Georgia Criminal Law Blog

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I previously wrote a post about this case. You can see it here.

In Patterson v. State, the full Court of Appeals reversed Smith v. State, 257 Ga. App. 88 (2002), reestablishing a long line of cases which prohibit an expert witness from giving an opinion on another witness’s credibility and prohibits the witness from expressing an opinion on the ultimate issue of the defendant’s guilt for the purpose of rehabilitating the credibility of a witness whose veracity was attacked. 

In this case the State had put up an expert to testify that she believed the victim did not fabricate the charges against the defendant.

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The Supreme Court ruled 5-3 on Wednesday that it is unconstitutional for police without a warrant to search a home, if two occupants are present at the time and one consents but the other objects. The search may not go forward in the face of that objection, but the occupant must be present to have the objection count, the Court said in a decision written by Justice David H. Souter. The case was Georgia v. Randolph (04-1067).

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On March 10, 2006 the Georgia Court of Appeal decided State v. Pierce (A05A1749).  The court clarifies the definition of “incarceration” and specifically holds that house arrest is not incarceration for the purposes of a DUI sentence under O.C.G.A. 40-6-391(c)(2)(B). 

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The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled in Pitts v. State that 911 calls are not testimonial and therefore admissible when a witness is not available despite an objection on 6th amendment grounds and Crawford v. Washington. 

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Below is a post that I wrote on 2-28-06.  I deleted it and moved it here because it was causing a problem with the podcast RSS feed.

The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled in Pitts v. State that 911 calls are not testimonial and therefore admissible when a witness is not available despite an objection on 6th amendment grounds and Crawford v. Washington.  I should note that the statement would still need to meet a hearsay exception like res gestae or excited utterance.

The bizarre part of this case is where the Court gives examples of how a 911 call may be testimonial or not.  It gave an example of a case where a spouse called in to report that her husband had violated his parole as being testimonial because the purpose was to establish an evidentiary fact and not to prevent a crime in progress.  Well, in the Pitts case, it too had a spouse mention that her husband was violating his parole.  The court said that part of the tape ”came close” to being testimonial but wasn’t really because she was just trying to explain why the prior difficulties made the current situation a dangerous one.

The flood gates have been opened and barred in place with such wide discretion that almost every 911 call will be non-testimonial.  They have really carved out 2 exceptions to Crawford that swallow the rule.  1. To avert a crime progress.  2. To seek assistance in preventing immediate harm.  90% of calls are going to fall in one of these categoreis as non-testimonial.  The Court does say that a call may contain a mixture of testimonial and non-testimonial and that those tapes should be redacted.  But as I pointed out a minute ago, there may be a third exception that will allow testimonial statements in that explain conduct.

Palma v. State is a case that came out of the Georgia Supreme Court recently.  It says that a defense lawyer can argue punishment in closing argument in the context of a witness’s motivation to lie.  This case is an extension of the rule that the lawyer can explore witness bias in being a witness for the prosecution and the potential sentence that the witness will avoid in exchange for testifying.

Click here to listen to the podcast about Palma v. State.  I wrote a previous post about that case on January 23, 2006.

On November 21, 2005, the Georgia Supreme Court handed down the opinion on Ramos v. Terry, Case No. S05A1123 which discusses the requirements for qualified interpreters for non-english speaking defendants.  Click Here to listen to the discussion.