Court Opinion

ID: 9566328
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:37:10.27474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:35:45.353093
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Presiding Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in Divisions 1 and 2 but I respectfully dissent with respect to Division 3, which involves the rejection of two requested *816charges. As to Division 4, I cannot concur because a new trial is not required and thus the three remaining enumerations must be addressed.
1. Request No. 14 is a nearly verbatim recitation of the charge endorsed in Davis v. State, 74 Ga. 869, 880 (1885).1 It is premised on the given fact that all of the evidence linking defendant with the crime is circumstantial. It starts out, “[w]here the guilt of the defendant depends upon circumstantial evidence alone ...” and the rest follows, focusing only on the scenario of a “chain of circumstances.” Davis was such a case. There was no direct evidence whatsoever that Davis had committed the homicide or that it was in fact murder. The court posed “[t]he great question” thusly: do the links in this chain of circumstances so twine around and bind the accused as to make the knot, tied by all combined, hold him as it can hold no other person . . . ?” Id. at 877. It answered as follows: “If, then, suicide and accident can, neither of them, consist with these circumstances, and some one is a murderer, . . . , the same circumstances can consist with no other, as that murderer, than this unhappy [defendant].” Id. at 879.
The instant conviction did not depend on circumstantial evidence alone. Both victims testified that defendant performed the indicted acts on them. The charge was not adjusted to the evidence. It would have been wrong to imply to the jury that all of the evidence in this case was only circumstantial and thereby to relegate the direct evidence to the lower status accorded to circumstantial evidence, which requires a higher quantum and quality to support a conviction. See Davis, supra at 880.
Robinson v. State, 261 Ga. 698 (410 SE2d 116) (1991), involved both direct and circumstantial evidence. The Court held that “where the state’s case depends, in whole or in part, on circumstantial evidence, a charge on the law of circumstantial evidence must be given on request.” The Court did not rule that the request made by defendant in this case was required. Nor is the particular charge requested by Robinson set out in the opinion. Robinson does not mandate the charge requested by McGuire; it mandates “a” charge, and it obviously means a proper charge, given the body of evidence in the case.
Here the court did instruct the jury on the definitions of, and the difference between, direct and circumstantial evidence, and on the two theories principle.
The opinion in Russ v. State, 204 Ga. App. 689 (1) (420 SE2d 373) (1992), relied upon by appellant, does not contain the charge requested and indicates that the court gave no charge whatsoever on *817the law of circumstantial evidence. It is not authority for the contention that the charge requested by McGuire was demanded.
2. Defendant’s authority for Request No. 15 is Riley v. State, 1 Ga. App. 651, 655 (1) (57 SE 1031) (1907), but the requested charge constitutes merely that court’s judicial opinion upon the worth of circumstantial evidence; it does not constitute the instruction which that court held must be given in “wholly” circumstantial cases. That case, unlike this one, depended “entirely” on circumstantial evidence.
Defendant’s reference below to O’Quinn v. State, 153 Ga. App. 467, 471 (265 SE2d 824) (1980), is of no aid to him because it did not involve a jury charge. Defendant’s final authority, Williamson v. State, 191 Ga. App. 388 (381 SE2d 766) (1989), which like O’Quinn concerned a conviction based exclusively on circumstantial evidence, also did not involve a jury charge. Rather, the issue was whether the evidence was sufficient to support the verdict.
The refusal of the trial court to instruct the jury as defendant requested did not deprive him of a fair trial.

 It is not, as such, in the Suggested Pattern Jury Instructions, Vol. II, Criminal, 2d ed. See pp. 11-12.