Curry v. State

• Decision Date: 01 June 1995
• Docket Number: No. A95A0619,A95A0619
• Citation: 217 Ga.App. 623,458 S.E.2d 385
• Parties: CURRY v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

Page 385

458 S.E.2d 385

217 Ga.App. 623

CURRY v. The STATE.

No. A95A0619.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

June 1, 1995.

Reconsideration Denied June 20, 1995.

Certiorari Denied Sept. 25, 1995.

D. Todd Wooten, Athens, for appellant.

Harry N. Gordon, Dist. Atty., Richard L. Dickson, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.

McMURRAY, Presiding Judge.

Defendant was indicted for the offenses of aggravated assault and armed robbery. The evidence adduced at a jury trial reveals the following: At about 11:30 in the evening on December 3, 1992, defendant and an accomplice entered a liquor store in Athens, Georgia and shot the owner of the store (during a gun battle) as he was preparing to close the business. Although wounded, the victim returned fire and shot defendant just before the assailants made off with the store's cash register. A few minutes later, defendant appeared at a neighbor's home complaining that he had been wounded during a drive-by shooting. Defendant was taken to a hospital and a physician found a bullet lodged "in the deep musculature of [his left] leg." Further examination revealed that the wound was not life-threatening; that extracting the bullet via surgical means was medically unnecessary and that such a procedure presented unwarranted health or safety risks to defendant. Nonetheless, law enforcement officials pressed defendant's physician to remove the bullet, but he refused to perform the surgery required to retrieve the evidence without defendant's consent. The physician did, however, give defendant the option of surgery after advising defendant that police officials wanted the bullet removed; that extracting the bullet was medically unnecessary and that the surgical procedure posed a risk of certain medical complications. Defendant declined to consent to surgery and the State filed a petition (in the superior court) to force surgical removal of the bullet. The trial court granted this petition, but defendant's physician remained firm. He would not perform surgery "for other than medical reasons ..." without his patient's consent and, to this extent, defendant would not yield. As a consequence, surgery was never performed and the bullet remains in defendant's leg.

After the jury found defendant guilty of aggravated assault and armed robbery, the trial court merged the aggravated assault charge with the armed robbery charge and sentenced defendant to life in prison. This appeal followed the denial of defendant's motion for new trial. Held:

1. In his first two enumerations, defendant contends the trial court erred in ordering surgical removal of the bullet from his leg and in permitting testimony regarding his refusal to consent to surgery. Specifically, defendant argues that the trial court's order infringes upon his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable intrusions into his body and that testimony regarding his refusal to consent to the surgery infringed upon his state and federal constitutional rights against coerced self-incrimination by sanctioning an inference that "he 'had something to hide.' "

"[E]vidence of a defendant's refusal to comply with a lawful court order has been held to be admissible in other [jurisdictions] on the ground that '(a)n attempt by a criminal defendant to suppress evidence is probative of consciousness of guilt and admissible on that basis.' United States v. Wagner, 834 F.2d 1474, 1484 (9th Cir.1987) (quoting United States v. Castillo, 615 F.2d 878, 885 (9th Cir.1980))." United States v. Jackson, 886 F.2d 838, 845 (7th Cir.1989). Georgia courts have embraced parallel logic, adopting "[t]he broad premise ... that a statement or conduct by [a] defendant which indicates a consciousness of guilt is admissible against him. Bridges v. State, 246 Ga. 323, 324(2) (271 SE2d 471) (1980)." Parker v. State, 181 Ga.App. 590, 591(2), 353 S.E.2d 83. We cannot say, however, that this principle is broad enough to encompass reasonable opposition to unlawful governmental intrusions. To say otherwise would not only chill justified resistance to unlawful police practices, but would leave criminal suspects with the unfavorable option of either giving up the right to privacy or resisting unlawful police intrusions knowing that such opposition will be available to support an inference of guilt without running afoul of state and federal prohibitions against coerced self-incrimination. Similar was the presentation offered by government officials in Howard v. State, 237 Ga. 471, 474, 228 S.E.2d 860, where the Georgia Supreme Court held that a defendant's silence in the face of actions amounting to unlawful police interrogation is not admissible to support an inference of guilt. Id. at 475, 228 S.E.2d 860.

The controlling issue in the case sub judice is therefore whether defendant was constitutionally justified in defying law enforcement efforts to have the bullet surgically extracted from his leg. To this extent, we observe that the State's compelling need to retrieve evidence of a crime is, alone, insufficient to justify an intrusion into the body of a living human being. There must also be proof that the surgical procedure required to accomplish the seizure is reasonable, i.e., unsubstantial. Creamer v. State, 229 Ga. 511, 514(2), 515, 192 S.E.2d 350. Of course, the measure for determining what bodily intrusions are "reasonable" or "unsubstantial" is not always a subject for rigid objective analysis. Each case must be measured on its own merits. Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908. We are guided in the case sub judice by the United States Supreme Court's decision in Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 754, 105 S.Ct. 1611, 1613, 84 L.Ed.2d 662, where an order directing surgical removal of a bullet from a criminal suspect was found to be too obtrusive under Fourth Amendment standards. ¹ The Supreme Court decided that society's interest in accurately determining guilt or innocence (as measured by the strength of other evidence supporting...