Derrick Paul Holmes appeals his convictions and sentences for the malice murder of Nakisha Rawls, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (“RICO”) Act. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
Construed to support the verdicts, the evidence showed that Rawls and Holmes knew each other for more than seven years. Rawls was a prostitute, and Holmes was her pimp; Holmes had other prostitutes working for him as well, all of whom he kept under control by threats and violence. For several months before her death, Rawls spoke of leaving prostitution, and she twice left Holmes; she left a third time, was living with her mother, and feared that Holmes would harm her.
Two days before Rawls was killed, Emma Grant, a prostitute who worked for Holmes, helped him follow Rawls’s mother from her place of work to the apartment complex in which she lived. Holmes told Grant to rent a vehicle with tinted windows; the next day, Grant’s mother rented a white SUV with tinted windows, which Grant turned over to Holmes.
In the hours before Rawls was killed, a white SUV was seen repeatedly driving in the parking lot of the apartment complex where Rawls and her mother were living; a resident became suspicious and recorded the license number of the SUV. While the SUV was in the parking lot, Rawls exited the apartment building and got into a black Cadillac near the SUV; two men carrying firearms emerged from the SUV and shot into the Cadillac. Rawls was struck by eleven bullets, primarily in the head and torso, and died of multiple gunshot wounds. A law enforcement officer who responded to the crime scene received
Telephone calls from Holmes’s cell phone in the minutes before Rawls was killed originated from the area of a cell tower close to the scene of the shooting. Holmes and Andre Smith were arrested after a road rage incident in November 2008; a pistol recovered at that time proved to have been used in the shooting of Rawls.
1. The evidence authorized the jury to find Holmes guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted. Jackson v. Virginia,
2. Evidence that Holmes violated the RICO Act included certain items that were the product of a vehicle search that occurred more than two years before Rawls was killed. During the incident that brought about the search, Holmes, while in an area known for prostitute activity in College Park, was seated behind the wheel of the Cadillac that later proved to be the vehicle in which Rawls was killed; he was approached by a city police officer and gave consent to search the vehicle; and the search yielded the items that were introduced at trial. Holmes contends that the fruits of the search should have been suppressed because he was stopped by the officer on suspicion of violating a city ordinance, and the State did not allege and prove the ordinance at issue. See Lucas v. State,
justified by some objective manifestation that the person stopped is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity.... This specific, articulable suspicion must be based on the totality of the circumstances — e.g., objective observations,*231 information from police reports, the modes or patterns of certain kinds of lawbreakers, and the inferences drawn and deductions made by a trained law enforcement officer.
Ciak v. State,
Moreover, the trial court also noted that the police officer was authorized to approach the parked Cadillac, ask questions of the occupants, and even ask for consent to search the vehicle, without a requirement that the officer have articulable suspicion. See In the Interest of D. H.,
3. Holmes contends that his trial counsel failed to provide effective representation, and that his motion for new trial on that ground should have been granted. In order to prevail on this claim, he must show both that counsel’s performance was deficient, and that the deficient performance was prejudicial to his defense. Smith v. Francis,
(b) During the trial, a law enforcement officer testified to an incident in which he arrested Holmes and Andre Smith and recovered one of the handguns that was used to kill Rawls; Holmes contends that the officer’s testimony regarding the events leading to the arrest was hearsay to which trial counsel should have objected. The officer testified that: a motorist, Styles, while driving on a street in Atlanta, encountered a car blocking the street while the vehicle’s occupants talked to a female pedestrian; at that time, Holmes was in the front passenger seat of the stopped car and Smith was in the driver’s seat; Styles exchanged words with the two men and drove away; Styles observed the same vehicle shortly thereafter and saw the two men switch seating positions; the car pulled up alongside Styles’s car; Smith fired a pistol five times at Styles, who called 911; another law enforcement officer encountered the vehicle with Holmes and Smith inside it; Holmes and Smith abandoned their vehicle and ran; the testifying officer searched the area on foot, and found the two men lying on the ground next to a dog kennel; and he arrested them, and found the pistol in the dog kennel.
During the hearing on the motion for new trial, trial counsel testified that he was aware of a potential hearsay objection, but was also aware that, in any event, the officer would be able to testify to apprehending Smith and Holmes at the site where he recovered the pistol used to shoot Rawls. Counsel also testified that the officer’s testimony allowed him to argue to the jury that the murder weapon was not his client’s, but belonged to Smith; during his closing argument, counsel noted that the weapon had been used in “the shooting in Atlanta, not by Mr. Holmes [but] by Andre Smith,” and concluded that there was “actually more evidence against Andre Smith” than against Holmes. Thus, we cannot conclude that in failing to raise a hearsay objection, counsel was pursuing an unreasonable strategy. See Robinson v. State,
(c) Finally, Holmes contends that trial counsel should have objected to the testimony of a motel owner as it was derived from information gained during the encounter between Holmes and the College Park police officer, see Division 2, supra, and was thus “fruit of the poisonous tree.” See Vergara v. State,
Judgments affirmed.
Notes
Rawls was killed on August 30, 2008. On May 17, 2011, a DeKalb County grand jury indicted Holmes and Emma Hope Grant for malice murder, felony murder while in the commission of aggravated assault, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and violating the RICO Act. Holmes was tried alone before a jury October 3-7, 2011, and found guilty of all charges. On October 18, 2011, Holmes was sentenced to life in prison for malice murder, twenty years in prison for violating the RICO Act, and five years in prison for possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, all to be served consecutively; the remaining guilty verdicts were either vacated by operation of law or merged with crimes for which sentence was entered. See Malcolm v. State,
Although Holmes states that 13 such acts appeared in the indictment, the only two he specifically addresses are: the allegation that Rawls’s mother purchased an airplane ticket for Rawls when Rawls was in Miami and attempted to leave Holmes’s employ; and, a description of Grant’s attire and possessions during the police encounter discussed in Division 2, supra, and the statements she made at the time.