HARRIS v. THE STATE.
S24A0910
Supreme Court of Georgia
August 20, 2024
321 Ga. 87
PINSON, Justice.
FINAL COPY
On September 14, 2021, Emmanuel Harris and his girlfriend, Jordan Gooch, got in a fight, and Harris stabbed and killed Gooch. Harris claimed that he stabbed Gooch in self-defense after she “came at” him with a knife. After a trial, he was convicted of malice murder.1
We agree that admitting this evidence was an abuse of discretion.
This error requires reversal of Harris‘s convictions because the State has failed to prove that the error was harmless. An error that does not violate the defendant‘s constitutional rights is harmless if it is “highly probable that the error did not contribute to the verdict.” Harris v. State, 314 Ga. 238, 283 (5) (875 SE2d 659) (2022) (cleaned up). The other-acts evidence that was admitted in error was powerful and highly prejudicial: it allowed the State to cast Harris as a violent, repeat abuser using firsthand, graphic evidence, and the State asked the jury to rely on the impermissible inference from that evidence that Harris murdered Gooch because he was a bad person who had committed domestic violence before. The properly admitted evidence, although significant, does not dispel the likelihood that the prejudicial other-acts evidence contributed to the jury‘s guilty verdict, which necessarily rejected Harris‘s claim of self-defense.
For these reasons and others set forth below, Harris‘s convictions are reversed. Because the evidence was sufficient to authorize
1. Background
The evidence at trial showed the following.3
(a) Harris and Gooch had been dating on-and-off for about a year, and living together for three or four months, at the time of Gooch‘s death. They had known each other even longer and had dated for two or three years in the past. Gooch‘s sister, who sometimes spent the night at the apartment that Gooch shared with Harris, said that Gooch and Harris would sometimes “get in each other‘s faces” when they argued, but she was not aware of any physical violence in the relationship. Gooch‘s mother, who knew Harris “very well” because he had lived with the family for several months in the early years of the relationship, said that Harris “had a problem with his temper” but had told her when he and Gooch resumed their re
The day before she was killed, Gooch stayed at her mother‘s home after an argument with Harris. While Gooch was with her sister, Harris called Gooch 32 times. Gooch eventually answered one of Harris‘s calls and then told her sister that Harris was coming over. Gooch went outside and talked to Harris when he arrived, and Gooch‘s sister watched them from a distance. Gooch‘s sister saw Gooch and Harris stand by Harris‘s parked car and talk for 30 or 40 minutes. Neither of them appeared “aggressive,” and there was no physical contact, yelling, or screaming. After the conversation between Gooch and Harris ended, Harris left, and Gooch went back inside her mother‘s home, where she spent the night. Gooch told her sister that Harris had apologized and said he would come to Gooch‘s
The next morning, Gooch told her mother and sister she was going to the apartment she shared with Harris to get a change of clothes. Late that night, Gooch‘s mother and sister learned that Harris had crashed Gooch‘s car and was in the hospital. But Gooch had not been in the car with Harris when he crashed, and Gooch‘s mother and sister could not get in touch with her. They were able to get into Gooch‘s and Harris‘s apartment the next day, where they found Gooch‘s dead body lying on the living room floor.
Investigators arrived soon after. They found a broken knife on the couch near Gooch‘s body and saw a large amount of blood on the knife and on the couch and carpet in the living room. The State‘s crime-scene expert opined that the blood spatter on the wall suggested Gooch had been stabbed while she was on the couch, and the pooling of blood on the floor was consistent with Gooch bleeding while on the floor. And this evidence could be consistent with Gooch being stabbed either while on the ground or while sitting on the
Harris‘s fingerprints were found on the knife along with a second set of fingerprints that could not be identified. The State‘s fingerprint examination expert explained that the unidentified fingerprint appeared to be a “fingertip impression” and it was “possible that the area [the examiner] needed to see for that comparison was not represented on” the known prints from Harris and Gooch because of the techniques used to collect them. The investigators also connected bloody footprints seen throughout the apartment to dried blood on Harris‘s feet, and the blood samples collected from the knife and Harris‘s feet matched Gooch‘s DNA.
A GBI medical examiner performed Gooch‘s autopsy and determined that Gooch died from multiple stab wounds. The medical examiner opined that the stab wound to the left side of Gooch‘s upper chest, near the shoulder and armpit region, had been fatal. This wound passed through Gooch‘s ribs, lungs, and heart. Gooch also had two stab wounds on the left side of her back, one close to her
A GBI agent interviewed Harris two days after Gooch‘s body was found, and a recording of that interview was played for the jury. During the interview, Harris said Gooch was mad that he was packing her things and he found her sitting on the couch with a knife by her side. He claimed self-defense, and said Gooch attacked him. He also said that, at some point, they “fell while fighting” over the knife, and Gooch was “cut,” and he used a sweater to try to stop the bleeding. Later, he said that they were both holding onto the knife when they “tripped,” and he fell on top of Gooch; he could not recall where
(b) Before trial, the State filed a notice of intent to introduce evidence under
At trial, the court gave a limiting instruction before C. A.‘s testimony, directing the jury to consider the evidence only as it related
C. A. testified as follows. She and Harris had been dating and living together for almost a year when the battery happened, and Harris had never been violent toward her before then. Then one day he grew angry with her, raised his voice, and slapped her across the face. He apologized afterward and promised “he would never hurt [her] again.” But the next night, Harris became upset while they were playing a computer game, “slammed [C. A.‘s] laptop shut,” and told her “something to the effect of[,] ‘You‘re being a little ridiculous.‘” They both stood, and Harris screamed and spit in C. A.‘s face, then pushed her to the floor and kicked her “over and over again on [her] backside.” At one point he screamed, “Die!” C. A. testified that Harris was like “a different person” and had “pure hate in his eyes for [her].” Harris then ripped off C. A.‘s nightgown and underwear and continued to kick her as she lay naked on the floor.
After this attack, Harris started packing his belongings and taking them to his car. He then came back to the room, pushed C. A. to the floor, and started kicking and pushing her again. At some
When C. A. thought Harris was gone, she locked herself in the bedroom, but he returned and broke through the locked bedroom door. She also hid in the bathroom with her dog at one point and he broke the door down.
After Harris left, C. A. looked in the mirror and saw that she had black bruises on her buttocks, broken nails, and injuries to her arms. The State introduced photos that showed C. A.‘s injuries, including a black eye, bruising with a handprint visible on her back, and two photos showing dark bruising across three quarters of her buttocks. After this incident, C. A. missed a week-and-a-half of work due to her injuries and was prescribed sleeping pills and anxiety
Harris later called C. A., apologized, and asked if he could return to their home but C. A. told him not to. In the days that followed, Harris sent C. A. “[a] lot of text messages.” Screenshots of the text messages were introduced into evidence, and C. A.‘s verbatim reading of these messages spans nearly 19 pages of the trial transcript. In the messages, he apologized, asked to come back, offered to pay C. A. money, professed his love for her, and asked for forgiveness. In the final text message that was read to the jury, Harris said he went to a doctor and had “a slipped disk from where you shoved me down the stairs because you were upset I was about to leave.”
After C. A. finished testifying and was excused, the parties read a stipulation that Harris entered a guilty plea to two counts of aggravated battery of C. A. Harris testified that he served 22 months in jail with work release, meaning he was either at work or in jail during that period.
(c) Harris testified as follows. When asked about the weekend
As to his relationship with Gooch, he testified that they had dated for almost three years in the past, broken up, and later resumed their relationship; she stayed at his apartment most nights and kept her belongings there. But Gooch would sometimes stay with her mother or a friend “for a couple days” when she and Harris had a “dispute.” In July 2021, Harris and Gooch “had a big blowout” and he “kicked her out and moved all her stuff out.” But they reconciled after “two or so weeks give or take a couple of days,” and Gooch
Two nights before Gooch‘s death, Harris and Gooch got into an argument after Harris “made a snide remark.” Gooch broke a plate during that argument, and Harris broke a lamp. They got into another argument the next morning, after Harris complained that he “wished [Gooch] would clean up more.” Gooch “got into [Harris‘s] face,” Harris asked her to leave, and she left. Later that day, Harris could not find his car keys and suspected Gooch took them when she left because she had previously taken his keys, phone, or wallet when she got mad at him. Harris called Gooch more than 20 times before she answered, and then he met her outside her mother‘s home. According to Harris, they discussed their relationship and Gooch did not want to end things, but Harris did, so he told Gooch they could arrange a future time for her to pick up her belongings from their apartment. Harris then returned home.
The next day, Gooch returned to the apartment and let herself in with her key while Harris was on a Zoom call. When Harris finished his call, he found Gooch sitting on the couch and she seemed
When Harris left the bedroom to go to the kitchen, he saw Gooch “standing there” with “a big silver kitchen knife in her hand.” She had a “glare in her eye” and was holding the knife in her right hand. Gooch then “came at” Harris with the knife. Harris “caught her hand, her knife hand, and [he] kind of staggered back because it was dangerously close to hitting [him].” He was “scared” and in “survival mode,” and he “manipulated” the knife in her hand and drove it into her shoulder. Gooch fell toward Harris, and he stabbed her again in the shoulder and they both fell. Harris testified that he stabbed Gooch “multiple times. It was just a reaction, a survival instinct.”
When asked why he did not take the knife from Gooch and toss it, Harris testified that she “came at” him fast and “with enough force” that he “lost control or full control trying to disarm her” and
(d) The prosecutor argued in closing that Harris‘s “motive is to control romantic partners with violence. That‘s what he does. That‘s what he did in this case.” The prosecutor argued that this motive was shown by the evidence that Harris “ripped off [C. A.‘s] nightgown and left that handprint on her back and did this to her as she was lying in a fetal position on the ground and he is kicking her like a dog over and over” and his “incessant calls and text messages” to C. A. and Gooch. The prosecutor also noted that Harris told both C.
The prosecutor argued that it was not a case of self-defense, “[a]nd if it‘s not self-defense, then it‘s murder. Since it‘s not self-defense, it has to be murder.” Turning back to the State‘s motive theory, the prosecutor said, “You know from the evidence you heard that leaving — one of the partners leaving is not only generally a very dangerous time, but it‘s a very dangerous time with Mr. Harris. You heard [C. A.] say that she sustained those injuries when he‘s leaving, when he‘s no longer in control.” Then, as to Gooch, the prosecutor argued that “[w]hen [Harris] could not control [Gooch] with the incessant texts and apologies and the things he always tries, he ambushed [Gooch] and he exerted the ultimate and final control, the ultimate and final control. Twice in the back, twice in the back, and once through the heart and lung.” And, referring to broken clothes hangers found at the crime scene, the prosecutor argued “this explosive, violent behavior is how he kept [Gooch] off balance and controlled her.”
(a) Rule 404 (b) Error
Harris contends that the trial court erred by not excluding under
If evidence has “any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence . . . more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence,” it is relevant.
Rule 404 (b) is one such law that requires the exclusion of potentially relevant evidence. That rule limits the admission of “[e]vidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts,” which is sometimes called “extrinsic” or “other-acts” evidence. Roberts v. State, 315 Ga. 229, 235 (2) (a) (880 SE2d 501) (2022). Evidence of a defendant‘s past wrongdoing is treated with caution because of the danger that the
If other-acts evidence is relevant to an issue in the case other than the defendant’s character, it is not inadmissible under
Here, the State argued and the trial court agreed that the evidence of Harris’s aggravated battery in 2017 was relevant to explain Harris’s motive for killing Gooch and to show that stabbing her was not an accident or mistake. We address each argument in turn.
(i) Motive
Speaking generally, motive is the defendant’s “reason” for committing a crime. Brooks v. State, 298 Ga. 722, 726 (2) (783 SE2d 895) (2016). Motive is not an essential element of any crime, so the State need not prove it, but the State often wants to introduce evidence of motive because it can help prove that a defendant had the required criminal intent. See id. (describing motive as “the reason that nudges the will and prods the mind to indulge the criminal intent”)
When the State seeks to use other-acts evidence to show motive, the danger that the evidence will be used as improper propensity evidence is acute. The problem is that motives are too easily described in “too generic a fashion.” Kirby, 304 Ga. at 487 (4) (b). An alleged motive to “obtain money and sex,” id., or to “control other people with violence,” Strong, 309 Ga. at 312 (2) (d) (2), for instance, can be just a “classic improper propensity argument” in disguise, because it focuses on an aspect of the defendant’s bad character as the generic “motive” to act, id. (citation and punctuation omitted). See also Harris, 314 Ga. at 270 (3) (e).
To separate propensity arguments from motive arguments when the State seeks to use other-acts evidence to show motive, we require the alleged motive to have a “specific, logical link to the alleged crimes.” Harris, 314 Ga. at 270 (3) (e) (citing Strong, 309 Ga. at 312 (2) (d) (2)). Put another way, if the other-acts evidence actually tends to show the jury that the defendant had a specific reason for committing the charged crime, it is relevant to motive. If, on the
Applying these principles here, the State’s argument that the other-acts evidence was relevant to show Harris’s “motive” does not hold up. The State argued that Harris’s battery of his ex-girlfriend in 2017 showed that he had a “motive to control intimate partners with violence.” We have rejected this same generic motive as a “classic improper propensity argument” before. Strong, 309 Ga. at 312 (2) (d) (2). See also Pritchett, 314 Ga. at 778 (2) (b).7 And nothing here
(ii) Absence of Accident or Mistake
The trial court also admitted the other-acts evidence as relevant to show the absence of accident or mistake. At trial, Harris testified that he acted in self-defense — not that the stabbing was an
To be admissible under
But even assuming mistake or accident were at issue and that the evidence that Harris battered C. A. was relevant to disproving those defenses, the evidence still had to be excluded if the probative value of that evidence was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.10 The probative value of evidence is a function of its “logical force to prove a point and the need at trial for evidence on that point,” and the need for such evidence “depends on the marginal worth of the evidence — how much it adds, in other words, to the other proof available to establish the fact for which it is offered.” Harris, 314 Ga. at 263 (3) (a) (cleaned up). And unfair prejudice results when relevant evidence “lure[s] the factfinder into declaring guilt on an improper basis rather than on proof specific to the offense charged.” Id (citation and punctuation omitted).
*
Because the other-acts evidence the State put forward here was not relevant to prove motive and its minimal probative value as to the issue of accident or mistake was substantially outweighed by its unfair prejudicial effect, the trial court abused its discretion by admitting the evidence. See Harris, 314 Ga. at 262-263 (3) (a), 270 (3) (e); Pritchett, 314 Ga. at 778 (2) (b); Strong, 309 Ga. at 312 (2) (d) (2)-(3).
(b) Harmless Error
Having concluded that it was an abuse of discretion to admit the evidence of Harris’s battery of his ex-girlfriend in 2017, we must consider whether that error requires reversal of his convictions. Reversal is required unless the State proves that the error is harmless. See Platt v. State, 319 Ga. 1, 11 (3) (901 SE2d 114) (2024). An error
When the error is admitting evidence that should not have been admitted, the harmless-error question turns on how much the wrongly admitted evidence likely mattered to the jury’s decision to convict. See Heard, 309 Ga. at 91 (3) (g) (concluding that wrongly admitted other-acts evidence was harmful where it was the only evidence of the defendant’s “involvement in violent acts,” so the general principle that wrongly admitted evidence is harmless when it “had no significant influence on the guilty verdicts” did not apply).
The wrongly admitted evidence here was powerful and highly prejudicial. As we discussed above, evidence of a defendant’s past bad acts is excluded precisely because jurors will give it too much weight, relying on the seductive logic that a defendant who does bad things probably did this bad thing, too. See White, 319 Ga. at 398-399 (Peterson, PJ, concurring); Michelson, 335 U.S. at 475-476. That is all the more likely when the specific content of the other-acts evidence is itself inflammatory, see Strong, 309 Ga. at 316-317 (4) (considering “the severity of the prior acts and their resulting injuries”
We cannot discount the effect that such powerful and prejudicial character evidence could have had on the jury’s decision to find Harris guilty of murder. It is true that, apart from the other-acts evidence, the State also marshaled significant properly admitted evidence that tended to make Harris’s claim of self-defense less likely. Gooch’s autopsy showed that she died from a stab wound to her side but also had head wounds and two other stab wounds near her shoulder blade, only Harris’s fingerprints were definitively identified on the knife, and Harris fled the scene. But Harris offered an explanation consistent with self-defense and the evidence for each point: He was “scared” and in “survival mode” when he “manipulated” the knife in Gooch’s hand and drove it into her shoulder, and
3. Conclusion
For the reasons set out above, the trial court abused its discretion by admitting the evidence of Harris’s past battery in this case, and the State failed to prove that the error was harmless. Harris’s convictions must therefore be reversed. The evidence of Harris’s guilt was sufficient as a matter of constitutional due process, so the State may retry him if it so chooses. See Harris, 314 Ga. at 289 (6).
Judgment reversed. All the Justices concur, except LaGrua, J., who dissents.
LAGRUA, Justice, dissenting.
“
1. As noted by the majority, evidence is relevant if it has “any tendency” to make the existence of “any” consequential fact “more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.”
At trial, the State presented the C. A. evidence to prove Harris’s motive in killing Gooch: namely, his motive to use violence to control a domestic partner as the romantic relationship with that partner was ending. See State v. Williams, 316 Ga. 249, 253 (887 SE2d 285) (2023) (“Even evidence that reflects on a person’s character or a trait of character . . . may be admitted under Rule 404 (b) . . . [as] proof of motive[.]”) (cleaned up). Harris’s motive in violently assaulting C. A. was relevant to his motive in his violent encounters with Gooch, i.e., to control domestic partners with violence as the relationship ends. Thus, the C. A. evidence was
In Smart, a case the majority indicates may have been wrongly decided, we held that other-act evidence of spousal abuse was relevant and admissible if it “help[ed] the jury understand why [an a]ppellant might have used violence” against his wife. Smart v. State, 299 Ga. 414, 418 (2) (a) (788 SE2d 442) (2016). And, while the majority distances itself from Smart by stating that “[s]ome of us have doubts about whether Smart was correctly decided,” we have not cabined Smart. On the contrary, we have cited Smart explicitly referencing the holding so fundamentally important here. See Lowe v. State, 314 Ga. 788, 793 (2) (a) (879 SE2d 492) (2022) (citing Smart for its holding that, “evidence of prior acts of violence was relevant under Rule 404 (b) to help the jury understand that the defendant used violence to control the victim”); Thompson v. State, 308 Ga. 854, 858 (2) n.5 (843 SE2d 794) (2020) (noting Smart’s holding that prior domestic violence against the defendant’s ex-wife “was relevant to
Thus, both in Smart and elsewhere, we have held that evidence of extrinsic domestic violence is admissible to prove motive in a domestic violence case under Rule 404 (b), and I believe it was likewise admissible here. See Smart, 299 Ga. at 418 (2) (a). See also McWilliams v. State, 304 Ga. 502, 510 (3) (820 SE2d 33) (2018) (holding that evidence of extrinsic acts of physical abuse of romantic partners “was needed to adequately explain that appellant became violent with his romantic partners after consuming alcohol, including inflicting blows to their heads”).
Additionally, the State presented the C. A. evidence at trial to prove the absence of accident or mistake in the killing of Gooch. See
Thus, “[a]lthough the defense did not expressly contend that [the charged murder] was an accident, the State bore a heavy burden to overcome this implication[.]” Naples v. State, 308 Ga. 43, 52 (2) (e) (838 SE2d 780) (2020).13 Accordingly, I believe the C. A. evidence was also admissible under Rule 404 (b) to prove the absence of accident or mistake. See
Moreover, in this case, the majority has underemphasized Rule 403’s inclusive nature in considering the admissibility of the C. A. evidence. Rule 403 allows the admission of unfairly prejudicial evidence — it is only when the unfair prejudice “substantially” outweighs the probative value that Rule 403 mandates exclusion. See
“The probative value of evidence is a combination of its logical force to prove a point and the need at trial for evidence on that
The danger of unfair prejudice from the admission of the C. A. evidence was limited and did not substantially outweigh its prejudicial effect. In Smart, supra, we admitted evidence of Smart’s abuse of his previous spouse — that he would “often punch” his ex-wife, and that he “shoved her out of [a broken] window” when she was eight-months pregnant, such that she was “injured and bloody,” and then, when she finally made it inside the house, he “forcefully dragged” her back out of it — because “there was nothing inherent in this evidence that would create a risk” that the jury convicted Smart on a ground “different from proof specific to the offense charged.” Smart, 299 Ga. at 416 (2), 419 (2) (b) (citation and punctuation omitted). Here, the C. A. evidence, including C. A.’s testimony and the photographs depicting C. A.’s bruising, though troubling, was not unduly “graphic.” See Flowers v. State, 307 Ga. 618, 623 (2) (837 SE2d 824) (2020) (citing Smart, holding that the danger of unfair prejudice of testimony and video evidence of a previous “beating” did not substantially outweigh its probative value, because there was nothing “inherent” in the evidence creating a risk that the appellant “would be convicted on a ground different from proof specific to the offense charged”) (citation and punctuation omitted). Moreover, Harris testified that he and Gooch “kind of went through [a violent] cycle over and over again” and continued to have “some turmoil, lots of ups and downs” in the weeks before Gooch’s death, including the argument where Gooch broke a plate and Harris broke a lamp.
Harris’s relationship with C. A. followed a very similar pattern, also resulting in a violent end.14 As the State observed, both C. A. and Gooch were involved in arguments with Harris that lasted for several days, following which Harris packed his own belongings or
Thus, looking at the C. A. evidence “in a light most favorable to its admission, maximizing its probative value and minimizing its undue prejudicial impact,” Wilson, 312 Ga. at 190 (2) (citation and punctuation omitted), the trial court did not clearly abuse its discretion in admitting the C. A. evidence.
2. It is also highly probable that any error in the admission of the C. A. evidence did not contribute to the verdict against Harris in this case. See Smart, 299 Ga. at 416-419 (2). Although the C. A. evidence was disturbing, it is highly unlikely that it caused the jury to convict “on a ground different from proof specific to the offense charged.” Id. at 419 (2) (b) (citation and punctuation omitted).
Additionally, Harris’s trial testimony regarding what he did after Gooch’s death was inconsistent; first stating that he drove away in Gooch’s car after he killed Gooch, but he could not recall where he went; then admitting that he used a map program on his iPad for directions on where to go, but he could not recall his password to access the iPad. And the text messages between Harris and Gooch had been intentionally deleted from Harris’s cell phone and were irretrievable, but all his other text messages remained.
Notably, any undue prejudice arising from the C. A. evidence was minimized when Harris told the jury that he pleaded guilty to the aggravated battery of C. A. and spent two years in a work-release program. This admission “reduce[d] the risk that the jury convicted [Harris] to punish him for his other crime[ ],” because the jury heard that Harris “had already been punished for [that crime].” Nundra v. State, 316 Ga. 1, 7 (2) (885 SE2d 790) (2023).15 The trial
With respect to the State’s reference to the C. A. evidence during closing argument, the State argued that Harris’s motive for killing Gooch was “hard to understand,” which was why the C. A. evidence was necessary to prove that Harris’s “motive [wa]s to control romantic partners with violence” and to show that Gooch was in the most danger when she tried to leave, just like C. A. was.
In sum, Harris’s contradictory testimony and the evidence presented against him at trial were compelling evidence of his guilt, and the evidence pertaining to the incident with C. A. was not inherently prejudicial, both because the jury heard that Harris pleaded guilty to the related aggravated battery charge and because the State did not unduly emphasize, or unfairly characterize, the C. A. evidence during trial or in closing. Thus, even if admission of the
As such, I dissent.
Decided March 4, 2025.
Murder. Hall Superior Court. Before Judge Bearden.
Jake A. Shapiro, Christopher H. van Rossem, for appellant.
Lee Darragh, District Attorney, Rachel S. Tomlinson, Assistant District Attorney; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Beth A. Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Meghan H. Hill, Clint C. Malcolm, Senior Assistant Attorneys General, M. Catherine Norman, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Leslie S. Jones, amicus curiae.