Court Opinion

ID: 9568716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:06:51.1887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:56:57.852743
License: Public Domain

Birdsong, Judge,
dissenting.
The trial court erred in charging the jury: “If you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants on trial did . . . have under *141their control any quantity of codeine . . . you would be authorized to find them guilty.” This incorrect statement of law allows the jury to ignore the presumption of individual innocence and the requirements of separate proof and find both defendants guilty even if only one was in possession of codeine.
Contrary to the majority’s statement on the matter, this charge on possession of codeine must be considered “in a vacuum,” for it is the only charge on possession of codeine, and its misleading effect is not corrected by proper instructions on possession of other drugs. Even if the jury could possibly have ignored the mistake and taken the correct law from the charges on possession of other illicit drugs, this charge is still error, for the jury could not be expected to divine which was the true charge; even where the trial court charges the jury correctly on a certain point and elsewhere in the instructions charges incorrectly on the same point, this constitutes error since the jury cannot be expected to select and be guided by the correct portion and to disregard the incorrect. Salisbury v. State, 221 Ga. 718 (146 SE2d 776); see Burnett v. State, 152 Ga. App. 738 (264 SE2d 33).
This erroneous charge does not bear the majority’s colorful comparison to the perversion of a Biblical truth by the omission of the words: “The fool hath said in his heart. . . .” See Ford v. State, 9 Ga. App. 851, 852-853 (72 SE 442). Indeed, if that Biblical statement (“[t]he fool hath said in his heart, [t]here is no God”) were a point of law, we would have no trouble finding fatal error in a charge stating simply: “There is no God,” for this would not be a mere omission corrected elsewhere in a charge, but would be an incorrect and misleading statement standing alone, as is the charge here on possession of codeine. If we consider the charge “as a whole,” this misstatement is not corrected anywhere. Burnett, supra.
The fact that the jury returned separate verdicts of guilty on the count does not prove they understood the truth of the law from the charge on possession of other drugs, for the very error of this charge is that it enables the jury to find a separate verdict of guilty for each defendant as to possession of codeine, simply by finding that “they” possessed it, whatever that means, and however confused the jury might have been about the elements of possession. The fact that all other charges allowed the jury to decide each defendant’s guilt separately and then on the last charge stated: “You would be authorized to find them guilty” compounds the error.
I would reverse the verdicts of guilty on the count of codeine possession, for the evidence as to possession is complex and the incorrect charge allows conviction of “them,” even if one of them technically did not possess codeine under a correct charge of law. That this mistake was an “inadvertence” in an otherwise fine set of instructions does not make it less erroneous.
*142Decided March 8, 1990
Rehearing denied March 28, 1990
Linda S. Cowen, for appellant (case no. A89A1855).
James T. Barfield III, for appellant (case no. A89A1856).
Robert E. Keller, District Attorney, Tracy G. Gladden, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
I respectfully dissent. I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Banke and Judge Cooper join in this dissent.