and am of the opinion that the admission of the prior offense was also reversible error.
2. As the trial court instructed the jury, the aggravated assault of twelve years previously was “admitted solely for the jury to consider only as it might tend to illustrate the defendant’s state of mind on the subject involved, if you think it does so illustrate and for that purpose alone.” The court continued the restrictive caution: “You are not to consider evidence of any other possible offense or offenses for any other purpose, . . . you are considering it solely with reference to the mental state[,] intent or identity of the defendant insofar as the same is applicable to or referred to or illustrates the charges contained in this bill of indictment and for no other purpose.” Of course, there was no issue as to identity, so that reference is superfluous.
The sole defense was mental capacity or illness at the time of the commission of the offense on trial, and in the final instructions, the court charged at length on the subjects of insanity and mental illness at the time of the act and the effect of a finding of either on the verdict to be rendered.
It is true that evidence of independent crimes is admissible under certain circumstances when the issue is state of mind. Walrauen v. State, 250 Ga. 401, 408 (4) (b) (297 SE2d 278) (1982). What is meant by “state of mind?” As adopted in Walrauen, “ ‘The state of mind that will permit the admission of an unrelated crime is the state of mind at the time of the commission of the offense as shown by the acts or words of the defendant so close in time to the alleged offense as to have a bearing upon his state of mind at that time. Defendant’s conduct over the years cannot be shown to prove that he has a depraved or wicked state of mind generally.’ [Cit.]”
The majority cites Blake v. State, 239 Ga. 292 (236 SE2d 637) (1977) as authority for the admissibility of the evidence here at issue. In that case, the Court recognized that defendant’s prior threat against a child in order to influence the mother, his former wife, to accede to his wishes was material and competent to show his “state of mind, plan, and motive,” tending to rebut the defense of insanity on the occasion in question “by showing a course of conduct.” The time relationship between the prior incident in Blake and the crime on trial, the killing of the child of his girl friend with whom he had had a fight, is not evident from the opinion. Here, the prior aggravated assault is remote in time, having occurred over a decade earlier, and in my opinion is irrelevant in that it does not tend to serve the only relevant purpose for which it was offered and admitted, i.e., defendant’s state of mind when he committed the acts for which he was on trial.
State v. Johnson, 246 Ga. 654 (272 SE2d 321) (1980), also cited *335by the majority, is also not supportive. It involves the admissibility of evidence of two subsequent drug sales, in a case involving a conviction for sale of marijuana. The Supreme Court held that it “was probative as to identity, the main issue in the case.” Id. at 655. Thus it does not involve the relationship of a remote-in-time crime to the issue of state of mind, which we have here.
Decided June 17, 1987.
Christopher W. Duncan, for appellant.
Michael H. Crawford, District Attorney, E. J. McCollum, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
Since the prior aggravated assault was not relevant to the issue of defendant’s state of mind at the time he shot at Randy Barrett with a pistol at the plant, its admission contravened OCGA §§ 24-9-2 and 24-9-20 and requires reversal.