Court Opinion

ID: 9774058
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:07:44.531194+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:01.437794
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent and make the following observations: I reserve judgment on the issue whether the statutory aggravating circumstance taken from § 565.012.2(1), “whether the defendant has a substantial history of serious assaultive convictions”, is unconstitutionally vague. Appellant raised and argued the point in his brief, but the principal opinion does not discuss the issue, and the facts here do warrant an application of pertinent constitutional tests. However, it should be pointed out that the Georgia Supreme Court, whose lead this court repeatedly follows in death penalty cases, held the “serious assaultive convictions” aggravating circumstance unconstitutionally vague in Arnold v. State, 236 Ga. 534, 224 S.E.2d 386 (1976).
*726I am unable to agree with permitting the prosecution to get by with not serving defense counsel until the morning of the trial with notice of aggravating circumstances. For the state to seek to take a man’s life is a serious matter and we should insist that the state proceed in a fair and orderly fashion. The state knows that it must make known in advance of trial the evidence in aggravation proposed to be introduced. This necessarily means timely notice, and notice on the morning of trial is not timely. The matter of aggravating circumstances is no trifling matter. Without aggravating circumstances, no death penalty is possible. The defendant is entitled to know what is claimed in this regard. Defense counsel needs time to appraise the state’s claim and to prepare to meet it. This cannot be done when notice is not given until the morning of the trial. A remark by the prosecutor a month earlier that he intends to seek the death penalty is no substitute. The prosecutor has to do more than that. He is not bound by such a remark, and he knows that such a remark alone is not sufficient. The defense should not have to speculate on whether or not the prosecutor actually intends to seek the death penalty or whether he is merely using this threat as a negotiating chip for plea bargaining. In this case, for example, just a month before trial the prosecution was ready to accept a guilty plea to a second degree murder charge. Then for some reason the defendant refused to go through with the deal. For all the defense knew, the prosecutor’s remark was no more than a threat.
I would make it plain that we will not permit this sort of handling of a death penalty case. It is not imposing any undue burden on the state to require the prosecutor to give a timely notice with respect to aggravating circumstances in cases where the death penalty is sought. Prosecutors can easily comply with this requirement, and I think we should insist on it. We are setting a bad precedent when we give our tacit approval to what occurred here. The principal opinion says that, after all, defendant himself knew about his prior convictions, so that could not have come as any surprise, but in my opinion that will not do as a method of handling the giving of notice of aggravating circumstances. There are fifteen statutory aggravating circumstances and we should not have to decide the matter of notice on the basis of whether the defendant ought to have been aware of what the prosecutor was going to do about specific aggravating circumstances. That leads only to unnecessary factual disputes. All this would be eliminated if the state were required to act reasonably and give timely notice of what it proposed to do. We should not accept any less where the outcome is to take the defendant’s life.