Appellant Rodqucas Bowen was found guilty by a jury of felony murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of victim Henry Wright, Jr.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence at trial established as follows. On April 9, 2009, appellant went to buy drugs at a drug or “trap” house operated by Paul Parker and cousins Antonio and Dontravious Fagin out of an apartment in Fulton County. That afternoon, Antonio Fagin and Wright, who worked as the trap house door man, were the only people present in the apartment and were unarmed.
Antonio testified that while running from the back of the building, he used his cell phone to call Dontravious and, having seen Wright collapse on the sidewalk, informed Dontravious and Parker that Wright had been shot. As the three men met up near the exit gate of the apartment complex, they spotted appellant walking nearby and ran after him. Robert Barrett, who was walking in the complex after getting off work, testified that he saw Wright lying on the curb. Approaching Wright, Barrett then saw appellant, whom he had known for 13 years, walking toward him. The two men greeted each other, and, as Barrett went to aid Wright, he saw the other men run toward appellant. Confronted by Antonio and the others, appellant denied having anything to do with Wright’s shooting and, displaying a gun, told the unarmed group to back off. When they complied, appellant ran to a nearby gas station where he carjacked a woman, Brittany Turner, and escaped in her car. Wright, who had been shot in the arm and the chest, died shortly thereafter from the gunshot wound to his torso.
Police investigating the scene found a trail of blood running from where Wright had collapsed to the porch of the trap house apartment. The apartment itsélf, however, had been cleaned before the police arrived, and no shell casings or fingerprints were found inside. During the course of the investigation, police received information naming appellant, along with two other individuals, Moxtious Cain and Xza-rious Terrell, as being involved in Wright’s death. Thereafter, Antonio picked appellant out of a photo lineup as the man he sold marijuana to in the apartment just prior to the shooting, and Dontravious picked appellant out of a separate photo lineup as the man he and the others confronted outside the apartment following the shooting. Brittany Turner also picked appellant out of a photographic lineup and identified him as the man who carjacked her at the gas station.
1. Appellant asserts that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support his convictions. In addressing challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, we view the evidence presented in the light most favorable to the verdict and determine only whether a rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt from that evidence that the defendant was guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. See Ellis v. State,
Pursuant to OCGA § 16-2-20 (a), “[e]very person concerned in the commission of a crime is a party thereto and may be ... convicted of commission of the crime.” While proof of a shared criminal intent with the actual perpetrator is necessary to establish that one is a party to the crime, “shared criminal intent may be inferred from the person’s conduct before, during, and after the crime.” Grant v. State,
2. Appellant further contends that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion for new trial on general grounds, the consideration of which involves different issues than mere sufficiency of the evidence. See Allen v. State,
3. Appellant’s claim that the trial court erred by denying his request to question the venire about potential bias against him because he is a convicted felon has not been preserved for appeal. See Hurt v. State,
4. Finally, appellant contends that the trial court erred in admitting evidence at trial of the photographic pre-trial identifications of appellant by Brittany Turner and the Fagin cousins. Without providing any specifics, appellant generally asserts that the pre-trial identification procedures used by the officers who conducted the photographic identifications were unduly suggestive and unreliable and that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress this evidence, as well as his in-court continuing objections with respect to its admission.
Testimony regarding a witness’s pre-trial identification of the defendant must be excluded if the identification procedure was unduly suggestive and, under the totality of the circumstances, resulted in a substantial likelihood of misidentification. See Neil v. Biggers,
Based on our review of the record,
Finding no evidence of action by law enforcement that would have led any of these witnesses to single out appellant in the photographic lineups, we conclude that the pre-trial identifications of appellant by these witnesses were admissible.
Judgment affirmed.
Notes
The crimes occurred on April 9, 2009. A Fulton County grand jury indicted appellant, along with co-indictees Moxtious Cain and Xzarious Terrell, on charges of felony murder (two counts), aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (two counts), criminal attempt to commit armed robbery, possession of a firearm during commission of a felony, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Appellant was tried separately before a jury in October 2010. The trial court granted appellant’s motion for a directed verdict of acquittal on criminal attempt to commit armed robbery and felony murder premised on the felony of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and the jury found appellant guilty on the remaining counts. On October 8, 2010, appellant was sentenced to life in prison for felony murder predicated on the underlying felony of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. One count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon was merged with the felony murder count for sentencing purposes, see Noel v. State,
The guns normally kept in the trap house had been removed earlier that day and stored in a nearby parked car after police were seen patrolling in the area.
Several witnesses, including Antonio, described appellant as being bald or with little to no hair.
Although appellant did not file a motion to suppress Brittany Turner’s pre-trial identification of him, at the beginning of his trial appellant sought via motion in limine to exclude all evidence regarding the carjacking, including Ms. Turner’s pre-trial and in-court identification of appellant, on the basis that this evidence involved a separate crime for which appellant had not been charged and, thus, constituted improper character evidence. The trial court disagreed, finding that the carjacking involved appellant’s flight from the scene of the shooting and thus was a continuation of the crime at issue and part and parcel of the same event.
Other than what the trial court included in its order entered February 9, 2010 denying appellant’s motion to suppress the pre-trial identifications of him made by the Fagins, we do not know what evidence or arguments were considered by that court as appellant failed to include a copy of the transcript of the pre-trial hearing in the record and failed to move to supplement the record after the State pointed out the absence of that transcript in its brief to this Court. See Johnson v. State,
Having determined that the identification procedures used were not impermissibly suggestive, this Court is not required to examine the totality of the circumstances to determine whether these procedures created a substantial likelihood of misidentification. See Miller,