Appellant Maurrice Julius White was convicted of malice murder in connection with the death of James Miller, a taxicab driver in Vidalia, Georgia. 1 The taxicab company’s dispatcher testified that the victim had reported picking up a passenger at a convenience store shortly before he was found fatally wounded in his cab, with three gunshot wounds to his neck and head. Two employees of the convenience store identified appellant’s photograph as depicting one of several young men in the store shortly before the homicide. A firearms expert from the GBI Crime Lab concluded from an examination of the bullet fragments recovered from the victim’s body that the bullets had been fired from a .32 caliber revolver. The State introduced statements given to police by a now-deceased juvenile in which the juvenile stated that he had loaned a .32 caliber gun equipped with five bullets to appellant the evening before the taxicab driver was shot, and that appellant had returned the weapon a day or two later with only one bullet. Another witness testified that appellant had told the witness and his brother that appellant had shot the taxicab driver in an attempt to rob him. Unsigned statements of two other *29 witnesses, each stating that appellant had admitted shooting the taxicab driver, were admitted into evidence as prior inconsistent statements after the witnesses denied making the statements. A latent print examiner from the GBI Crime Lab matched known prints of appellant to fingerprints lifted from the interior glass of the right rear window of the victim’s taxicab.
1. Appellant suggests that, in light of the jury’s acquittal of appellant on the armed robbery charge, the evidence was not sufficient to authorize the jury’s guilty verdict on the murder charge. In light of the abolition of the inconsistent verdict rule in criminal cases by this Court in
Milam v. State,
2. As stated earlier, statements given to police by a juvenile deceased at the time of trial were admitted at trial through the testimony of the police detective to whom the statements were given. One statement consisted of the detective’s summary of her conversation with the decedent four months after the taxicab driver was slain; the other was a handwritten statement, purportedly written by the juvenile eight months after the crime, and signed by the juvenile, his mother, and the detective. In each statement, it was reported that appellant had borrowed the decedent’s .32 caliber revolver and five bullets “to get some money” the evening before the victim was killed, and returned it a day or two later with only one bullet. The gun was not recovered by authorities because, according to the juvenile’s statements, the juvenile had thrown it into a dumpster in a neighboring town upon hearing about the taxicab driver’s death. The police detective found .32 caliber shell casings at a site where the juvenile was said to have shot the weapon in target practice.
The police detective’s testimony, as it related to the deceased youth’s statements, was hearsay since its value rested mainly on the veracity and competency of one other than the witness relating it. OCGA § 24-3-1;
Farmer v. State,
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The declarant’s pre-trial death meets the necessity prong.
Mallory v. State,
A statement made to a police officer during the course of an investigation has been deemed reliable when it was made shortly after the incident to which it related or shortly after the declarant was contacted by police concerning the incident. See
McKissick v. State,
3. Appellant complains that the trial court erroneously limited his cross-examination of the police detective concerning the death of the juvenile whose statements were admitted under the “necessity” exception to the hearsay rule. Appellant contends the trial court’s ruling made him “unable to properly pursue in the presence of the jury information that may have shown a suicide motive. . . .” At a hearing outside the presence of the jury, a detective testified that the investigation into the juvenile’s death was ongoing and that possible circumstances of the death, i.e., suicide, accidental shooting, involvement of others, could not be excluded until the autopsy and crime lab reports were received. When defense counsel stated her intention of examining the witness before the jury about the possibility of suicide as the cause of death, the trial court ruled out questions “that tend to be speculative,” and limited the witness’s testimony to what she knew. Before the jury, the witness testified that the circumstances of the juvenile’s death, including the possibility it was a suicide, were not yet resolved. Thus, appellant successfully brought to the jury’s attention the possibility that the juvenile had taken his own life. Any testimony from the non-expert witness about possible reasons why the juvenile might have committed suicide was correctly ruled speculative and inadmissible by the trial court.
4. Appellant next contends his character was impermissibly placed in evidence and the trial court erred when it denied his motion for mistrial and failed to give curative instructions to the jury. The contested evidence made its appearance when, in response to a question asking what the defendant had told him about the taxicab driver’s murder, a witness testified that appellant told him and his brother, about a week after the crime, that he had shot the taxicab driver and needed cocaine “to calm his nerves.” After the trial court overruled a hearsay objection, the assistant district attorney asked the witness if it was his testimony that initially appellant had asked the witness’s brother for cocaine to calm his nerves. Appellant thereafter sought a mistrial on the ground that his character had been placed in issue by the testimony concerning his purported need for
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cocaine. The trial court denied appellant’s motion for mistrial. Appellant did not request curative instructions and none were given. See
Brown v. State,
When prejudicial matter is improperly placed before the jury, a mistrial is appropriate if it is essential to the preservation of the defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Stanley v. State,
5. Appellant next contends that the trial court improperly admitted the fingerprint evidence, i.e., fingerprint cards, because a proper chain of custody was not established. “A fingerprint card . . . may be admitted into evidence without the showing of a chain of custody since it can be readily identified by reference to the subject’s fingerprints.”
Hill v. State,
Appellant correctly points out on appeal that the fingerprint lift cards admitted into evidence were never identified by the crime scene technician as the cards he prepared. See
Roland v. State,
supra,
6. When two of the State’s witnesses denied they had told a police detective that appellant had told them he had shot the victim, the State was permitted to introduce, through the testimony of the police detective, the witnesses’ prior statements inconsistent with their trial testimony. Our holding in
Gibbons v. State,
Judgment affirmed.
Notes
The crime occurred on March 14, 1995. Appellant was charged in an indictment returned December 18, 1995, with malice murder and armed robbery. The trial began June 17, 1996, and ended two days later when the jury returned a guilty verdict as to the murder count and acquitted appellant of the armed robbery charge. The trial court sentenced appellant to life imprisonment on June 19, and appellant filed a Notice of Appeal on July 18, 1996. The appeal was docketed in this Court on September 26, 1996, and submitted for decision without oral argument.
The juvenile was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head 25 days before appellant’s trial. The gun which fired the fatal shot was found at the scene, but some distance from the victim.