Court Opinion

ID: 9616368
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:46:04.037249+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:57.628097
License: Public Domain

Benham, Judge,
concurring specially.
I agree fully with Chief Judge Carley’s special concurrence in this case, but I am compelled to write separately to point out what I perceive as a basic flaw in the majority’s treatment of this issue.
The majority holds that giving the jury the elements of the offense by reading from the statute is not sufficient. Bundren v. State, 247 Ga. App. 180 (2) (274 SE2d 455) (1981), on which the majority *565relies, does not support that position. The Supreme Court ruled in Bundren that it was error for the trial court to omit any reference to knowledge from the charge, but it did not hold the language of the statute to be insufficient to inform the jury that knowledge is an element of the offense. The majority’s holding to that effect in this case is, in essence, a holding that the language of the statute is not adequate to give a person of ordinary intelligence notice of the conduct prohibited. If that is so, the statute is void for vagueness. Izzo v. State, 257 Ga. 109 (1) (356 SE2d 204) (1987). I do not believe the statute is defective in that fashion.
Finally, the majority’s overruling of Carter v. State, 162 Ga. App. 44 (2) (290 SE2d 143) (1982), is unnecessary to the resolution of this case and is, therefore, dicta. This case was decided on the basis that the charge, as given, was adequate; that being so, it was unnecessary to consider Carter’s viability.