Court Opinion

ID: 9853989
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:58:53.068277+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:52.005205
License: Public Domain

Evans, Judge,
concurring specially.
Here the burden of proof was placed on the defendant in a case where he pleads coercion, an affirmative defense. It is quite true that the Supreme Court of Georgia has held that in affirmative defenses by a defendant in a criminal case, the burden is on defendant, except as to his plea of alibi. (Why there would be any difference between alibi and other affirmative defenses, I have not the slightest idea.)
The Supreme Court of Georgia in Chandle v. State, 230 Ga. 574 (3) (198 SE2d 289), where the affirmative defense was that of accident, held that the burden was on the defendant. Still later the Supreme Court of Georgia in the case of State v. McNeill, 234 Ga. 696 (217 SE2d 281), where the affirmative defense was that of entrapment, *738held that the burden was on the defendant. Certain cases by the Court of Appeals were overruled by the two decisions cited above.
But the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States take precedence over the decision of our Supreme Court of Georgia (see Feldschneider v. State, 127 Ga. App. 745, 748 (195 SE2d 184)) and all courts in Georgia are bound to follow the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, which court held in the recent case of Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684 (95 SC 1881, 44 LE2d 508) (1975), that it is error to place the burden on the defendant as to any defense that he may plead in a criminal case. While the Mullaney case, supra, is the most recent case that comes to our notice, it cites other cases by the United States Supreme Court to the same effect.
Being bound by the United States Supreme Court decisions, I therefore vote to reverse, and hold there was no burden on the defendant in this case to prove his affirmative defense of coercion.