Court Opinion

ID: 9585722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:03:13.581035+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:57.586728
License: Public Domain

Weltner, Justice,
concurring specially.
I disagree with the majority’s interpretation of our opinion in Felker v. State, 252 Ga. 351 (314 SE2d 621) (1984), but concur in the judgment of reversal. I write from a concern that, without a correct synthesis of this case with Felker, we might lead other trial courts into error.
1. First, we must acknowledge that there is no difference in the essential factual elements of Felker and the case now before us. In each case, the defendant had been tried for a series of offenses arising out of a single incident, and was convicted on one charge. In each case, the defendant was acquitted of a forcible sexual assault (in Felker, of rape; in this case, of sexual battery). In each case, the state presented, as evidence of “similar crimes,” the testimony of the victim in the earlier prosecutions. In each case, the victim testified that the defendant had committed acts for which each defendant had been acquitted.
2. I respectfully disagree with the majority’s analysis of Felker, and most especially with the statement at p. 2: “Given the bizarrely similar nature of the previous sexual act to the one involved in the crime on trial, the entire incident was admissible to prove identity by establishing modus operandi, whether or not it was consensual.”
*872Such a rule — depending upon mere similarity, and heedless of prior acquittal — would eliminate the very doctrine of collateral estoppel that the majority purports to uphold. It would offer no guidance to trial courts,1 and would authorize the admission of evidence (in a subsequent prosecution of a similar crime) of a long string of prior prosecutions, even though a defendant had been acquitted of all charges.2
3. Properly understood, Felker stands for the proposition that, in multiple prosecutions arising out of one incident, the relevance of the incident itself (to a subsequent prosecution for a similar crime) is not destroyed by a defendant’s acquittal on one of the criminal charges resulting from that incident. Thus, in Felker, the victim certainly might testify concerning the forcible sodomy (for which Felker was convicted), as well as other aspects of the incident. However, she would be prohibited from testifying (in a subsequent prosecution of a discrete offense) as to the essential forcible element of the rape charge, on which Felker was acquitted.3
4. In Felker, error was assigned to the admission into evidence of the “extrinsic offense.”
In his eleventh enumeration of error, appellant contends that the extrinsic offense was inadmissible because, although he was convicted in 1976 of aggravated sodomy, he was acquitted on the rape count.
252 Ga. at 361.
That contention properly was rejected, in view of the clear similarity of the prior incident to that on trial, and of the fact that Felker was convicted on one of the constituent counts of the “extrinsic offense.” Our specific holding as to this enumeration was: “His contention that the 1976 crime was inadmissible, because of the acquittal, is meritless.” Id., p. 362.
Thus, while the significant factual elements of Felker and of this *873case are indistinguishable, the enumerations of error on appeal are substantially different. The holding in Felker, based upon the specific enumeration of error urged on appeal, was correct. The holding of the majority in this case, based on the doctrine of collateral estoppel, also is correct. The majority’s analysis of Felker is, I suggest, inappropriate.
Decided February 15, 1989.
Raphael E. Salcedo, pro se.
Robert E. Wilson, District Attorney, Nelly Withers, Eleni Ann Pryles, Assistant District Attorneys, for appellee.
I am authorized to state that Justice Smith and Justice Bell join in this special concurrence.

 I disagree also with the majority’s statement concerning Felker: “The issues relevant to the crime on trial simply were not resolved in the defendant’s favor in the previous trial.” (Salcedo, at 871.) In Felker’s first trial for rape, the essential element of force was resolved in his favor by virtue of his acquittal on the rape charge.

 Indeed, the Georgia prosecution against Salcedo is fully as “bizarrely similar” to his Florida prosecution as were the two prosecutions in Felker. In both of Salcedo’s cases, the victims were awakened in the early morning hours to find that Salcedo had broken into their rooms. In each case, the victims testified that Salcedo assaulted them sexually. In each case, Salcedo admitted his presence, but claimed that the sexual encounter was consensual. In the prior prosecutions of both Felker and Salcedo, the jury returned verdicts of not guilty in the forcible sexual assault counts, and returned convictions on other counts arising out of the earlier incidents.

 This is, of course, consistent with the holding of the majority in the present case, in which I concur.