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215 Ga. App. 340

Chapman v. State

Court of Appeals of Georgia

Decided November 23, 1994

Court of Appeals of Georgia · decided 1994-11-23

Relies on Friedman v. Friedman · 210 Ga. App. 517 - Datz v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1994-11-23

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently March 2011

4 state decisions

20199420002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Blackburn, Judge.

¶1Denward Chapman appeals his conviction by a jury of driving under the influence, less safe driver. On appeal, Chapman contends the trial court erred in excluding evidence of Officer Goosman’s professional misconduct.

¶2It is undisputed that at the time of trial, Officer Goosman had resigned from the Hall County Sheriff’s Department, under threat of being fired. During his employment with the Sheriff’s Department, he had been under investigation for sexual misconduct and for an accident in which a pedestrian was struck by his patrol car. The sexual misconduct investigation occurred prior to the actions charged in the indictment, and the other incident occurred afterwards. At trial, Chapman sought to introduce evidence of these investigations against Officer Goosman. The trial court granted the State’s motion in limine to exclude any evidence regarding the investigations.

¶3In the present case, Officer Goosman arrived at the scene of an accident wherein Chapman’s car hit a tractor trailer while the driver of the tractor trailer was attempting to enter the cab of the vehicle. Officer Goosman interviewed Chapman and conducted field sobriety tests. Other officers conducted an investigation of the scene. At trial, Officer Goosman testified as to the results of the field sobriety tests conducted on Chapman.

¶4The trial court determined that evidence of the investigations into Officer Goosman’s conduct was irrelevant in that it was unrelated to the investigation of the charges pending against Chapman. “Generally speaking, questions of relevance are within the domain of the trial court, and, absent a manifest abuse of discretion, a court’s re*341fusal to admit evidence on grounds of lack of relevance will not be disturbed on appeal. The rule is usually stated that the judge may exercise his discretion in excluding relevant evidence if he finds that its probative value is substantially outweighed by the risk that its admission will create substantial danger of undue prejudice or of misleading the jury.” (Punctuation omitted.) Friedman v. Friedman, 259 Ga. 530, 532 (384 SE2d 641) (1989). See also Datz v. State, 210 Ga. App. 517 (7) (436 SE2d 506) (1993).

Decided November 23, 1994.H. Bradford Morris, Jr., for appellant.Jerry Rylee, Solicitor, Brett P. Turner, Assistant Solicitor, for appellee.

¶5In the present case, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in limiting Chapman’s cross-examination of Officer Goosman.

¶6Judgment affirmed.

Birdsong, P. J., and Ruffin, J., concur.
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