Court Opinion

ID: 9566463
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:39:36.30272+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:36.496229
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
Defendant was charged with and convicted of unlawfully selling cocaine to M. Willis on April 19, 1991, in violation of OCGA § 16-13-*60830 (b). This is a criminal act which requires no specific intent, as distinguished from another crime prohibited by that same Code section, possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance.
The State offered as evidence of earlier transactions one incident of an interrupted apparent drug sale for which defendant pleaded guilty to possession and one incident of a cocaine sale. This was during its case-in-chief, and the stated purpose was to establish motive, bent of mind, intent to engage in the sale of cocaine, and course of conduct on the part of Evans. The court so understood the purpose of this evidence and admitted it over objection.
Evans did not testify. The defense was not that a drug sale did not occur, or that the substance sold was not cocaine, or that defendant did not intend to sell cocaine in the transaction, but rather that the State did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was the person who engaged in the sale. He was arrested not on the spot but several months later, based on the buying police officer’s selection of his mug shot from a stack of photos a couple of inches thick at the police station about thirty to forty minutes after the transaction; it was about six photos down in the stack. There was no evidence that the officer ever saw Evans on any other occasion other than in court on this charge.
The court instructed the jury that it was to consider this evidence of other transactions “solely and only” to illustrate defendant’s state of mind, if the jurors thought this evidence did illustrate such. The court charged that the law allows such evidence “where motive, intent, bent of mind and course of conduct or other matters dependent upon a person’s state of mind are involved as material elements in the offenses (sic) for which he’s on trial.” It later added “identity,” although that was not a purpose for which it was offered or admitted.
Intent and state of mind were not in issue. The State simply had to prove that someone sold the substance cocaine and that someone was defendant. Defendant did not contest that such a sale had occurred but only that he was that someone; his defense was that the State had not borne its burden of proving his identity as the perpetrator.
Did the purpose for which the evidence was offered justify the exception to the general rule of admissibility articulated in OCGA § 24-2-2? It did not, because it was not necessary to prove the elements of the crime. The State failed to affirmatively show that the evidence was offered “not to raise an improper inference as to the accused’s character, but for some appropriate purpose.” Williams v. State, 261 Ga. 640, 642 (2b) (409 SE2d 649) (1991). See Hunter v. State, 177 Ga. App. 326, 327 (339 SE2d 381) (1985) (Beasley, J., dissenting).
Even if the stated purpose could be stretched into a necessary *609one, the prejudicial effect far outweighed the probative value. The pivotal issue, after all, was identity, not motive, intent, bent of mind, or course of conduct.
I am authorized to state that Judge Cooper joins in this dissent.