Court Opinion

ID: 9608826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:18:12.723453+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:51.243797
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I fully concur in the ruling that the court erred in prematurely allowing the witness’ invocation of the privilege against self-incrimination. I also agree that the error was harmless, but I am persuaded by the facts that the transaction for which defendant was on trial was tape-recorded, the playing of the tape was admitted (without objection) and even replayed in part for the jury, and both parties to the dialogue testified so that the jury could compare their voices to those on the tape.
The taped informant’s conversations with Brenda Ross, allegedly five months after the subject transaction, do not relate to this transaction but rather with one involving a person whose first or last name was Robert. The informant revealed to Brenda that he had lied at Robert’s trial in that the drugs he testified he bought from Robert had in reality come from the police and not from Robert. The informant told Brenda that the reason he lied was to save himself from a false prosecution for car theft, which was threatened by the chief of police, the sheriff, and the district attorney, who wanted to imprison Robert. He said he was bothered by the lie and expected to tell the truth about it in court in February to get it off his chest. (The court proceeding was not identified; the trial in this case did not occur until June.)
There was no mention of the instant transaction or of defendant’s name at all. Although the informant told Brenda that “Some of *287them drugs they (the police) sent to the lab was their own drugs. I tell you the God’s truth,” no reasonable inference could be drawn that he was referring to the cocaine in this case, so as to make the evidence relevant.
Decided June 11, 1991
Reconsideration denied July 2, 1991
Erion & Exum, Charles T. Erion, for appellant.
James L. Wiggins, District Attorney, H. Frederick Mullís, Jr., Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
In the conversation with Brenda, the informant admitted that he used drugs himself, and he apparently was smoking marijuana during the first conversation. He denied at trial that he ever used drugs or smoked marijuana or stole a car, but these were not material discrepancies relevant to the informant’s testimony regarding the transaction in issue. See OCGA § 24-9-83; Reynolds v. State, 257 Ga. 725, 727 (5) (363 SE2d 249) (1988).
Since the excluded evidence would not have aided in establishing defendant’s innocence or created a reasonable doubt of his guilt, its absence from the jury’s consideration was harmless.