Court Opinion

ID: 9598563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:09:55.268108+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:49.605900
License: Public Domain

*879Beasley, Chief Judge,
concurring specially.
1. I note first that the case was transferred to this Court by the Supreme Court, to which Rabern’s appeal had been taken, by an order which is based on the conclusion that “the only ruling [involving constitutionality] he invoked from the trial court involves a matter regarding which there are well-settled principles of law. . . .’’The first enumeration of error, challenging constitutionality, is beyond our jurisdiction to consider. Miller v. Ga. Ports Auth., 217 Ga. App. 876, 878 (2) (460 SE2d 100) (1995).
2.1 concur because, even without the hearsay evidence from the informant to which the property owner objected, the evidence supported the trial court’s finding of fact that, by a preponderance, the real property was used, and in fact was being used at the time of the search, “to manufacture and store marijuana for distribution.” See Bloodworth v. State of Ga., 185 Ga. App. 880 (366 SE2d 324) (1988), regarding burden of proof.
Owner Rabern was charged with manufacturing marijuana in violation of OCGA § 16-13-30 (b), to which he pleaded guilty. The large number of small plants being nurtured in the room or shed attached to Rabern’s house constitutes circumstantial evidence that they were in the early stages of cultivation for ultimate sale or at least distribution. The evidence supported the inference that it was the grower’s intention to sell or otherwise dispose of the plants in “a transaction” rather than simply grow them as a hobby or experiment or for personal use. Thus the property was in use as a nursery to produce the product which would constitute the object of future sale or transaction; the real property “was used to facilitate” the enterprise in this fashion.
This case does not involve a loophole in the last sentence of OCGA § 16-13-49 (e) but rather a proper construction of that sentence in context. It creates an exception that does not cover this case because, although less than “four ounces of marijuana” was involved, the other factor necessary for the exception was absent. The majority’s proper construction does not obliterate the exception. Growing a plant or small number of plants of marijuana, for example, would probably not support as reasonable the inference that the property hosting the plant or plants “was used to facilitate a transaction in ... or sale of . . . marijuana.” More likely would be the facilitation of personal use. It is evident from the wording that the legislature intended to exclude such host property from the severe penalty of forfeiture. The property subject to forfeiture, when small amounts of contraband are involved, must be in current or past use to facilitate a transaction, purchase, or sale which is current or past or intended for the future.
I agree that Carr v. State of Ga., 212 Ga. App. 36 (441 SE2d 85) *880(1994), was correctly decided. It need not be overruled despite the statement that “subsection (e) provides for forfeiture only where there is actual use of the property in a transaction, sale or purchase, where small amounts of drugs are involved.” Id. at 37. That statement must be disapproved as an incorrect construction of the statute because it excludes the intended future, which is the purpose of the current or past use of the property.
3. The majority applies two seemingly contradictory principles of construction. One is the rule of strict construction for special statutory proceedings. State v. Henderson, 263 Ga. 508, 509 (436 SE2d 209) (1993). The other is the rule of liberal construction to effect the remedial purposes of the forfeiture statute, which rule the legislature expressly incorporated into the statute. OCGA § 16-13-49 (z). The rules are compatibly applied in our construction of the sentence in subsection (e) which is at issue, because the ordinary significance of the words makes the legislature’s intention plain. Franklin v. Hill, 264 Ga. 302, 304 (2) (444 SE2d 778) (1994).