Court Opinion

ID: 9568902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:08:30.094104+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:14:25.330343
License: Public Domain

Benham, Justice,
dissenting.
In Div. 2 (c), the majority asserts that the prosecutor’s query in closing argument (“Where are all those people [appellant] said, I’m not the kind of man who would do all these things? Where are they? Where are all these people [who are] going to get up here and say that he is not the kind of man to do all these things?”) was a comment on facts in evidence since the statement had been read to the jury.9 The majority then holds that appellant’s failure to object to the admission of the statement on character grounds constituted a waiver of his right to assert on appeal that the prosecutor’s argument impermissibly introduced character evidence. The majority then concludes that the prosecutor’s statement was a proper comment on the evidence before the jury. I disagree with the majority’s decision that there has been a waiver.
Evidence of a defendant’s bad character is statutorily rendered inadmissible “unless and until the defendant shall have first put his character in issue.” OCGA § 24-9-20 (b). Only where a defendant elects to put his good character in issue may the State present evidence of bad character. Jones v. State, 257 Ga. 753, 758 (363 SE2d 529) (1988). In the case at bar, appellant never introduced evidence of his good character. It was the State that introduced into evidence a pre-trial statement made by appellant. The majority opinion is implicitly holding that a defendant puts his character in issue when he makes a statement to police. The majority then goes on to require the defendant to seek redaction of anything positive he might have said about himself prior to the State’s introduction of the statement, or suffer the consequences of having placed his character in issue. However, “a defendant does not put his ‘character in issue’ within the meaning of OCGA § 24-9-20 (b) by inadvertent statements regarding his own good conduct.” Jones v. State, supra at 758. Even if we were to assume that the State, rather than the defendant, may introduce evidence of the defendant’s good character in order to open the door for admission of evidence of bad character, we must conclude that appellant’s pre-trial statement to police that others know he is not the kind of person to do such a thing was “an inadvertent statement regarding his own good conduct,” and therefore cannot be the basis for admission of bad character evidence or for commentary on the *483lack of good character evidence.
Decided October 4, 1993
Reconsideration denied October 29, 1993.
Drew Findling, Anna Blitz, for appellant.
Lewis R. Slaton, District Attorney, Rebecca A. Keel, Leonora Grant, Assistant District Attorneys, Michael J. Bowers, Attorney General, Susan V. Boleyn, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Peggy R. Katz, Staff Attorney, for appellee.
In the case at bar, appellant successfully defeated the State’s attempts on cross-examination to have appellant open the character door. By permitting the State to comment during closing argüment on appellant’s failure to produce character witnesses, the trial court allowed the State to do what it forbade it to do during cross-examination of appellant — to make character an issue when appellant had not elected to make character an issue. By permitting the State to question the whereabouts of appellant’s character witnesses, without appellant having put his character in issue, the trial court allowed the State to force upon appellant the need to prove he was of good character, a burden that has heretofore been a matter of choice for a defendant. See Jones v. State, supra at 755. I respectfully dissent.

 It should be noted that, during cross-examination of appellant, the prosecutor tried several times to get appellant to give character evidence so that she could then get some of her own character evidence in. Each time, the trial court sustained defense objections to the questioning, at one time stating that the prosecutor was “walking a very narrow line at this point.”