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258 Ga. 503

371 S.E.2d 852

Walden v. State

Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided September 16, 1988

Supreme Court of Georgia · decided 1988-09-16

Relies on Peters v. State · Walden v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1988-09-16

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently November 2006

11 state decisions

50198819902000decided

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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Bell, Justice.

¶1 A jury in the State Court of Cobb County convicted the appellant, Marsha Walden, of the offense of failure to yield the right-of-way. The trial court assessed certain costs against Walden, and she appealed the judgment for costs. The Court of Appeals affirmed part of that judgment, including costs of bailiffs and jurors. Walden v. State, 185 Ga. App. 413 (364 SE2d 304) (1987). Walden petitioned this court for a writ of certiorari. We granted the writ to review the question whether a trial court may tax the costs of bailiffs and jurors against the defendant in a criminal case.

¶2 A majority of the Court of Appeals held that OCGA § 17-11-1 authorizes trial courts to recover any costs accruing in the trial court as a result of the prosecution, including the expenses of jurors, Walden, supra, 185 Ga. App. (3) at 415-416, and any costs accruing by any officer pending the prosecution, including compensation for bailiffs, id. (1) at 413-414.

¶3 Judge Benham, with two other judges joining him, dissented to the affirmance of the portions of the judgment imposing fees for jurors and bailiffs, because there are no statutes specifically authorizing charging criminal defendants with the fees for jurors and bailiffs. Id. at 416-417. See Peters v. State, 9 Ga. 109 (1850).

¶4 We agree with Judge Benham. As he observed in his dissenting opinion, “[t]he logical extension of the majority’s position would require that unsuccessful litigants bear a proportionate share of all the *504 costs of maintaining a judicial system.” Walden, supra, dissent at 416-417. We hold that the costs in question are not taxable to criminal defendants, and therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals to the extent it holds otherwise.

Decided September 16, 1988. Larry W. Yarbrough, Marc D. Celia, for appellant. Patrick Head, Solicitor, for appellee.

¶5 Judgment reversed in part.

All the Justices concur.
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