Court Opinion

ID: 9587535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:23:21.214861+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:35.222864
License: Public Domain

Townsend, J.,
dissenting. The defendant, a State Trooper, was indicted under Chapter 26-15 of the Code of Georgia. The subject of the Chapter is “False Imprisonment”. False imprisonment is defined under § 26-1501 as “a violation of the personal liberty of a person and consists in confinement or detention of such person without sufficient legal authority.”
Code § 26-1502 entitled “Punishment” provides as follows: “Any person who shall arrest, confine* or detain a person without *836process, warrant, or legal authority to justify it, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” The evidence, including the defendant’s statement is undisputed that the prosecuting witness was arrested by the defendant and charged by him with the offense of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicants; that the prosecuting witness was conveyed by the defendant directly to the county jail at Ringgold and locked up by the negro janitor at the jail under the supervision and direction of the defendant; that a ticket charging the prosecuting witness as aforesaid was left at the jail together with the driver’s license of the prosecuting witness by the defendant, who then left the jail with the prosecuting witness locked up in it.
Code § 27-207 provides as follows: “An arrest for a crime may be made by an officer, either under a warrant, or without a warrant if the offense is committed in his presence, or the offender is endeavoring to escape, or for other cause there is likely to be a failure of justice for want of an officer to issue a warrant.”
Code § 27-212 provides as follows: “In every case of an arrest without warrant, the person arresting shall, without delay, convey the offender before the most convenient officer authorized to receive an affidavit and issue at warrant. No such imprisonment shall be legal beyond a reasonable time allowed for this purpose.”
The case, by the majority opinion, is being reversed because of failure on the part of the court to charge good faith in making the arrest by the defendant as a defense against the crime of false imprisonmnt of which he was convicted. On the question of whether or not good faith in making such an arrest constitutes a defense to this crime see Holliday v. Coleman, 12 Ga. App. 779 (78 S. E. 482), and Goodwin v. Allen, 83 Ga. App. 615 (3) (64 S. E. 2d 212). However, assuming without admitting, that such good faith in making the arrest constitutes a defense to an unlawful arrest, the statement of the defendant, the testimony of his associate officer, and the testimony of two State’s witnesses is without conflict and demands the conclusion that this arresting officer, who made the arrest without a warrant, did not convey the alleged offender before the most convenient officer authorized to receive an affidavit and to issue a warrant. To comply with this law, arresting officers cannot legally at 3 o’clock on the after*837noon of a weekday, in a county-seat town take an alleged offender directly to a jail located within a stone’s throw of the county courthouse wherein the ordinary’s office is housed and cause such person without a warrant to be incarcerated. The prosecuting witness here was both confined and detained without process, warrant or legal authority to justify it. The evidence is bereft of any exigency showing a necessity or convenience for locking up the prosecutor before getting a warrant. From the evidence it is apparent that it would have been fully as convenient to have procured the warrant first. In fact the evidence here demands the conclusion that this defendant never intended to get a warrant. When he finished getting the prosecutor locked up he left the jail and the prosecutor to his fate. Surely we who are charged with the preservation of the sanctity of liberty must recognize with disapproval this desecration.
I am authorized to state that Nichols, J., concurs in this dissent.