Patrick Luckie was tried by a Fulton County jury and convicted of unlawfully possessing heroin with intent to distribute1 and unlawfully abandoning heroin in a public place.2 He appeals from the judgment of conviction, contending in his sole enumeration of error that the trial court erred when it permitted the prosecuting attorney to elicit testimony from a defense witness about criminal charges then pending against the witness. The prosecuting attorney offered this testimony ostensibly to prove that the witness had a motive to shade his testimony in favor of Luckie, but Luckie argues on appeal that the testimony is not probative of any such motive. Although Luckie might well be right that the specific testimony elicited at trial was not probative of any motive to testify favorably for Luckie, he did not raise this argument below, and, for this reason, he has failed to properly preserve the issue for our review. Consequently, we are constrained to affirm his convictions. At trial, two police officers testified that, while patrolling a parking lot near the Georgia Dome late at night on June 1, 2004, they saw Luckie throw down a bag, which, the officers discovered, contained heroin, and they then arrested Luckie and charged him with the crimes that form the basis for the convictions in this case. To rebut this testimony, Luckie called two witnesses, each of whom testified that he was with Luckie in the parking lot on that night and that Luckie threw a cigarette, not a bag, to the ground. The cross-examination of one of these witnesses, Gerald Hurst, is the subject of this appeal. Both Hurst and Luckie, it turns out, had been arrested for possession of heroin on another occasion. The charges arising from this separate incident still were pending against both men when Hurst appeared in this case as a witness for Luckie.
Before Hurst testified, the prosecuting attorney informed the defense lawyer and the trial judge that he intended to ask Hurst about the pending heroin charge, and he inquired whether the defense would have any objection to this line of cross-examination. The defense lawyer said that, yes, she would object, although she needed some time to identify the precise grounds for her objection. The defense lawyer said then that she was “leaning towards objecting on the ground that the pending charge is not a conviction.” At that point, the trial judge said that he would entertain an oral motion in limine on this line of cross-examination at a later time, but in any event, before Hurst testified.
