Rivers v. State

In Rivers v. State, 236 Ga. App. 709 (513 SE2d 263) (1999), the Court held that the following charge was erroneous on its face: Before you may consider evidence of similar offenses or transactions for any purpose, it must be first made to appear and you must be satisfied that this defendant is the same person to whom the evidence of similar transactions pertains. If you believe that that has been proven, however, you are strictly limited in your consideration of the evidence as to identity, state of mind or element of the offense charged in this indictment. Id. at 710 (1). The Court concluded: The language in the questioned charge inadvertently but substantially expands the limited purposes for which similar transaction evidence can be used. By informing the jury that it also could consider similar transaction evidence for the purpose of showing "the crimes charged in the case," and in considering an "element of the offense charged in this indictment," a fair risk exists that the jury was confused and misled as to the proper limited use of similar transaction evidence to the prejudice of the defendant. Thus, the jury might have improperly concluded that similar transaction evidence could be directly used to prove the crime charged or one or more of its elements; for example, it might have inferred that because the defendant had committed a previous crime, he had bad character and therefore was likely to have committed the crime charged in the indictment. Id. at 712 (1) (b). When such a charging error occurs, "a rebuttable presumption arises that the charge is prejudicial and harmful, and this Court must so hold unless it appears from the entire record that the error is harmless." Id. at 712-713 (1) (b).