Byrd v. Hopper
Decision Date | 22 April 1975 |
Docket Number | No. 29809,29809 |
Citation | 215 S.E.2d 251,234 Ga. 248 |
Parties | Charles H. BYRD v. Joe S. HOPPER. |
Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
James C. Bonner, Jr., Thomas M. West, Jackson, for appellant.
Arthur K. Bolton, Atty. Gen., Lois Oakley, Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, for appellee.
Syllabus Opinion by the Court
Petitioner is presently confined under a five-year sentence imposed for motor vehicle theft. He did not appeal his conviction. His petition for habeas corpus relief complained solely of a portion of the convicting court's charge to the jury that recent possession by petitioner of the goods taken There was no separate, general instruction on circumstantial evidence. After a hearing, the habeas corpus court denied relief and remanded petitioner to the custody of the respondent warden. Petitioner contends that this portion of the charge was violative of due process in that it shifted the burden of proof to him.
The threshold issue is whether petitioner may attack the validity of his confinement by way of habeas corpus on the basis of an allegedly unconstitutional jury charge. This court in Shoemake v. Whitlock, 226 Ga. 771, 177 S.E.2d 677, reiterated the well-settled principle that habeas corpus cannot be used as a substitute for appeal to correct errors of law. The decision held that even though an allegedly erroneous charge is challenged on due process grounds, the issue is not cognizable in habeas proceedings. It does not necessarily follow, however, that a constitutionally defective charge cannot so pervade the entire proceedings at the trial level as to render the conviction thereunder itself a violation of due process and therefore cognizable in a habeas corpus proceeding under the Habeas Corpus Act of 1967. While making no reference to the Shoemake decision, this court in two subsequent cases reached the merits of due process attacks based on jury charges but upheld the orders remanding the petitioners to custody. Jacobs v. Caldwell, 231 Ga. 600, 203 S.E.2d 188; Sneed v. Caldwell, 229 Ga. 507, 192 S.E.2d 263.
In addressing the question of whether an erroneous jury charge can reach constitutional proportions, the U.S. Supreme Court in Cupp v. Naughten 414 U.S. 141, 146, 94 S.Ct. 396, 400, 38 L.Ed.2d 368, said:
The court then held that a charge to the effect that witnesses are presumed to speak the truth did not so impinge upon the principle of reasonable doubt and the presumption of innocence as to render the conviction constitutionally invalid.
It is necessary to determine, therefore, whether the portion of the charge complained of here, even if erroneous, was of such dimension as to render the conviction itself violative of due process.
In the recent decision in Barnes v. United States, 412 U.S. 837, 93 S.Ct. 2357, 37 L.Ed.2d 380, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a charge which made clear to the jury that recent unexplained possession raised only a permissible inference that the defendant knew the goods had been stolen. The court held that the burden of proving the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt remained on the government. Because the charge satisfied the reasonable doubt standard, there was no violation of due process. The court said, at p. 846, 93 S.Ct. at p. 2363, n. 11:
It has long been settled in this State that recent unexplained possession of stolen property permits the jury to infer that the accused committed the theft. See Aiken v. State, 226...
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Parrish v. Hopper
...charges to be considered on habeas if their deficiencies rendered the trial fundamentally unfair, as was recognized in Byrd v. Hopper, 234 Ga. 248, 215 S.E.2d 251 (1975) which modified Shoemake, but stopped short of overruling it. It should be noted that after he failed to obtain relief in ......
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Allen v. State, s. 30311
...State, 226 Ga. 840, 178 S.E.2d 202 (1970). This is not a case in which the charge created any presumption of guilt. See Byrd v. Hopper, 234 Ga. 248, 215 S.E.2d 251 (1975). 402 F.Supp. 787 (N.D.Ga.1975). This enumeration is without Enumeration 21 concerns that portion of the trial judge's ch......
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