Court Opinion

ID: 9585719
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:03:13.29224+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:57.579213
License: Public Domain

Banke, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
I agree with all that is said in Divisions 2, 3, and 4 of the majority opinion. I also agree with the holding in Division 1 that the appellant was not entitled to examine the materials which had been reviewed by one of the state’s expert witnesses prior to his taking the stand. However, for what it is worth, I disagree with the majority’s evident conclusion that Caviness v. State, 180 Ga. App. 792 (3) (350 SE2d 813) (1986), would have mandated a different result.
The majority reads Caviness as having held that a criminal defendant has the right to review “any and all . . . materials which a witness for the State may have reviewed at some indefinite point in time prior to his actually being called to testify. . . .” There is no such language in that decision. In fact, Caviness merely held that a defendant was entitled to see notes made by a police witness regarding the content of his (the defendant’s) in-custody statement, where the witness had reviewed those notes “immediately prior to trial” to refresh her recollection. Id. at 793. (Emphasis supplied.) Normally, of course, notes used by a witness to refresh his recollection immediately prior to trial would either be in the courtroom itself or close enough to it to be readily available. I can find no holding nor any implication *592in Caviness that a defendant is entitled to discover “any and all. . . materials which a witness for the State may have reviewed at some indefinite point in time prior to his actually being called to testify.”
Nevertheless, regardless of how broadly or restrictively Division 3 of Caviness is construed, I agree that it cannot be reconciled with Division 9 of the Supreme Court’s decision in Catchings v. State, 256 Ga. 241 (347 SE2d 572) (1986), holding that the right to review notes utilized by a prosecution witness to refresh his recollection extends only to notes used for that purpose “during the trial.” Consequently, I agree that, to the extent of this inconsistency, Caviness must be overruled.