Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Appellant was convicted of incest against his step-daughter, following sexual abuse that began when the victim was five years old and continued until she was 16, when he impregnated her and took her to get an abortion. At issue was whether the trial court should give a jury instruction on prior inconsistent statements and whether the Court of Appeals erred in upholding the trial court's amendments to appellant's sentence to include special conditions of probation. The court held that the pattern jury instruction on prior consistent statements should not be given as a matter of course. Unlike some other states, Georgia admitted prior consistent statements as substantive evidence and not solely to rehabilitate a witness's trial testimony. Therefore, in this case, as in most cases, the instruction did not harm appellant and so the Court of Appeals properly affirmed the conviction. The court also held that appellant's rights were not violated by the process the trial court followed in imposing his special conditions of probation. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

Defendant entered a negotiated plea of guilty on one count of child molestation in October 2003 and was sentenced to twenty years probation. In October 2010, defendant filed a petition for writ of mandamus seeking to compel a change from supervised to unsupervised probation; the termination of mandatory therapy sessions and polygraph tests; and the restoration of his access to computers. The trial court dismissed the petition and defendant appealed. The court held that defendant could not demonstrate a right to mandamus relief, as mandamus was not a proper vehicle for obtaining post-appeal review of a sentence imposed by a state court. Moreover, defendant had access to the remedy of habeas corpus. That the utilization of such remedy could be barred by the statute of limitation, did not render it inadequate. Accordingly, the trial court did not err by dismissing defendant's petition for mandamus.

Defendant was convicted of the malice murders of two victims and other crimes. Defendant subsequently appealed from the denial of his motion for new trial. The court held that the evidence was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to find defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted. The court held that because the trial court did not err by allowing the State to introduce a witness's prior inconsistent statements, defendant's trial counsel did not perform deficiently by failing to make a meritless objection to the admission of the evidence. The court also held that there was no error in the trial court's admission of the witness's testimony regarding statements made to him by a co-defendant during the concealment phase of the conspiracy. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.

Corey Bernard Freeman and Ethron Carl Crawford each filed a pre-trial petition for writ of habeas corpus. Recognizing that Freeman and Crawford both qualified as a prisoner pursuant to OCGA 42-12-3(4), the court ordered that the two cases be consolidated for purposes of appeal. At issue was whether the holding in Smith v. Nichols, that the final order in a pre-trial habeas corpus action filed by a prisoner was directly appealable, was effectively abrogated by the amendment to OCGA 42-12-3(1) in Ga. L. 1999, p. 847, section 1, such that these appeals therefore must be dismissed for failure to file an application for discretionary appeal pursuant to OCGA 5-6-35. The court held that although it had held in several cases after the passage of the 1999 amendment that a petitioner could file a direct appeal from the denial of a pre-trial petition for writ of habeas corpus, these cases expressly relied on Nichols without acknowledging that the language of the Act was different than it was when Nichols was decided. Therefore, the court overruled cases which allowed a petitioner to file a direct appeal from the denial of a pre-trial petition for writ of habeas corpus. Accordingly, the court held that, as neither defendant filed an application for discretionary appeal pursuant to OCGA 5-6-35, both appeals were dismissed.

This appeal involved the manner in which a superior court could enforce the provisions of the Open Records Act (Act), OCGA 50-14-1, against a municipality. Plaintiffs filed a complaint alleging an Open Records Act violation against the city and requested, among other things, an award of attorney fees and an injunction preventing the city from holding any future "secret" meetings. The city ultimately conceded that it had violated the Act but filed an appeal, arguing that the trial court's imposition of attorney fees was improper. The court held that OCGA 36-33-5 did not apply to plaintiffs' request for attorney fees and that the Act explicitly authorized the assessment of attorney fees. The court also held that the city's argument was defeated by the plain text of the Act. Therefore, based on this explicit grant of legislative authority, the trial court did not err. The court finally held that plaintiffs provided no evidence that the trial court abused its discretion by determining that the amount of attorney fees awarded to plaintiffs, not the amount for which they asked, was reasonable under the circumstances of the case. Accordingly, the court affirmed the trial court's award of attorney fees and expenses.

Defendant was convicted of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Defendant subsequently appealed the trial court's denial of his motion for new trial. The court held that the evidence was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to find defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted. The court held that certain testimony during the cross-examination of defendant regarding defendant's pre-arrest silence was improper and the trial court erred when it overruled defendant's objection. The court held, however, that based on the overwhelming evidence in the case, reversal was not warranted. Therefore, the trial court's denial of the motion for new trial was affirmed.

Appellant challenged his conviction for violating a county ordinance regulating the volume of noise from "mechanical sound-making devices." Appellant contended that the provision was facially invalid under the free speech clause of the Georgia Constitution. Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. V. The court held that the county drew the challenged provision of its ordinance deliberately and in response to specific concerns, and the county had offered good reasons for rejecting appellant's proposed alternatives. The court also held that the provision advanced a substantial government interest in the least restrictive way. Furthermore, the provision was content neutral and left open ample alternatives for communication. Therefore, the ordinance was a reasonable, content-neutral time, place, and manner speech regulation and appellant's facial challenge to it was without merit.

Defendant was charged with malice murder and other crimes arising out of a 1997 shooting death. In 1999, a jury acquitted defendant of malice murder but found him guilty of felony murder, armed robbery, kidnapping with bodily injury, entering an automobile with intent to commit theft and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Although defendant filed a timely motion for new trial, the motion was not ruled upon until 2010 when the trial court granted the motion on certain grounds and denied it on other grounds. The court granted the State's application for interlocutory appeal to review the trial court's ruling. The court held that the successor judge erred by granting a new trial after the successor judge found that the presiding judge manifestly abused his discretion for failing to dismiss a juror in this case in light of the factual errors by the successor judge regarding the finding about the juror's husband's "job prospect" and the juror's explicit acknowledgement that her concerns applied to any verdict she might return, in addition to the presiding judge's express findings as to the juror's truthfulness and sincerity regarding her impartiality and fairness.

Defendant sought reversal of his convictions for malice murder, three counts of aggravated assault, and four counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. The court held that the evidence was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to find defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted. The court also held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion where defendant had not shown the requisite prejudice from the denial of his motion to sever. The trial court further held that trial counsel's failure to renew the motion to sever did not constitute deficient performance. The court finally held that the trial court's refusal to grant a continuance that defendant had requested the morning the trial was scheduled to commence was not an abuse of discretion. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.

Defendant appealed from the denial of his motion for new trial following his conviction of malice murder and other related crimes. The court held that the evidence was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to find defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted. The court reversed defendant's conviction on the charge of conspiracy to violate the Georgia Controlled Substances Act, OCGA 16-4-8, because the language of the indictment could be read to charge individuals with conspiracy who, under Georgia law, could not conspire with one another to violate the Act and because the trial court failed to eliminate the possibility for error by instructing jurors that they would not be authorized to convict defendant of conspiracy based merely on his participation with the sellers in the drug transaction. The court also held that defendant's assertion that the trial court improperly expanded the indictment was moot because defendant's felony murder conviction was vacated by operation of law based on his conviction for the charge of malice murder. The court rejected defendant's claims of ineffective assistance of counsel.