Brown v. State

• Decision Date: 08 March 1993
• Docket Number: No. S92A1518,S92A1518
• Citation: 262 Ga. 833,426 S.E.2d 559
• Parties: BROWN v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 559

426 S.E.2d 559

262 Ga. 833

BROWN v. The STATE.

No. S92A1518.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

March 8, 1993.

Michelle C. Feinberg, Office of the Public Defender, Robert W. Lavender, Lavender & Lavender, Elberton, for Brown.

Lindsay A. Tise, Jr., Dist. Atty., Hartwell, Hon. Michael J. Bowers, Atty. Gen., Atlanta, C.A. Benjamin Woolf, Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, for the State.

Susan V. Boleyn, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta.

BENHAM, Justice.

This appeal is from appellant's conviction for malice murder. ¹ The evidence adduced at trial established that appellant, a mentally retarded nineteen-year-old, killed her one-year-old child by means of repeated blows to his head with a metal table leg. ²

1. In her first enumeration of error, appellant complains of the trial court's denial of her motion for mistrial on the ground that an expert witness testified to the ultimate issue in the case. A physician who had evaluated the victim's injuries in the hospital was asked by the trial court whether he had an opinion as to the cause of death. The witness's response, that the "child died directly from child abuse," and that the "child died of a massive head injury as a direct result of child abuse," prompted appellant's motion for mistrial. The trial court denied the motion and cautioned the jury that child abuse was not an issue in the case and that it was to disregard any reference to child abuse.

At trial, appellant relied on Harris v. State, 261 Ga. 386, 405 S.E.2d 482 (1991), and Allison v. State, 256 Ga. 851, 353 S.E.2d 805 (1987), and on appeal relies on McCartney v. State, 262 Ga. 156, 414 S.E.2d 227 (1992), for the proposition that the witness's testimony was so prejudicial as to require a mistrial. While we recognize that reversible error may have occurred had the trial court admitted the testimony over appellant's objection, that is not what happened here: instead of admitting the testimony, the trial court took measures to exclude it by directing the jury not to consider it. In all three cited cases, it was the admission of the testimony which was held to be error. In the present case, the exclusion of the testimony and the trial court's curative instructions prevented the error from occurring.

2. Appellant objected at trial to a psychologist's opinion testimony on the subject of sanity, basing the objection on the same ground as her objection to the excluded testimony of the physician regarding child abuse. Contrary to her argument, expert testimony on the subject of sanity is admissible. See Smith v. State, 247 Ga. 612, 617, 277 S.E.2d 678 (1981). Appellant's complaints on appeal concerning the prosecuting attorney's conduct in eliciting the psychologist's testimony were not raised in the trial court and may not, therefore, be raised here. Spencer v. State, 260 Ga. 640(9), 398 S.E.2d 179 (1990).

3. Appellant contends in her third enumeration of error that the trial court erred in refusing to charge the jury on insanity. The only evidence on the subject of insanity was the testimony of an expert witness for the State to the effect that appellant was not insane and was not mentally ill. There being no evidence that appellant was insane, there was no error in refusing to charge on the issue. Duck v. State, 250 Ga. 592(2)(a), 300 S.E.2d 121 (1983).

4. Contrary to appellant's representation on appeal, the trial court's charge on mental retardation was taken verbatim from appellant's request to charge on that issue. That being so, any error in the charge was induced and cannot now be relied upon to seek a reversal. Patterson v. State, 233 Ga. 724(7), 213 S.E.2d 612 (1975).

5. Appellant's request for a charge on malice based on this court's decision in Lackey v. State, 246 Ga. 331(8), 271 S.E.2d 478 (1980), was properly refused by the trial court. The requested charge speaks of the necessity of distinguishing between harm caused by intentional neglect and harm caused by inability, carelessness or accident. The evidence in this case did not raise any issues of neglect, intentional or otherwise. Since the charge was not authorized by the evidence in this case, it was properly refused. Harper v. State, 249 Ga. 46(3), 287 S.E.2d 211 (1982).

6. In attacking the trial court's determination that appellant's confession was voluntarily made, appellant argues that the factors enumerated in Marshall v. State, 248 Ga. 227(3), 282 S.E.2d 301 (1981), for scrutinizing the statements of juveniles should have been applied because appellant is mentally retarded. Appellant offers no authority for that position and we have found none. On the other hand, this court has previously faced the issue of the voluntariness of a confession made by a person suffering from mental retardation.

A trial court may be authorized to find that an individual is capable of waiving his rights even though there is evidence to the effect that he is moderately retarded. [Cit.] Retardation, and the extent of the same as presented by the ambit of the evidence in this case, is one of the facts that had to be determined by the trial court at the Jackson v. Denno hearing. Once the determination is made it will be approved by this court unless we find that it is clearly erroneous. [Cit.]

Moses v. State, 245 Ga. 180(5), 263 S.E.2d 916 (1980). In the present case, the trial court heard testimony from appellant and testimony from the police officers who received appellants several statements. The officers testified that appellant was several times informed of her rights and appeared to understand them, that she never asked for counsel, that she volunteered to write out a written statement and did so, that she was given an opportunity to take a break and to make a telephone call, and that her statements were made voluntarily. Appellant testified that she was never informed of her rights, that she did not write out the statement, and that her voice did not appear on a taped statement. Part of the trial court's determination of admissibility was based on credibility, specifically a finding that appellant was not telling the truth.

A trial court's findings as to factual determinations and credibility relating to the admissibility of a confession will be upheld on appeal unless clearly erroneous. [Cit.] The trial court's credibility determinations here were not clearly erroneous.

Terry v. State, 259 Ga. 165(2), 377 S.E.2d 837 (1989). We find no error in the admission of appellant's statements.

7. There being nothing in the record to show that the atmosphere in the community was so inherently prejudicial due to pretrial publicity that appellant could not receive a fair trial, or that she could not receive a fair trial due to the prejudice of individual jurors (see Peebles v. State, 260 Ga. 430(2), 396 S.E.2d 229 (1990)), we find no error in the denial of her motion for a change of venue.

8. Relying on DHR v. Corbin, 202 Ga.App. 10, 413 S.E.2d 484 (1991), appellant complains that a police officer's testimony concerning a blood pattern analysis should not have been permitted because he was not the person who did the testing. That complaint is not supported by the record. In Corbin, the excluded evidence contained conclusions based on results of tests performed by persons other than the witness; here, the record shows that the witness collected the physical evidence and subsequently did the pattern analysis with the assistance of an instructor at the Georgia...