Court Opinion

ID: 9539528
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:05:33.786267+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:55.552406
License: Public Domain

Weltner, Justice,
concurring specially.
I concur in the judgment, but would affirm by overruling Dingier v. State, 233 Ga. 462 (211 SE2d 752) (1975). There, our court adopted standards which had been proposed by the American Bar Association relative to severance, thus departing from a long-tenured practice of leaving the question of severance to the sound discretion of the trial judge, except as otherwise provided by statute. More recently, see Head v. State, 253 Ga. 429 (322 SE2d 228) (1984).
I make this suggestion because I am unable fully to comprehend the import of our adopted “Standards on Joinder Offenses,” which are set out in Dingier v. State, supra. Apparently, joinder is permissible if the offenses “are of the same or similar character, even if not part of a single scheme or plan; or (b) are based on the same conduct or on a series of acts connected together or constituting parts of a single scheme or plan.” Joinder is not permissible if “two or more offenses have been joined for trial solely on the ground that they are of the same or similar character. ...”
The difficulty in applying this seeming contradiction to real cases is evident, I suggest respectfully, in the majority opinion, which concludes that Cooper had engaged in a series of discrete offenses, embodying differing elements and taking place over a period of 16 days — all of which, nonetheless, constituted “parts of a single scheme or plan.”