S18A1158. THE STATE v. SPRATLIN.
S18A1158
Supreme Court of Georgia
March 11, 2019
Reconsideration denied March 27, 2019
305 Ga. 585
NAHMIAS, Presiding Justice.
FINAL COPY. Murder. DeKalb Superior Court. Before Judge Coursey. Sherry Boston, District Attorney, Lenny I. Krick, Anna G. Cross, Otobong U. Ekpo, Assistant District Attorneys; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, for appellant. Gerard B. Kleinrock, for appellee.
Appellee DeJuan Spratlin was convicted of malice murder and a firearm offense in connection with the shooting death of Edward Cobb. The trial court granted Spratlin a new trial, however, on the ground that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to seek the exclusion of testimony and comments about his post-arrest silence. The State appeals that ruling. As explained below, we reverse the trial court’s order.
1. (a) In March 2012, a DeKalb County grand jury indicted Spratlin and Isaiah Blackmon on charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault on Cobb, aggravated assault on Stanton Gilliam, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Spratlin and Blackmon were tried together beginning on October 28, 2013.
The evidence presented at trial showed the following.1 According to
According to Gilliam, he called his friend and neighbor Cobb to come over when Blackmon arrived because Gilliam felt uncomfortable about having to deal with two people when he had been expecting to be dealing with Spratlin alone. The men continued to negotiate, and after Cobb arrived, Blackmon agreed to pay Gilliam $1,025 and handed over the money. Blackmon then put the pound of marijuana in his coat, and the four men left the kitchen and headed
Abner, who had been waiting in her car, testified that after she heard the gunshots, she started to drive away when she saw Spratlin run out of the house in a panic saying, “They’re trying to rob me.” Spratlin got into Abner’s car and they drove away. Abner did not see Blackmon leave the house, and she never
Gilliam’s two housemates, Karalo Jackson and Rikeshia Andrews, had been asleep but woke at the sound of gunfire. Jackson found Cobb lying on the floor in the living room and called 911. Jackson and Andrews attempted to resuscitate Cobb, but he died from his gunshot wounds. Gilliam was taken to the hospital and recovered from his wounds. When the police searched the crime scene, they found a number of small bags of marijuana in a pair of Jackson’s pants in his room. Gilliam later testified that Jackson took 22 bags of marijuana out of Cobb’s pockets before the police arrived. Gilliam told the police that Spratlin and his associate had come over to purchase candy and then attempted to rob him. When shown a photographic lineup that included both Spratlin’s photo and Blackmon’s photo, Gilliam identified Spratlin (his former classmate) but was unable to identify Blackmon. Gilliam, Jackson, and Andrews did not tell the police that Spratlin and Blackmon had actually come over to buy marijuana, although they admitted it at trial.
Experts testified that Cobb had a grazing gunshot wound to the back of the head. He was shot through his arm and into his side by a .40-caliber bullet fired from close range. The fatal wounds were caused by two .38-caliber bullets fired
Spratlin was tracked to Alabama, where — 16 days after the shooting — detectives found him with Blackmon and an unidentified woman. Both suspects fled when the plainclothes detectives approached. Spratlin ran across the street but was quickly apprehended; Blackmon was later found hiding a mile away. A few days after the men were arrested, Gilliam saw Blackmon’s photo on a mugshot website for DeKalb County, where Blackmon was listed as being
Neither defendant testified. Spratlin’s primary theory of defense was mere presence. Spratlin’s counsel acknowledged that Spratlin set up the drug deal, but argued that he was surprised by Blackmon’s spontaneous decision to rob and shoot Gilliam and Cobb.
(b) During its case-in-chief, the State elicited testimony from three witnesses regarding Spratlin’s pretrial silence. First, as mentioned above, Abner testified that after she heard the gunshots, Spratlin ran toward her car and said, “They’re trying to rob me.” The prosecutor then asked the following questions:
Q. Ms. Abner, when DeJuan Spratlin jumped back in the car, did he ever tell you to call 911?
A. No.
Q. Did he ever tell you to drive to a police station so he could tell them what happened to him?
A. No.
Second, a detective from the Birmingham Police Department (“the Alabama detective“) testified that he located and arrested Spratlin in Alabama.
Q. Did you ask [Spratlin] if he wanted to make a statement?
A. No ma‘am.
Q. Did he make a statement? Did he tell you anything?
A. No ma‘am.
Third, a detective from the DeKalb County Police Department (“the Georgia detective“) testified that he traveled to Alabama to retrieve Spratlin and Blackmon after they were arrested. The prosecutor then asked the following questions:
Q. Okay. And when you got there, did you have the occasion to interview anyone?
A. Yes.
Q. Who did you interview?
A. I interviewed DeJuan Spratlin and Isaiah Blackmon.
Q. And what, if anything, did either of them tell you?
A. DeJuan refused to make a statement. When I interviewed Isaiah, I noticed that he seemed to be under the influence of something. So I did not continue with the interview, knowing that he was going to be coming back to DeKalb County.
Spratlin’s counsel did not object to any of this testimony.
At the close of the State’s case-in-chief, with the jury outside the courtroom, Spratlin moved for a directed verdict of acquittal. In response, the prosecutor argued that after the shooting, “[Spratlin] made no phone calls to the
Closing arguments were not taken down by the court reporter. After the arguments concluded and a lunch break (and with the court reporter taking down the proceedings again), Spratlin’s counsel made an objection and moved for a mistrial, asserting that the prosecutor had “made a reference of Mr. Spratlin not talking to the police at any point” during the State’s rebuttal argument. The parties disagreed about exactly what the prosecutor had said, but the trial court indicated that the prosecutor should not have referred to Spratlin’s “not making a statement to the police” and should not have said “anything about the defendant remaining silent.” The court denied the mistrial motion, but added the following curative instruction to the jury charges:
A defendant in a criminal case is under no duty to present any evidence tending to prove innocence and is not required to take the stand and testify in the case. Furthermore, let me add that a defendant is not required to make any statement to the police. If a defendant elects not to testify or if a defendant elects not to make any statement to the police, no inference hurtful, harmful, or adverse to the defendant shall be drawn by the jury, nor shall such fact be held against a defendant in any way.
On November 1, 2013, the jury found Spratlin guilty of all charges except the aggravated assault of Gilliam. The trial court sentenced Spratlin to serve life in prison for malice murder and a consecutive term of five years for the firearm
(c) Spratlin’s trial counsel then filed a “Motion for New Trial and Motion to Correct and/or Complete the Record,” which was amended in December 2014. The motion argued, among other things, that the trial transcript needed to be supplemented to include the prosecutor’s comments on Spratlin’s silence during closing arguments as well as counsel’s objections to those comments. After holding an evidentiary hearing, the trial court denied Spratlin’s motion in February 2015. As to supplementing the record, the court ruled that the transcript of the discussion about the motion for mistrial “aligns with the Court’s memory of the State’s rebuttal argument about Spratlin’s refusal to talk to the police.” The court added that although Spratlin’s counsel asserted that the prosecutor had also said, “Why didn’t [Spratlin] testify?” the court would have “certainly addressed any violation as blatant as [that] on the record.”
Spratlin filed a notice of appeal, and the case was docketed in this Court in July 2015. However, Spratlin then obtained new counsel, who successfully
(d) On remand, Spratlin filed an amended motion for new trial asserting that his trial counsel had rendered ineffective assistance by failing to seek the exclusion of testimony and prosecutorial comments about Spratlin’s post-arrest silence. At an evidentiary hearing in June 2016, trial counsel explained that he did not object to Abner’s testimony about Spratlin’s pre-arrest silence because he did not believe it was improper. He said that he did not object to the Alabama detective’s testimony because several of his objections had already been overruled and he did not want the jury to see him being overruled again.
Trial counsel acknowledged, however, that he could have objected to the testimony outside the jury’s presence. When asked why he did not make a motion in limine to prevent any further testimony or comments about Spratlin’s silence, trial counsel said that he did not consider that option because he had never filed such a motion “to basically tell the State to act appropriately” and “you don’t anticipate a prosecutor or those types of statements being elicited on direct testimony.” Finally, counsel said that he did not object to the Georgia detective’s testimony about Spratlin’s refusal to make a statement for the same
At the hearing, Spratlin based his legal arguments on federal circuit court cases holding that, under certain circumstances, a prosecutor’s comment on the defendant’s pretrial silence violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Rather than responding to those federal constitutional arguments, the State based its argument on Georgia cases applying the evidentiary rule this Court announced in an old Georgia Evidence Code case — Mallory v. State, 261 Ga. 625, 629-630 (409 SE2d 839) (1991), overruled on other grounds by Clark v. State, 271 Ga. 6, 9-10 (515 SE2d 155) (1999).
In February 2018, the trial court entered an order granting Spratlin a new trial. After ruling that Spratlin’s trial counsel was not ineffective with respect to Abner’s testimony — a ruling not at issue on appeal — the court held that trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to object to the Alabama and Georgia detectives’ testimony and failing to prevent the prosecutor’s comments during closing arguments. The court rejected trial counsel’s excuses
2. As we have explained many times before:
To establish that his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective, [a defendant] must prove both deficient performance by counsel and resulting prejudice. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (104 SCt 2052, 80 LE2d 674) (1984). To show that his lawyer’s performance was deficient, [the defendant] must demonstrate that the lawyer performed his duties in an objectively unreasonable way, considering all the circumstances and in the light of prevailing professional norms. See id. at 687-690. This is no easy showing, as the law recognizes a “strong presumption” that counsel performed reasonably, and [the defendant] bears the burden of overcoming this presumption. Id. at 689. To carry this burden, he must show that no reasonable lawyer would have done what his lawyer did, or would have failed to do what his lawyer did not. See Humphrey v. Nance, 293 Ga. 189, 192 (744 SE2d 706) (2013). In particular, “decisions regarding trial tactics and strategy may form the basis for an ineffectiveness claim only if they were so patently unreasonable that no competent attorney would have followed such a course.” Reed v. State, 294 Ga. 877, 882 (757 SE2d 84) (2014).
Even when a defendant has proved that his counsel’s performance was deficient in this constitutional sense, he also must prove prejudice by showing “a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694. “It is not enough to show that the errors had some conceivable effect on the outcome of the proceeding.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 104 (131 SCt 770, 178 LE2d 624) (2011) (citation and punctuation omitted). Rather, [the defendant] must demonstrate a “reasonable probability” of a different result, which, the United States Supreme Court has explained, is “a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694.
Davis v. State, 299 Ga. 180, 182-183 (787 SE2d 221) (2016). In reviewing a ruling on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, we defer to the trial court’s findings of fact unless they are clearly erroneous, but we apply the law to the facts de novo. See Barrett v. State, 292 Ga. 160, 167 (733 SE2d 304) (2012). “In all, the burden of proving a denial of effective assistance of counsel is a heavy one,” and Spratlin has failed to carry that burden. Davis, 299 Ga. at 183 (citation omitted).
(a) The State contends that Spratlin’s trial counsel was not deficient in
In Fletcher v. Weir, 455 U.S. 603 (102 SCt 1309, 71 LE2d 490) (1982), however, the Supreme Court held that “[i]n the absence of the sort of affirmative assurances embodied in the Miranda warnings, we do not believe that it violates due process of law for a State to permit cross-examination as to postarrest silence when a defendant chooses to take the stand.” Id. at 607. The Fletcher Court added that “[a] State is entitled, in such situations, to leave to the judge and jury under its own rules of evidence the resolution of the extent to which postarrest silence may be deemed to impeach a criminal defendant’s own testimony.” Id. This Court in Mallory seized on that caveat to announce an evidentiary rule that prohibits Georgia prosecutors from eliciting testimony or otherwise commenting about a defendant’s pre-arrest silence for impeachment or otherwise. See Mallory, 261 Ga. at 630 (announcing that “a comment [upon a defendant’s silence or failure to come forward] will not be allowed even where the defendant has not received Miranda warnings and where he takes the stand in his own defense“); State v. Sims, 296 Ga. 465, 469 (769 SE2d 62) (2015) (describing Mallory as “focus[ing] on commentary on a defendant’s conduct between the time of the crime and prior to arrest“).
Thus, we properly consider the testimony and comments about Spratlin’s post-arrest silence through the lens of the federal Constitution rather than Mallory. The Alabama detective arrested Spratlin, but the record does not indicate that the detective ever gave Spratlin the Miranda warnings, and it appears that the detective never conducted a custodial interrogation, because he specifically denied asking Spratlin to make a statement. Indeed, it appears that the Alabama detectives simply apprehended Spratlin and Blackmon on behalf of the DeKalb County police. Nor does the record indicate that Spratlin affirmatively invoked his right to silence after the Alabama detective arrested him, as opposed to merely saying nothing. See Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370, 382 (130 SCt 2250, 176 LE2d 1098) (2010).
The Georgia detective’s testimony was clearly objectionable, however, because he was attempting to interrogate Spratlin in a custodial setting and Spratlin invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent by “refus[ing] to make a statement.” See Miranda, 384 U.S. at 468 n.37; Howard, 237 Ga. at 473. See also Davidson v. State, 304 Ga. 460, 468 (819 SE2d 452) (2018) (“Nothing
Trial counsel did perform deficiently, however, with respect to the prosecutor’s comments during closing arguments. By that stage of the trial, it
(b) We turn to considering the effect of trial counsel’s deficient performance on the result of Spratlin’s trial. In addressing the Strickland prejudice issue, it is important to recognize that the trial court erroneously
Moreover, while the prosecutor improperly suggested to the jury that Spratlin had an obligation to tell his story to the police when the Georgia detective interviewed him, the impact of that argument was mitigated in two significant ways. First, the prosecutor’s comments were somewhat cumulative, because the jury also heard about Spratlin’s pre-trial silence through Abner’s testimony that Spratlin did not seek to tell his story to the police right after emerging from Gilliam’s house; that testimony was not challenged by Spratlin’s post-arrest silence ineffective assistance claim and remains unchallenged on appeal.
Moreover, although the evidence against Spratlin was not as strong as in other cases in which we have held that similar comments on post-arrest silence were harmless or not prejudicial, see, e.g., Taylor v. State, 303 Ga. 583, 585-587 (814 SE2d 302) (2018), the evidence of Spratlin’s guilt was not weak.5 Spratlin
The forensic evidence demonstrates that two different guns were used in the shooting, with the shots that struck Cobb in the arm and side from close range and Gilliam in the leg being fired by a .40-caliber pistol wielded by Blackmon and the two fatal shots fired into Cobb’s back from a .38 Special or .357 Magnum from an unknown range. Although Gilliam and Abner testified
Spratlin fled the crime scene with Abner and without Blackmon, but that is also how he and Blackmon had arrived there. Perhaps most inconsistent with Spratlin’s claim that he was surprised by Blackmon’s attack on Cobb and Gilliam and had nothing to do with it is the fact that he was found with Blackmon again 16 days later, not just coincidentally somewhere in the Atlanta area but hiding out together and then fleeing from the police more than 100 miles away in Birmingham. The jury was instructed on the concept of parties to a crime, see
For these reasons, we conclude that there is not a reasonable probability
Judgment reversed. All the Justices concur, except Melton, C. J., who dissents.