Appellant Dionne Andrea Baugh appeals the judgment of conviction entered against her after a jury found her guilty of malice murder, theft by taking, and financial transaction card fraud in connection with the death of Lance Herndon. 1
1. The victim’s mother found him in his bed after he had not been seen in his office. His head was bloodied and her efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy testified the victim had received a single, non-fatal blow to the back of the head that possibly disoriented him, and multiple blows to the front and right side of his face that crushed all the facial bones inward and caused death. When presented with a wrench identified by the victim’s housekeeper as similar to the one on a household counter before the victim’s death and missing since, the medical examiner testified the wrench could have inflicted the fatal blows. DNA found under the victim’s fingernails was determined to be that of the victim and that of appellant. A forensic expert testified that two head hairs and one pubic hair lifted from the victim’s nude body *737 were similar enough to samples obtained from appellant that they could have originated with appellant. A blood spatter expert testified that the assailant was on the bed, possibly straddling the victim, at the time the wounds were inflicted.
The State also presented evidence that appellant, one of several of the victim’s lovers, had been arrested for criminal trespass outside the victim’s home a month earlier and the court date for the charges was the day the victim was found dead. While appellant told police that the victim had visited her in her home the evening before he was found dead, telephone records and witnesses who spoke with the victim as reflected in the records indicated he was at his home at that time. Police found several documents awaiting the victim’s signature in a search of appellant’s purse nine days after the victim was killed. One document stated the car appellant was driving had been purchased by the victim and, in the event of his death, the title should be given to appellant; another was a purported agreement between appellant and the victim acknowledging the existence of their romantic relationship and stating the car would belong to appellant if appellant stayed in the relationship until July 1998; the third unsigned document was the victim’s purported summary of the circumstances of the criminal trespass case against appellant and his desire that the charges be dropped. A laptop computer missing from the victim’s business office in his home and valued at $3,500 was found in appellant’s possession without the carrying case the victim insisted be used when it was borrowed. There was also evidence that appellant, giving the name Dionne Herndon, used a credit card issued to the victim to purchase furniture the day the victim was found dead.
Appellant contends the circumstantial evidence presented by the State was not sufficient to authorize her convictions.
[T]he correct rule for determining the sufficiency of the evidence in convictions based entirely on circumstantial evidence is that questions as to reasonableness are generally to. be decided by the jury which heard the evidence and where the jury is authorized to find that the evidence, though circumstantial, was sufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis save that of guilt, the appellate court will not disturb that finding, unless the verdict of guilty is unsupportable as a matter of law. [Cit.]
Roper v. State,
2. Citing
Woodard v. State,
After the detective recited what a witness had said in her out-of-court statement, the detective was then asked what appellant had said on the same subject in her statements to police, thereby repeatedly demonstrating an inconsistency between appellant’s statements and those made by various witnesses. In
Woodard
at 320, we pointed out that a witness’s prior consistent statement is admissible at trial “only where (1) the veracity of a witness’s trial testimony has been placed in issue at trial; (2) the witness is present at trial; and (3) the witness is available for cross-examination.” See also
Coburn v. State,
In the case at bar, the five witnesses testified and were subject to cross-examination before the investigating detective testified. During the cross-examinations of four of those witnesses, the defense did not suggest that the witness’s trial testimony was a recent fabrication or the product of improper motive or influence.
2
As in
Woodard,
the
*739
hearsay statements were introduced during the direct examination of the investigating officer and were not used to rehabilitate the credibility of the maker of the prior consistent statement after the veracity of the maker’s trial testimony had been attacked. Instead, the State used the prior consistent statements of the witnesses to impeach the defendant by presenting to the jury through one witness the inconsistencies between appellant’s out-of-court statements to police and the out-of-court statements made by other people. Since prior consistent statements are admissible only “to rebut a charge that a witness is motivated or has been influenced to testify falsely or that [her] testimony is a recent fabrication,”
(Woodard,
supra,
The question then becomes whether the error was harmful. We have often said that the erroneous admission of hearsay is harmless error where legally admissible evidence of the same fact is introduced. See, e.g.,
Felder v. State,
After reviewing the trial transcript in the case at bar, we conclude that the erroneous admission of the prior consistent statements constituted harmful error. The State’s case was one entirely of circumstantial evidence and credibility, and the improper bolstering of the State’s witnesses “added critical weight” to the State’s case. See
Phillips v. State,
In light of our reversal of the judgment of conviction, the remaining enumerated errors need not be addressed since they are not likely to recur on retrial.
Judgment reversed.
Notes
The crimes occurred in the early morning hours of August 8, 1996. On February 3, 1998, the Fulton County grand jury returned a true bill of indictment charging appellant with malice murder, felony murder (aggravated assault), aggravated assault, theft by taking a laptop computer from the victim, theft by taking jewelry from the victim, and financial transaction card fraud. Appellant’s jury trial commenced on April 9, 2001, and concluded on April 17 when the jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts. The trial court sentenced appellant on April 20 to life imprisonment on the malice murder conviction, a concurrent five-year sentence for theft by taking, and a concurrent two-year sentence for financial transaction card fraud. The felony murder conviction was vacated by operation of law
(Malcolm v. State,
During the cross-examination of appellant’s ex-mother-in-law, defense counsel suggested that it was not until appellant and the witness’s son were going through a divorce that the witness had first told police about the statement she testified appellant made to her. This was a suggestion that the witness’s trial testimony and her prior consistent state *739 ment were the result of the witness’s animus toward appellant as a result of the divorce proceedings.