Cornwell v. State

I agree fully with Chief Judge Carley’s special concurrence in this case, but I am compelled to write separately to point out what I perceive as a basic flaw in the majority’s treatment of this issue.

The majority holds that giving the jury the elements of the offense by reading from the statute is not sufficient. Bundren v. State, 247 Ga. App. 180 (2) (274 SE2d 455) (1981), on which the majority *565relies, does not support that position. The Supreme Court ruled in Bundren that it was error for the trial court to omit any reference to knowledge from the charge, but it did not hold the language of…