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Hudson v. State9/20/1999
ated the earlier incident. One of the officers had responded to the call for police help at the home of appellant's mother, collected six spent .25 caliber bullet shells at the scene, and developed appellant and his brother (later named in the 1994 indictment as the victim of the aggravated assault), as possible suspects. The other officer testified that he had interviewed appellant's brother, who had not been injured in the incident. Because of hearsay objections sustained by the trial court, none of the facts underlying the 1994 incident were presented to the jury. As a result, the State failed to present the trier of fact "with evidence establishing ... that the connection and/or similarity between [the 1994] offense and the crime charged is such that proof that the accused committed the former tends to prove that the accused also committed the latter." Williams v. State, supra, 260 Ga. at 642. Without evidence of similarity, the certified copy of the 1994 indictment and guilty plea should not have been admitted. Williams v. State, supra, 261 Ga. at 643; Stephens v. State, supra, 261 Ga. at 469.
We agree with the District Attorney's position that any error in the admission of the prior conviction as a similar transaction was harmless because the conviction was admissible to impeach appellant's testimony. Under cross-examination by the assistant district attorney, appellant asserted he was not a fighter and did not "mess with nobody and don't nobody mess with me." When the ADA queried whether appellant was a shooter, appellant denied the appellation, and the ADA apparently presented him with the certified copy of his 1994 guilty plea conviction for aggravated assault. The evidentiary requirements of Williams and Stephens are not applicable when a prior conviction is used to impeach the defendant. See USCR 31.3 (E); Grier v. State, supra, 206 Ga. App. at 95. Since the evidence of appellant's prior conviction was admissible for purposes of impeachment regardless of whether it was similar to the crime for which appellant was currently being tried, the lack of evidence of the similar nature of the prior independent offense did not render the evidence inadmissible.
3. Lastly, appellant contends the trial court erroneously failed to sua sponte instruct the jury that the jury could not consider the prior act evidence against appellant until it had determined that the facts of the prior act were sufficiently similar to the facts established in the case at bar so that the former tended to prove the latter. Without expressing an opinion on the propriety of the charge appellant now contends should have been given, we conclude that the failure to give such a charge is not error in the absence of a request. Murphy v. State, 270 Ga. 72 (2c) (508 SE2d 399) (1998). See also State v. Belt, supra, 269 Ga. 763.
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
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