Court Opinion

ID: 9566125
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:34:15.150831+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:11.913087
License: Public Domain

Hunstein, Justice,
dissenting in part.
The jury in the sentencing phase of this case heard C. Andrew Fuller, a sitting superior court judge,7 testify that while serving as district attorney, he made the initial decision to seek the death penalty against Mobley and could state from personal knowledge the reasons behind that decision. Judge Fuller then itemized the factors he had *302considered in making the decision, which included such matters as:
Appellant’s lack of remorse and a personality of “pure unadulterated meanness”;
The financial cost of death cases to taxpayers;
Discussions with the victim’s family and their support of a death sentence as the appropriate penalty;
Consideration of whether “last minutes of [victims’] lives were more horrible to them than in other cases”;
His feeling that Mobley’s description of the murder to Birch-field was “unmerciful”;
The strength of the State’s evidence (a factor which made up “95 percent” of the decision), as to which Judge Fuller repeated in detail the most damaging evidence adduced by the State in both the guilt-innocence and sentencing phases of the trial and inferences he had drawn from that evidence.
Judge Fuller summed up his decision to seek the death penalty with the statement: “I’ve handled many cases with heinous facts of a killing, but I have never, never seen a defendant like Mr. Mobley.”
It strains credulity that the majority can conclude the admission of Judge Fuller’s testimony was neither “inflammatory [n]or highly prejudicial.” The matters Judge Fuller’s thorough and deliberately-introduced testimony presented for consideration by the jury clearly extended far beyond what is characterized by the majority as “eviden-tiary features of the case.” Judge Fuller’s testimony went directly to the ultimate issue before the jury — whether Mobley should receive mercy (i.e., life imprisonment) or a death sentence — and represented an emphatic, personalized vouching for the appropriateness of the death sentence in this case. The jury heard a superior court judge weigh the evidence, pronounce his satisfaction with the sufficiency of that evidence to support a death sentence and the propriety of such a sentence vis-a-vis other murders committed in the county, and conclude with his personal assessment of the defendant’s character. This evidence constituted a recital in testimonial form of the essence of the State’s closing argument, replete with the imprimatur of the judicial branch.
This Court made a mistake in Division 4 of Mobley v. State, 262 Ga. 808 (426 SE2d 150) (1993) when it authorized a defendant to introduce as “mitigating evidence” during the sentencing phase the fact that he had made a conditional offer to plead guilty. I join with the majority in disapproving that ill-considered holding, the grievous consequences of which are so painfully illustrated by the case before us *303now. I am constrained to dissent, however, because rather than accept responsibility for the mistake in Mobley and grant this appellant a new sentencing trial free of the inflammatory evidence, ethical conflicts, and patent abuses which motivate this Court to repudiate Mobley now, the majority commits yet another mistake by affirming a death sentence rendered fundamentally unfair by the admission of Judge Fuller’s testimony, evidence this Court expressly authorized and approved.
The defense did not deliberately manufacture an error by introducing Mobley’s offer to plead guilty into evidence. Mobley did nothing more than what this Court said it was proper for him to do. True, following this Court’s holding led to a fundamentally unfair trial: but if this Court could not foresee the consequences, how can we reasonably expect a defendant facing a death sentence to possess greater wisdom and exercise better judgment? True, as well, that this Court left it to Mobley to “elect” to introduce this evidence: but in his desperate position, with virtually no mitigating factors to excuse his acts, how much “choice” did Mobley really have?
This Court has the responsibility to review death cases and invalidate those imposed for passion, prejudice, or other arbitrary factors. OCGA § 17-10-35 (c) (1). Because “every decision to impose the death penalty implicates the procedural and substantive protections of the Eighth Amendment, . . . our review must, at a minimum, be sufficient to satisfy those protections.” Conner v. State, 251 Ga. 113, 117 (303 SE2d 266) (1983). By a course of events initiated by this Court, the jury in the penalty phase of this case was improperly exposed to all the factors — financial, political, legal, psychological — a district attorney considers in deciding to seek the death penalty. These factors have nothing whatsoever to do with the issues a jury should consider in determining whether or not a defendant deserves to die for his crime and could only adversely influence a jury in its consideration whether to recommend mercy. The admission of Judge Fuller’s testimony was so egregious that it constituted reversible error under OCGA § 17-10-35 (c) (1) and rendered Mobley’s sentencing trial fundamentally unfair.
This Court made a mistake in Mobley: the majority makes another by affirming a death sentence insupportable under the Eighth Amendment and OCGA § 17-10-35 (c) (1). Because I would reverse the death sentence and remand for retrial on the penalty phase, I dissent.8
*304Decided March 17, 1995.
Michael K. McIntyre, Charles E. Taylor, Summer & Summer, Daniel A. Summer, for appellant.
Lydia J. Sartain, District Attorney, Leonard C. Parks, Jr., Assistant District Attorney, Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, Susan V. Boleyn, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Michael D. Groves, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Michael Mears, amicus curiae.

 Judge Fuller testified that he was appointed to his position on the bench of the Northeastern Judicial Circuit by the Governor in July 1993 after having “serve[d] the citizens of Hall and Dawson County as their district attorney” from January 1987 upon his election to that office. Judge Fuller testified that he was one of three judges in the circuit and that he served with the judge presiding over Mobley’s trial.

 I concur fully in Divisions 1, 3 through 17, and 19 through 22. To the extent Division 2 can be read as requiring scientific evidence adduced in mitigation at the sentencing phase to meet the standard of Harper v. State, 249 Ga. 519 (1) (292 SE2d 389) (1982), I concur in the judgment only in that division.