Court Opinion

ID: 9588940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:39:50.960029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:14:45.915874
License: Public Domain

Undercofler, Presiding Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from Division 2 and the judgment of reversal. In my opinion the victim’s statements were spontaneous declarations which were admissible under the res gestae rule. See Green, Georgia Law of Evidence (1957), §§ 289, 290.
The victim was 86 years of age. He received severe injuries to his head sometime after 8:00 p.m. At 8:00 a.m. the next morning he appeared at his adjoining neighbor’s apartment. He was clothed, had deep gashes on his head, appeared to be in desperate physical condition, and was "bloody all over.” He stated he was dying and asked the neighbor to call his son. He said not to call a doctor or police until his son arrived. About 20 - 30 minutes later when his son arrived he identified the defendant as having attacked him in his kitchen with a claw hammer about 9:00 p.m. the previous night.
The majority opinion places too much emphasis on the lapse of time between the attack and the utterances. In determining whether the utterances are spontaneous and admissible the totality of the circumstances of the event must be considered. As stated with approval in Mitchum v. State, 11 Ga. 615, 627 (1852), ". . . it is impossible to tie down to time the rule as to the declarations. We must judge from all the circumstances of the case. We need not go the length of saying that a *98declaration made a month after the fact, would itself be admissible. But if, as in the present case, there are connecting circumstances, it may even at that time form a part of the whole res gestae.” See VI Wigmore on Evidence, 3d Ed., p. 154, § 1750.