Court Opinion

ID: 9853859
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:56:23.630389+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:11.966193
License: Public Domain

Benham, Chief Justice,
concurring specially.
While I agree with the bottom line of the majority opinion and agree that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of a defense witness’s first offender record, I cannot concur in the overruling of Favors v. State, 234 Ga. 80 (3) (214 SE2d 645) (1975). Favors has no application to this case because the witness here was a defense witness, not a prosecution witness as was the case in Favors. Thus, the majority opinion, in undertaking to overrule more than 20 years of appellate decisions, goes farther than is necessary to resolve this case.
Even if Favors had any application to the present case, I would not agree that it should be overruled. In deciding Favors, this Court was balancing the right of a defendant in a criminal case to show the untrustworthiness of a State’s witness against the right of the witness under the first offender statute to prevent revelation of the fact that the witness has admitted committing a crime or has been found guilty of a crime. The conclusion was that a “lack of trustworthiness is shown by a verdict of guilty, or plea of guilty, whether or not a formal conviction has been entered,” and that the right of the defendant to impeach must prevail over the right of the witness. Although the reasoning that led to that conclusion may have tracked the rationale of U. S. Supreme Court cases concerning the confrontation clause, the conclusion did not rely directly on the confrontation clause. Thus, there was no reason for Favors to distinguish between types of impeachment and there is no valid reason for doing so today. Even under confrontation clause analysis, I contend that the witness’s lack of trustworthiness is a valid object of confrontation and, thereby, impeachment.
I cannot agree, therefore, that this Court erred in 1975 in deciding Favors or that a majority of this Court is correct today in overruling that decision.