Court Opinion

ID: 9852598
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:33:27.612884+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:30.397330
License: Public Domain

DOYLE, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur fully in Division 2, but I respectfully dissent from Division 1, because the majority fails to properly apply the test articulated by the Supreme Court of Georgia in Garza v. State.
In an effort to ameliorate the problems resulting from courts’ previous broad construction of the concept of asportation,14 the Supreme Court of Georgia in Garza adopted a new four-part test intended to delineate between movement that is a mere positional change incident to another criminal act and movement sufficient to sustain a kidnapping conviction.15 As noted by the Supreme Court of Georgia,
[assessment of these factors will assist Georgia prosecutors and courts alike in determining whether the movement in question is in the nature of the evil the kidnapping statute *580was originally intended to address — i.e., movement serving to substantially isolate the victim from protection or rescue — or merely a “criminologically insignificant circumstance” attendant to some other crime.16
Applying Garza’s four factors to the facts in this case, it is clear, as the majority concedes, that the duration of the movement, the first factor, was short. With respect to the second factor, the majority also correctly concludes that “the movement occurred during the commission of a separate offense.”17 As to the third factor, however, the majority concludes that the movement of the victim to the back yard “was clearly designed to present a significant danger to the victim independent of the assault.” However, this incorrectly characterizes the nature of the movement here, which occurred not only during the commission of the underlying offense (as the majority concedes) but also solely in furtherance of that act.
The testimony describing the extent of the movement came from the victim:
Witness: [W]hen he jumped out of the bushes, he started pulling my arm and then ... he took me to this tree when he was — as he was pulling me, he told me that “why haven’t you talked to me” and that — he was like “I want you to be mine and I don’t give a — if you don’t want to.” And then he started pulling me again.
State: [A]s he pulled you, . . . did you want to go with him? Witness: No.
State: Where did he pull you?
Witness: To the back of my mobile home park.
State: To the back of the park or the back of your home?
Witness: I mean the house, yes. . . .
State: All right. What happened as he pulled you back to the back of your home?
Witness: Somehow he made me trip and then he like started to pull my pants down and as I was trying to pull them up, so he hurt my hand, so —
State: So, he did what?
Witness: He hurt my hand when — because I was pulling them up, he was pulling them. And then he got on top of me, he’s tried to, you know, penetrate. So, he couldn’t, so I sort *581of pushed him to the side and then I was trying to like get away and then he grabbed me and then he got on top of me. . . .
On recall, the victim again testified that Flores “pulled me [by the arm] ... to the back of my house” as she struggled “to get away from him” before he pulled her pants down.
This description of the attack demonstrates that the movement here was done in furtherance of and as a part of the underlying offense. Garza expressly sought to avoid criminalizing as a separate offense this type of short movement “designed to better carry out the [underlying] criminal activity,” because it would allow prosecution for “movements that many other jurisdictions would view as ‘incidental’ and thus not sufficient to sustain a kidnapping conviction.”18
Further, with respect to the fourth Garza factor, the movement itself presented little or no danger (and yielded no injury) independent of the danger posed by the aggravated assault. This is in contrast to a scenario where a victim was taken from one place to another remote location that in and of itself heightened the danger to the victim.19 Therefore, the movement at issue here was wholly incidental to the underlying crime. Such conduct does not rise to the level of kidnapping under the Garza test.
With respect to the majority’s reliance on Henderson v. State,20 I do not share the majority’s view that the precedent it and Garza provide together is “clear and decisive.” In Garza, the Supreme Court held that an armed captor’s forcible movement of his victim from room to room away from police during the course of a false imprisonment did not suffice to support the asportation element of a kidnapping offense.21 In so holding, the Court explained that the movements did not conceal the victim from police (who were aware of the victim’s presence in the residence), did not “thwart in any appreciable way the efforts of the police to free” the victim, and did not “enhance significantly the risk [the victim] already faced as a *582victim of false imprisonment” by an armed captor.22
In Henderson, the Supreme Court of Georgia addressed a scenario where the victims of an armed robbery were moved at gunpoint from one room to another within a two-room duplex and ordered to remove their clothes and get on the floor after the completion of the robbery inside the duplex. There, the Court held that this movement did support a kidnapping conviction because the movement was independent of the completed armed robbery, and the movement “created an additional danger to the victims by enhancing the control of the gunmen over them.”23
The only clear distinction between these cases is the point at which the forcible movement occurred. In Garza, the room-to-room movement occurred during a false imprisonment as police attempted to intervene, and no kidnapping resulted. In Henderson, the room-to-room movement occurred after an armed robbery was completed, and a kidnapping resulted. Thus, from this precedent it appears that the timing of the movement, and the role it played in the underlying offense, are vital to applying the Garza factors.
Here, the forced movement was not a separate act performed after or before a completed assault, but it was a part of the same criminal course of conduct that occurred leading up to and during the attack (even if not a necessary element as a matter of law). Notably, the Supreme Court failed to hold in Henderson that the act most analogous to the present scenario, i.e., the ordering of one robbery victim from outdoors into the duplex (and out of public view) where the victim was then robbed, was sufficient to establish kidnapping.
Such a kidnapping scenario is similar to the one here and to those cited disapprovingly in Garza, i.e., where a victim was forced from one room to another in the course of an attempted rape,24 where the victim was dragged ten feet from a bus stop into bushes in the course of a robbery,25 and where a victim was grabbed and forced into a store in the course of an armed robbery.26 As a technical matter, each of these scenarios could be characterized as isolating the victim from protection or rescue,27 as the majority asserts here, but the cases relied upon in Garza and its analogues in other jurisdictions *583correctly do not take such a broad approach when construing their penal codes.28
Here, the victim was not moved far and was not held longer than necessary to complete the underlying assault which necessarily involved some detention of the victim. Further, the movement to the back yard was undertaken as a part of and to facilitate the attack; the movement itself did not present “a significant danger to the victim independent of the danger posed by the separate offense,” as required by the fourth factor in Garza.29
In light of the particular facts of this case, I do not find the movement in this case sufficient to sustain a conviction for kidnapping under current precedent. The Georgia Code defines the offense as “abduct[ing] or stealing] away.”30 As explained in Garza, which overruled prior precedent to the contrary, this definition is not satisfied by brief movements that do not themselves pose a danger to *584the victim and that are committed during an underlying offense inherently involving some confinement.
Decided June 26, 2009
Mack & Harris, Robert L. Mack, Jr., for appellant.
Jewel C. Scott, District Attorney, Billy J. Dixon, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
I am authorized to state that Judge Phipps and Judge Adams join in this opinion.

 Previously, the slightest movement was sufficient. See, e.g., Griffin v. State, 282 Ga. 215, 219 (1) (647 SE2d 36) (2007). However,
[a]s other courts and commentators have noted, and as [the Supreme Court of Georgia] has witnessed, this expansive construction of asportation poses a potential danger that the definition of kidnapping will sweep within its scope conduct that is decidedly wrongful but that should be punished as some other crime. Thus, for example, the robber who forces his victim to move from one room to another in order to find a cashbox or open a safe technically may commit kidnapping as well as robbery. This reasoning raises the possibility of cumulative penalties or of higher sanctions for kidnapping, even though the “removal” of the victim to another place was part and parcel of the robbery and not an independent wrong.
Garza v. State, 284 Ga. 696, 699 (1) (670 SE2d 73) (2008).

 Adopted from Govt. of Virgin Islands v. Berry, 604 F2d 221, 227 (IV) (3rd Cir. 1979), the test was formulated in an effort to synthesize the various standards employed by jurisdictions embracing the modern approach with respect to asportation. As noted by the majority, the four factors are: (1) the duration of the detention or asportation; (2) whether the detention or asportation occurred during the commission of a separate offense; (3) whether the detention or asportation is inherent in the separate offense; and (4) whether the detention or asportation created a significant danger to the victim independent of that posed by the separate offense. See Garza, 284 Ga. at 702 (1).

 Garza, 284 Ga. at 702 (1).

 Id.

 Id. at 701 (1).

 Compare Berry, 604 F2d at 227 (IV) (establishing the four-factor test adopted by Garza and holding that a short involuntary night-time drive to a beach where victim was robbed did not satisfy kidnapping statute), statutorily superceded, with Martinez v. Govt. of Virgin Islands, 2008 U. S. Dist. LEXIS 107613, *11 (III) (C) (2008) (applying the same test and holding that an involuntary, ten-mile, high-speed drive under armed threat to an isolated dead end road where victim was raped was sufficient to support kidnapping conviction). See also Garza, 284 Ga. at 701 (1) (collecting cases from other jurisdictions holding slight movements in furtherance of an underlying crime to be insufficient to support a kidnapping conviction).

 285 Ga. 240, 244-245 (5) (675 SE2d 28) (2009).

 Garza, 284 Ga. at 704 (3).

 Id.

 Henderson, 285 Ga. at 245 (5).

 See Woodson v. State, 273 Ga. 557, 558 (544 SE2d 431) (2001).

 See Scott v. State, 288 Ga. App. 738, 739-740 (1) (b) (655 SE2d 326) (2007).

 See Phillips v. State, 259 Ga. App. 331, 331-332 (1) (577 SE2d 25) (2003).

 Similarly, merely forcing a standing victim of an armed robbery to the floor could be construed as “enhancing the control” of a gunman over the victim. Compare Henderson, 285 Ga. at 245 (5). I decline to interpret the rationale of Henderson so broadly.

 See, e.g., Berry, 604 F2d at 227 (IV). For example, the Supreme Court of Maryland has characterized the modern trend (followed by our Supreme Court in Garza and in a majority of other jurisdictions) as follows:
If the victim is not moved too far, is not held for longer than is necessary to complete the other crime, and is not subjected to any significant peril from the confinement or movement itself, if the confinement or movement can reasonably be viewed as undertaken solely to facilitate the commission of the other crime, and if commission of the other crime normally involves (even if it does not legally require) some detention or asportation of the victim, the court is likely to conclude that the confinement or movement was merely incidental to the other crime and thus reverse ⅛ separate kidnapping conviction.
State v. Stauffer, 352 Md. 97, 110 (721 A2d 207) (1998). Similarly, the Supreme Court of Connecticut has summarized the Garza test as follows:
[A] defendant may be convicted of both kidnapping and another substantive crime if, at any time prior to, during or after the commission of that other crime, the victim is moved or confined in a way that has independent criminal significance, that is, the victim was restrained to an extent exceeding that which was necessary to accomplish or complete the other crime.
State v. Salamon, 287 Conn. 509, 530, 547 (949 A2d 1092) (2008) (noting that the hallmark of the offense of kidnapping is an abduction).

 See Maynard v. Govt. of the Virgin Islands, 2008 U. S. Dist. LEXIS 15632, *10-11 (III) (A) (2008) (evidence that victim was dragged 50-100 feet was insufficient to show that movement was “further than . . . necessary for [the defendants] to commit the crime of robbery”). See also Ohio v. Price, 60 Ohio St. 2d 136, 143 (V) (398 NE2d 772) (1979) (“[t]he force by which appellant removed [the victim] from the car to behind a nearby bush to engage in sexual conduct, as required under the rape statute, is indistinguishable from the force by which appellant restrained [the victim] of her liberty, as required under the kidnapping statute”).

 OCGA § 16-5-40 (a). I note that House Bill 575 (effective date July 1, 2009) amended this Code section and addressed the asportation aspect of the kidnapping offense, but because that is a substantive change to the law, it has no retroactive effect here.
As a general rule, a reviewing court must apply the law as it exists at the time the court’s opinion is rendered rather than the law prevailing at the time of an arrest. [However, a statutory] amendment may he applied retroactively if the changes do not affect constitutional or substantive rights and if the legislature did not express a contrary intention.
State v. McCabe, 239 Ga. App. 297, 299 (519 SE2d 760) (1999).