Court Opinion

ID: 9571458
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:31:54.814596+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:27.328664
License: Public Domain

Sears-Collins, Justice,
dissenting.
I am not at all content with Division 4 of the majority opinion. In this case, the trial court gave the jury an improper sequential charge in its main instructions. After some deliberation, the jury requested further instructions concerning voluntary manslaughter and the possible verdict alternatives. The trial court then recharged the jury, again in an improper sequential fashion, on murder, felony murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter.
To affirm Stewart’s conviction, the majority affirmatively concludes that the jury’s questions about voluntary manslaughter show that the verdict of felony murder was “the product of adequate consideration of charges for both forms of homicide rather than of any prejudicial emphasis communicated by a sequential charge.” (Emphasis supplied.) Majority p. 897. Such an affirmative conclusion simply is not supported by the record before this Court.
Although the jury’s request for further instructions concerning voluntary manslaughter indicates that it gave that verdict some consideration, the jury’s request for further instructions concerning verdict alternatives indicates the jury was confused about the verdicts it should consider. It is thus possible that, after the jury returned to the jury room following the court’s sequential recharge, which violated the rule in Edge v. State, 261 Ga. 865 (414 SE2d 463) (1992) the jury decided that the sequential charge and recharge relieved it of the necessity of giving voluntary manslaughter any further consideration. The record thus shows that the possibility that the jury did not give voluntary manslaughter adequate consideration is at least equally as likely as the possibility that it did. For this reason, and because the jury reached its verdict in the sanctity of the jury room, it is untenable for the majority to affirmatively conclude that the jury’s verdict was the result of adequate and proper consideration of murder and. voluntary manslaughter. In truth, the majority’s conclusion amounts to nothing more than speculation about the jury’s deliberative process.
*898Decided February 25, 1993
Reconsideration denied March 18, 1993.
Michael Mears, Mary Erickson for appellant.
Robert E. Wilson, District Attorney, Thomas S. Clegg, Barbara B. Conroy, Assistant District Attorneys, Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, C. A. Benjamin Woolf, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Moreover, if anything, the jury’s questions about voluntary manslaughter demonstrate the need to reverse this appeal. Those questions indicate the jury had found some evidence of voluntary manslaughter. Thus, a proper charge on murder and voluntary manslaughter was critical to insure the jury’s full consideration of a voluntary manslaughter verdict.
Because it is possible the jury did ultimately rely on the sequential charge and recharge and thus did not adequately and properly consider voluntary manslaughter, and because we should not affirm a conviction of murder based on the mere speculation that the jury itself cured a critical defect in the trial court’s charge, I dissent. This Court ought to forthrightly apply the rule we established in Edge, supra, when the circumstances so require, as in the present case.
I am authorized to state that Justice Benham and Judge Eugene Gadsden join in this dissent.