Court Opinion

ID: 9587620
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:24:19.724703+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:06.858717
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur in Division 1 (a) but for different reasons.
First, when the State moved the admission of the bag with the writing on it and its contents, defendant questioned the witness about it and then stated that he had no objection to its admission into evidence. A short time later the State rested its case and defendant moved for a directed verdict, which the court granted as to count 1. It was only then that defendant raised an objection to the writing on the outside of the bag, on the ground that it was hearsay. Since it was not hearsay, the objection was too late as a matter of law. Viener v. State, 150 Ga. App. 175, 177 (2) (257 SE2d 22) (1979). Consequently, defendant can hardly complain that when he objected and the court *183gratuitously offered to instruct the jury to limit its consideration of the writing to the question of chain of custody (i. e., as a unique mark to distinguish the bag from all others), the court erred by not excising the writing altogether.
Decided May 6, 1992.
John 0. Ellis, Jr., for appellant.
Robert E. Wilson, District Attorney, Gregory A. Adams, J. George Guise, Assistant District Attorneys, for appellee.
Defendant then added to his objection the ground that it bolstered the testimony of the witness. The testimony, some of it elicited by defendant, established the source, purpose, and meaning of the writing. There was no contrary evidence as to this; defendant merely made an issue of the chain of custody based on this evidence. Thus, the fact that defendant’s name as “owner” was not blacked out was not harmful because it was clearly identified as being a marking merely made by the officer as his own designation. The fact that he made this designation was not contested, so its observation by the jury in the jury room in addition to the jury’s hearing of it in the courtroom could not have constituted prejudice. See Brown v. State, 195 Ga. App. 389, 390 (393 SE2d 514) (1990). It merely showed that what was said to have been written on the bag was in fact written on the bag.
I concur in the remainder of the opinion.