Court Opinion

ID: 9611171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:53:00.816397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:10.725103
License: Public Domain

FLETCHER, Presiding Justice,
concurring specially.
I concur in the judgment of the majority opinion; I write separately because I do not believe that the wide latitude allowed in closing argument encompasses irrelevant and prejudicial comparisons to infamous defendants.
This Court first allowed a prosecutor to refer to notorious crimes in closing arguments in Forehand v. State.2 The four judges who joined that majority, however, gave no reason for the decision and simply stated “[w]e find no error,” and the sole case cited for support did not involve a comparison to an infamous crime.3 This Court has been loathe to reverse a conviction based on the state’s comparison of the defendant to well-known criminals. This fact, however, is scant reason to continue a practice that injects wholly irrelevant and highly prejudicial matter into a trial that should be focused on the individual crime and defendant. As this Court observed over 100 years ago,
[t]he rule of stare decisis is a wholesome one, but should not be used to sanctify and perpetuate error. . . . We deprecate and distrust rash innovation as much as the most conservative magistrates ought, but it has never been the doctrine of any court of last resort that the law is to be a refuge and safe asylum for all the errors that creep into it. . . . Courts, like individuals, but with more caution and deliberation, must sometimes reconsider what has been already carefully considered, and rectify their own mistakes. If this is to be done in any case, it would seem to be a case like the present. . . .4
Even under the cases cited by the majority, the references in this case were improper. The mention of notorious murderers is permissible only if there is an evidentiary basis for the illustration.5 An obvious corollary to this rule is that the illustration must factually support the point the state is attempting to make. The district attorney justifies his comparison of the defendant to Charles Manson, David Berkowitz and Jeffrey Dahmer by noting the alleged similarities *129between these men and the defendant, including the reliance on insanity as a defense. Despite the public perception that the crimes of Manson, Berkowitz, and Dahmer were so heinous that each must be crazy, none of these defendants pled not guilty by reason of insanity as Hudson did. Manson did not use an insanity defense at his trial and Berkowitz pled guilty.6 Dahmer did seek to prove his insanity, but only after pleading guilty to the crimes charged.7 Because the reference to these murderers was irrelevant to the issue of the defendant’s guilt and lacked any logical connection to Hudson or the crime charged, I conclude that the trial court also abused its discretion in overruling the objection to the prosecutor’s argument.
Decided November 13, 2000.
Culp & Smith, John C. Culp, for appellant.
Paul L. Howard, Jr., District Attorney, Bettieanne C. Hart, Anna E. Green, Assistant District Attorneys, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, W. Swain Wood, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Benham and Justice Hunstein join in this special concurrence.

 235 Ga. 295 (219 SE2d 378) (1975).

 Miller v. State, 226 Ga. 730, 731 (5) (177 SE2d 253) (1970).

 City of Atlanta v. First Presbyterian Church, 86 Ga. 730, 732-733 (13 SE 252) (1891).

 Carr v. State, 267 Ga. 547, 555 (7) (a) (480 SE2d 583) (1997).

 Ira Mickenberg, A Pleasant Surprise: The Guilty But Mentally III Verdict Has Both Succeeded in its Own Right and Successfully Preserved the Traditional Role of the Insanity Defense, 55 U. Cinn. L. Rev. 943, 970 (1987); Lee Lescaze, Berkowitz Pleads Guilty in ‘Son of Sam’ Murders, The Washington Post, May 9, 1978, at Al.

 Dahmer Changes Plea to Guilty but Insane, The New York Times, Jan. 14, 1992, at A-19.