Court Opinion

ID: 9592340
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:13:18.173533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:10.008166
License: Public Domain

Benham, Chief Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Although I agree with the majority opinion’s statement that the Criminal Procedure Discovery Act does not apply to presentence hearings, I believe the majority opinion’s interpretation of the Act as the exclusive means of discovery in criminal cases has rendered the Act unconstitutional. Accordingly, I must dissent to all but Division 5 of the majority opinion.
“It is a fundamental principle of statutory construction that if possible a statute will be construed in such a way as to find it constitutional.” Garner v. Harrison, 260 Ga. 866 (2) (400 SE2d 925) (1991). The majority opinion, however, has interpreted this Act in a way that makes it unconstitutional. The basic error in the majority opinion’s approach is treating the statute as an exclusive discovery provision. Division 4 of the majority opinion holds that the passage of the Act limits defendants who do not elect to invoke its provisions to “only that discovery specifically afforded by the Georgia and United States Constitutions, statutory exceptions to the Act, and non-conflicting rules of court.” That limitation makes plain that the majority opinion considers the legislature’s enactment of a “comprehensive” discovery statute to be an “exclusive” discovery statute, but those words are not synonymous. “Exclusive” means “[s] ingle or independent; sole . . . [c]omplete; undivided,” (American Heritage Dictionary, 2d College *367Ed.), and the majority opinion treats the discovery statute as the single source of discovery rights, as a complete delineation of discovery rights. “Comprehensive,” however, means “[i]ncluding . . . much; large in scope or content,” (id.), which aptly describes the legislature’s effort to craft a system of regulating discovery which would encompass much of the discovery available in criminal cases. But the Act does not purport anywhere in its own terms to be nearly so exclusive as the majority opinion would have it. I agree that defendants are entitled to all discovery which the courts have found to have constitutional footing, but the limitation to “statutory exceptions to the Act, and non-conflicting rules of court” is unwarranted by the Act’s language. The Act repealed all statutes in conflict with it, but it does not necessarily follow that any statute that might require the provision of information to criminal defendants is in conflict with the Act. The majority’s reading of the Act to have that effect violates the principle of statutory construction stated above and renders it unconstitutional.
The majority opinion contends that the Act, as construed therein, does not deny due process because it is reciprocal. I agree that the Act would not deny due process if, in the search for reciprocity, this Court had not thrown out all discovery not specifically made reciprocal. Wardius v. Oregon, 412 U. S. 470 (93 SC 2208, 37 LE2d 82) (1973), relied upon by the majority opinion, does not hold that discovery provisions must be reciprocal, but that statutes which require a defendant to disclose information without a reciprocal revelation by the State violate due process. The majority opinion has taken that holding, intended to foster a balance of forces, and expanded it to a holding of constitutional stature that undermines our legislature’s attempt to balance those forces. That expansion is neither necessary nor true to the spirit of the case on which it relies.
The majority opinion also goes too far in its holding that the statute, as construed in the majority opinion, does not violate a defendant’s right to confrontation. Without the benefit of citation, the majority opinion concludes that “the confrontation clause guarantees only the right to confront and cross-examine those individuals called to testify against a defendant at trial . . . .” (Emphasis in original.) Ignored in that analysis is the notion that the right to cross-examination, as guaranteed by OCGA § 24-9-64, may not be meaningful if not accompanied by some right to examine materials to be relied upon by a witness. See Eason v. State, 260 Ga. 445 (396 SE2d 492) (1990).
Related to the majority opinion’s incorrect diminution of the right of confrontation is the overruling of Eason, supra, in Division 4 (b) of the majority opinion. Contrary to the majority opinion’s statement, the right to subpoena scientific work product was not derived *368exclusively from a statute repealed by the Act. In Eason, this Court held that the right to subpoena scientific work product derived from the right to effective cross-examination, a right which this Court found to be based on Georgia statutes, not on federal law. Since the majority bases its limitation on discovery on the terms of the Act, and the Act did not repeal OCGA § 24-9-64, the statute on which the holding in Eason is based, there is no legal basis for overruling Eason or for holding that the passage of the Act impacted on the right of a criminal defendant to subpoena scientific work product on which the State’s witnesses will rely. This limitation demonstrates the majority opinion’s error in finding the Act’s regulation of discovery to be exclusive rather than, as the legislature provided, comprehensive.
The majority opinion’s rejection of the argument that the Act, as construed in the majority opinion, deprives criminal defendants of their right to effective counsel is contrary to the principle that one should not be forced to give up one right to secure another. See Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377 (88 SC 967, 19 LE2d 1247) (1968). By treating the Act as exclusive rather than comprehensive, the majority opinion forces defendants who feel the need to obtain discovery to which they are entitled by constitution or statute to obtain it at the expense of the right to have counsel exercise unfettered judgment in how to present the defense and when to reveal the strategy of the defense. As the Supreme Court held in United States v. Jackson, 390 U. S. 570, 582 (88 SC 1209, 20 LE2d 138) (1968), “[t]he question is not whether the chilling effect is ‘incidental’ rather than intentional; the question is whether that effect is unnecessary and therefore excessive.” That is exactly the error of the majority opinion: its chilling effect on the exercise of such rights as the right to counsel is unnecessary and, therefore, excessive.
Properly interpreted, this statute could survive constitutional scrutiny. By limiting the exclusionary effect of the Act to the statutes it repealed, and recognizing, as has Presiding Justice Fletcher in his dissent, that a broad range of discovery remains available to criminal defendants, this Court could uphold the statute and permit it to do the work the legislature intended in attempting to balance the forces at work in criminal litigation. Because the majority opinion has instead treated the reciprocal provisions of the Act as the exclusive means of discovery in criminal cases, thereby depriving defendants of valuable constitutional and statutory rights, I must respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Justice Fletcher and Justice Sears join in this opinion.