NORRIS v. THE STATE.
S20A0500
Supreme Court of Georgia
JUNE 1, 2020
309 Ga. 11
MELTON, Chief Justice.
FINAL COPY
MELTON,
Following a jury trial, Melissa Norris was convicted of malice murder and a related firearm offense in connection with the shooting death of her father, Charles.1 Norris appeals, arguing that the trial court erred by failing to charge the jury on mistake of fact. We affirm.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, the evidence presented at trial established that Norris and her father had a strained relationship based on Norris’s refusal to follow her parents’ rules. On December 20, 1995, Norris, who was 15 years old at the time, called her best friend, Alicia Osborne,2 and stated that she had been arguing with her father and that she was “fixing to do something.” Alicia later told officers that Norris had previously threatened to kill her father.
Sometime after ending her call with Alicia, Norris took a gun from her brother’s room, walked downstairs to the couch where her father was sitting, pointed the gun at the back of his head, and shot him. Norris left the scene, still holding the gun, and ran up the road to a nearby restaurant to find her brother. Once there, she told her brother that she had shot their father; he stated that he did not believe her, but took the gun from her and threw it into a nearby dumpster. Officers later recovered a .38-caliber handgun and a washcloth from that dumpster.
Norris then called Alicia and admitted to shooting her father. The pair did not call for help or notify law enforcement; instead, they met up and walked down the street to Alicia’s aunt’s house for dinner. Alicia’s aunt noticed that the girls were acting “giggly” and whispering back and forth throughout dinner.
That afternoon, Charles Norris was found shot to death in his home. The medical examiner concluded that he died from a single gunshot wound to the back of his head and that the gunshot wound was a contact wound.3 The medical examiner also located a bullet during the autopsy and turned it over to the GBI for further testing. The firearm examiner concluded that the bullet was fired from the .38-caliber handgun previously retrieved from the restaurant dumpster.
After providing numerous conflicting stories to law enforcement, including telling officers that her brother had shot the victim and that she was not at home when the shooting occurred, Norris eventually admitted that she shot her father in the back of the head. The State also introduced a letter Norris wrote to the District Attorney in 2009, wherein she stated, in pertinent part:
Of course, there is no excuse for my wrongdoing, but you have to know that I didn’t just up and decide to kill my father maliciously, that’s not the life of a normal 15 year old. I won’t point the finger elsewhere because I now take full responsibility, which I actually started the night I confessed.
Norris testified at trial that she pointed the gun at the back of her father’s head, that she did not know whether the gun was loaded, and that she was “just being stupid,
1. Though not enumerated as error, consistent with our customary practice in murder cases, we have reviewed the sufficiency of the evidence, and we conclude that the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to reject Norris’s claim of accident and find her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which she was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 319 (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979); State v. Newman, 305 Ga. 792, 795 (1) (827 SE2d 678) (2019).
2. In her sole enumeration of error, Norris claims that the trial court erred by failing to charge the jury on mistake of fact. The record shows that, during the charge conference, Norris requested the trial court read the suggested pattern jury instruction for mistake of fact, which, tracking the applicable statute, stated that “[a] person shall not be found guilty of a crime if the act (or omission to act) constituting the crime was induced by a misapprehension of fact that, if true, would have justified the act or omission.” See
As an initial matter, the record shows that Norris did not object to the trial court’s ruling and did not lodge an objection at the end of the trial court’s final charge to the jury. Because Norris failed to object in the trial court, this Court can only review her claim for plain error. See
Norris’s entire claim is premised on the assertion that there was evidence to support a mistake of fact jury charge. Through a complex analysis of the Georgia Code and English common law, Norris argues that Georgia law allows a defendant to assert a mistake of fact defense in order to reduce her culpability for an alleged crime, even where the underlying conduct — in this case, pointing a firearm at her father’s head and firing — is “unlawful.” Because of this, Norris argues that she was entitled to a mistake of fact jury charge. Norris’s intricate common-law argument is so convoluted and unsupported by Georgia authority directly on point that we cannot say that the trial court’s ruling amounted to “clear and obvious error beyond reasonable dispute.” (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Westbrook v. State, 308 Ga. 92, 101 (5) (a) (839 SE2d 620) (2020). See also Simmons v. State, 299 Ga. 370, 374 (2) (788 SE2d 494) (2016) (“An error cannot be plain where there is no controlling authority on point.” (citation and punctuation omitted)).
Moreover, Norris’s claim fails because she cannot show that the trial court’s failure to give the charge likely affected the outcome of the proceedings. See Kelly, 290 Ga. at 32-33 (2) (a). The evidence presented at trial established that Norris fought with her father prior to his death, told her friend she was “fixing to do something” immediately prior to the shooting, was holding the gun to her father’s head when it fired, fled the scene and failed to call for help after the shooting, had her brother throw the murder weapon in a dumpster, went to dinner and hung out with her friend after committing the crimes, admitted to numerous people she had shot her father, lied to law enforcement on numerous occasions about her role in her father’s death, and wrote a letter to the District Attorney taking “full responsibility” for her father’s death.
Given the strength of the State’s case, the trial court’s refusal to instruct the jury on mistake of fact does not amount to plain
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
DECIDED JUNE 1, 2020.
Murder. McDuffie Superior Court. Before Judge Hammond.
Lee & Ziegler, Christopher R. Lee, Konrad G. W. Ziegler, for appellant.
William P. Doupé, District Attorney, James W. Allen, Assistant District Attorney; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Matthew B. Crowder, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.