Court Opinion

ID: 9564580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:03:34.460462+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:32.413645
License: Public Domain

Ruffin, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur fully with all that is said by the majority. I write separately merely to undergird the important right at stake — the constitutional right to confront one’s accusers.
Wisdom does not greet us at the door of legal issues. For accurate and adequate disposition of issues, we look first to precedent. Failure to adhere to precedent, without a rational basis, creates judicial uncertainty. And we can neither risk nor condone judicial uncertainty, which not only risks institutional uncertainty, but also uncertainty in the law itself. Accordingly, stare decisis should govern. Nothing has happened between our decision in Vogleson v. State11 and our decision today that warrants a departure from our earlier *876opinion. Indeed, the dissent’s rationale is no more compelling now than when we met it in Vogleson.
I remain steadfast in my belief that a defendant’s right to a sifting cross-examination of his accusers includes the ability “to establish the exact nature and extent of any bias on the part of a State’s witness, which includes the ability to delve into the details of the deal reached with the State.”12 And the dissent’s argument does nothing to dissuade me. Rather, it clearly solidifies my views.
The dissent hinges upon the assertion that the testifying co-defendant’s actual prison time is an unknown. Thus, the dissent reasons, the specific number of years in prison “saved” by that co-defendant is misleading. What the dissent fails to recognize, however, is that evidence regarding the actual number of years subtracted from a mandatory sentence in exchange for the testimony of a co-defendant is not offered to show how many years that witness will actually serve in prison. Rather, it provides an objective and accurate benchmark for jurors, who are then charged with determining whether the deal that the witness struck with the state was sufficiently lucrative to render that witness’s testimony less creditworthy. And, as in Vogleson, I do not believe that oblique references to “lengthy sentences” sufficiently inform jurors regarding possible bias. Indeed, what constitutes a lengthy sentence is inherently subjective and likely varies considerably depending upon the age and experience of each individual juror.
With ardor amiss, the dissent firmly focuses on so-called “juror deception.” In so doing, the dissent either fails or refuses to grasp the crux of the issue. Accordingly, I believe that the dissent’s rationale is fundamentally flawed. The two competing interests at issue both in Vogleson and here are: (1) the defendant’s right to thoroughly cross-examine an accomplice witness; and (2) the defendant’s right to a bifurcated trial in which his punishment is not addressed until his guilt is established. The sole reason for refusing to admit evidence of the possible punishment faced by the co-defendant is that it necessarily raises the issue of the defendant’s possible punishment.13 If, as the dissent contends, the actual sentence is a complete unknown, then why the prohibition against injecting the sentence faced by the defendant? Surely the Board of Pardons & Paroles is just as likely to reduce the sentence of the defendant as well as that of the co-defendant. Accordingly, if the dissent’s reasoning is accepted, there is no reason for excluding evidence of the sentence faced either by the defendant or the co-defendant. It follows that there is even less rea*877son to prohibit a defendant from cross-examining the testifying accomplice.
Contrary to the dissent’s position, however, the sentence is not an unknown quantity — it is a concrete number. Although that number may not translate into the exact number of years a defendant may actually serve, it nonetheless provides jurors an accurate benchmark. If this were not the case, there would be no need for a bifurcated trial, which “was created to withhold matters inadmissible on the issue of guilt or innocence from the jury until that issue has been determined.”14 Inherent in OCGA § 17-10-2, the statute establishing the bifurcated procedure, is the premise that the introduction of a defendant’s possible sentence is potentially prejudicial. Even if such sentence is not exact, it is not, as the dissent would have us believe, meaningless — either to the defendant or to the testifying co-defendant. And, if a defendant chooses to elicit such potentially prejudicial testimony from the co-defendant in the hopes of establishing bias, the defendant should retain the right to make such choice.
In the theater of the judiciary, where life, liberty, and property are at stake, no person should be allowed to pit his self-interest against that of another without the severest scrutiny. Here, the dissent would allow a testifying co-defendant to act in his self-interest by cooperating with the State, without allowing the defendant to fully scrutinize that interest. The treachery of this error lies in the tragedy of its truth, that is: self-interest versus self-interest. The dissent, with all of its celerity, continues to move in a different and distant direction. But our constitution protects one irrespective of crime or creed, piety or position, wit or wealth.
The dissent urges us to employ both reason and the law. However, I find the dissent’s position unreasonable and contrary to law. As that judicial cognoscenti, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said, “[t]he life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.”15 Another sage, Benjamin N. Cardozo, reminds us from the past,
[t]he law has “its epochs of ebb and flow.” One of the flood seasons is upon us. Men are insisting, as perhaps never before, that law shall be made true to its ideals of justice. Let us gather up the driftwood, and leave the waters pure.16
Our reasoning in Vogleson was sound, and our opinion there should remain safe. And, as for the law, Vogleson remains the law *878and should be followed consistent with stare decisis. The waters are pure, and we should leave them so. Hence, I concur fully with the majority.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Pope, Presiding Judge Smith and Judge Barnes join in this concurrence and special concurrence.

 250 Ga. App. 555 (552 SE2d 513) (2001).

 Id. at 563 (Ruffin, J., concurring specially).

 See Whitlock v. State, 239 Ga. App. 763, 765-766 (2) (521 SE2d 901) (1999).

 Eberheart v. State, 232 Ga. 247, 253 (5) (206 SE2d 12) (1974).

 Holmes, Selections from the Common Law, The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes (Random House 1943), 51.

 Cardozo, A Ministry of Justice, 35 Harv. L. Rev. 113, 126 (1921).