Steele v. State, A90A0746
| Decision Date | 13 June 1990 |
| Docket Number | No. A90A0746,A90A0746 |
| Citation | 396 S.E.2d 4,196 Ga.App. 330 |
| Parties | STEELE v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
C. Jackson Burch, for appellant.
Spencer Lawton, Jr., Dist. Atty., Elise O. Gray, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.
The appellant was convicted of armed robbery, making terroristic threats, giving a false name to a law enforcement officer, and two counts of aggravated assault. He brings this appeal from the denial of his motion for new trial.
The state's evidence showed that the appellant, accompanied by an unidentified accomplice, entered a personal residence and held a gun on several of its occupants while his accomplice took money from the pockets of at least one of them. There was also testimony that the appellant threatened to kill one of the individuals in the house and that he ultimately fired shots at two persons, wounding one. The appellant fled the scene but was recognized by a police officer at a shopping mall approximately two weeks later and was arrested at that time. The officer's account of the events which preceded the arrest provided the evidentiary support for the appellant's conviction on the charge of giving a false name to a law enforcement officer. Held:
1. The appellant contends that the trial court erred in refusing to declare a mistrial after the arresting officer testified that he (the officer) had been responding to a call for assistance "in reference to a shoplifting suspect" when he confronted the appellant at the shopping mall. The appellant did not object to this testimony at the time it was offered but later moved for a mistrial on the ground that it placed his character at issue. The motion was properly denied. "[W]here evidence is relevant for the purpose of showing the circumstances of the arrest, it will not be excluded because it incidentally shows the commission of other crimes." Bixby v. State, 234 Ga. 812, 814, 218 S.E.2d 609 (1975). Moreover, Bennett v. State, 165 Ga.App. 600, 601(3), 302 S.E.2d 367 (1983).
2. The appellant contends that the evidence did not support his conviction of aggravated assault because the individual who was shot was not available to testify at trial, with the result that there was no evidence that the shooting placed him "in reasonable apprehension of his immediate safety." However, intentionally firing a gun at another, absent justification, is sufficient in and of itself to support a conviction of aggravated assault. See Williams v. State, 249 Ga. 6, 8, 287 S.E.2d 31 (1982). See generally OCGA § 16-5-21(a)(2). Moreover, the fact that the victim was severely wounded as a...
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