Court Opinion

ID: 9567772
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:57:36.470202+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:20:36.653336
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur because the record is not altogether clear as to what the witness was referring to when she said she reached the same conclusions the other officer did. The questions came in the context of her describing what she saw and did when she arrived at the scene. After she testified that they situated the little boy and talked to the people who had seen the incident, she was asked:
“Q. We have already had Officer Linder testify, and I won’t go through all of that again. Let me just ask you this, did you and Officer Linder prepare your report together concerning this?
“A. Yes, sir.
“Q. And so far as working with him, did you reach the same conclusions he did with respect to the report?
“A. Yes, sir.”
If the conclusions regarding the cause of the incident were in the report or she had been present in the courtroom and had heard his testimony regarding conclusions so that her answer adopted them, then the lack of objection would make the erroneous admission of Linder’s conclusions harmless. That is the result of the admission of opinion evidence of similar substance, unobjected to Andrews v. Major, 180 Ga. App. 393, 395 (2) (349 SE2d 225) (1986).
On the other hand, if the report did not contain the conclusions Linder gave, or the second officer had been sequestered when Linder testified, then there would have been no occasion for the objection.
*485Decided November 6, 1990.
Gleason & Davis, John W. Davis, Jr., for appellants.
Watson & Dana, Dennis D. Watson, for appellees.
We do not have the police report and thus do not know its contents. We are not authorized to assume that the second officer’s testimony encompassed Linder’s conclusions as to cause. Thus I agree that the error as to his testimony was not rendered harmless by the later testimony.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Deen joins in this special concurrence.