823 S.E.2d 291 | Ga. | 2019
*293**862Appellant Trevis Worthen was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of Tanieshia Evans. In this appeal, he contends that the trial court improperly purported to merge his felony murder counts into his malice murder conviction, when they actually were vacated by operation of law. That is true, but the error is harmless. He also contends that the State failed to prove venue for most of the crimes. That is not true - particularly because we have decided in this case to overrule Division 3 of Jones v. State,
1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence at trial showed the following. Late on the evening of January 3, 2012, Appellant and his friend Rashad Ballard drove to Evans's apartment building at 490 Angier Avenue in Fulton County to meet Brooke Stallworth, whom Appellant was dating, and Stallworth's friend Michelle Johnson. Stallworth and Johnson were staying with Evans, the paternal grandmother of Stallworth's son. Appellant parked his SUV on the street outside the apartment building, and he and Ballard remained in the vehicle as Stallworth and Johnson walked out to talk to them.
After Appellant, Ballard, Stallworth, and Johnson had been talking for about an hour, Evans called Johnson and Stallworth separately to ask them to come back to the apartment. During her call with Stallworth, Evans apparently heard Appellant say that he was going to take Stallworth home with him and that she would be back in the morning. Evans then came out of her apartment and walked to the driver's side of Appellant's SUV to stand by Stallworth and speak to Appellant, who was still sitting in the driver's seat. Evans and Appellant began arguing. Evans told Appellant that he was not good enough for Stallworth, that he did not have enough money, and that he was not allowed to come to her apartment anymore. When Appellant tried to roll up his window, Evans grabbed it and pulled on it, causing the window to shatter.
Appellant then drove off. After stopping down the street at the stoplight at the intersection of Angier Avenue and Boulevard, however, Appellant drove in reverse back to where Stallworth, Johnson, and Evans were still standing outside the apartment building. Appellant asked Stallworth why Evans had broken his window, and Stallworth **864replied that Appellant should not have disrespected Evans. As Appellant and Stallworth argued, Evans walked up to the SUV and asked Appellant, "You want some more?" Appellant repeatedly said "move"; he then grabbed a .32-caliber revolver that was on his center console and fired a single shot at Evans, hitting her in the chest. Appellant drove away with Ballard. Evans was taken to a *294hospital, where she soon died from the gunshot wound.
Stallworth and Johnson both identified Appellant as the man who shot Evans. In addition, tinted glass fragments found at the crime scene on Angier Avenue and down the road at the intersection of Angier Avenue and Boulevard were consistent with glass from the shattered window on Appellant's SUV.
Nearly three months after the shooting, Appellant was arrested in Austin, Texas. After he was returned to Georgia and booked into the Fulton County Jail, he asked another inmate about "getting rid" of two female witnesses - one named Brooke and one whose name started with an "M" - in exchange for money. Appellant wanted the inmate to meet up with Appellant's cousin, who had access to guns, to find out where the witnesses were living and kill them. The inmate instead provided this information to the police and testified against Appellant at trial.
Appellant also testified at trial, admitting that he shot and killed Evans but claiming that after she approached him and asked "You want some more?" he saw her reach for an object in her pants that looked like a black gun. Appellant said that he was afraid Evans would shoot and kill him. Johnson and Stallworth, however, testified that Evans never reached for a gun and did not have a gun, and there was no evidence that a gun was found at the crime scene. The State also called Ballard to testify at trial, but he claimed not to recall anything about the night of the shooting.
Aside from venue, which we address in Division 3 below, Appellant does not challenge the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions. Nevertheless, in accordance with this Court's practice in murder cases, we have reviewed the record and conclude that, when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial and summarized above was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find Appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia,
2. Appellant correctly contends that the felony murder counts actually were "vacated by operation of law" rather than "merged" into **865his malice murder conviction. See Graves v. State,
3. Appellant, who was indicted and tried in Fulton County, argues that the State failed to prove venue for the charge of malice murder and the associated charge of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
(a) Unless venue must be changed to obtain an impartial jury, a criminal case must be tried "in the county where the crime was committed." Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. VI, Sec. II, Par. VI. Generally, murder "shall be considered as having been committed in the county in which the cause of death was inflicted." OCGA § 17-2-2 (c). Under this Court's precedent, "venue is a jurisdictional *295fact the State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt in every criminal case." Crawford v. State,
The record shows, however, that the witnesses who testified that 490 Angier Avenue is in Fulton County used that address to refer to the entire crime scene. The detective testified that investigators "utilized that address as the crime scene location," and his crime scene drawing, which was admitted into evidence, describes the location of the crimes as "490 Angier Avenue NE," even though the sketch shows - in addition to Evans's apartment building - the street, the buildings on either side of Evans's building, and the intersection of Angier Avenue and Boulevard. The detective also identified several photographs of the "scene," which depict the buildings, sidewalk, street, and blood and broken glass on the street, as being "true and accurate representations of 490 Angier Avenue." In addition, the police officer testified that he responded to a call at "490 Angier Avenue" and that when he arrived "on the scene," he saw Evans lying on the sidewalk. The jury was entitled to conclude from this evidence that the witnesses who testified that "490 Angier Avenue" is in Fulton County were referring not exclusively to the apartment building with that street address or the precise metes-and-bounds description of that property's legal boundaries, but more generally to include the area just in front of the building that encompassed the spot where Appellant shot and killed Evans.
(c) To support his claim that proof that Evans's apartment building is in Fulton County is insufficient to establish that the street and sidewalk in front of that building are in the same county, Appellant relies heavily on this Court's divided opinion as to Division 3 of Jones v. State,
Then-Chief Justice Benham, joined by Justice Hunstein, dissented from that conclusion. The dissent explained correctly that Bradley was inapposite. In that case, the defendant was convicted of driving under the influence and failure to maintain lane, and the only venue evidence was a state trooper's testimony that he saw the defendant's vehicle weaving on Georgia Highway 3 and Baptist Camp Road; the Court of Appeals held that because the trooper did not indicate the county in *296which either road was located, no evidence was presented as to venue. See Bradley,
But the dissent focused on the illogical premise of the majority's holding:
While it is possible that houses that are directly across from one another, or even next door to each other, are in different counties since county lines may be drawn anywhere, there was no evidence in this case to suggest this possibility. Even if one were to speculate, reasonable people may differ as to whether this possibility creates a sufficient doubt under the law with respect to the venue question at hand because it is axiomatic that the majority of houses located opposite each other on a particular street will be located in the same county.
The holding of Jones's Division 3 stands apart from the rest of our law. Jurors are normally entitled to make reasonable inferences from circumstantial evidence regarding all sorts of facts, including the facts necessary to find defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of capital crimes. See, e.g., Williams v. State,
Apart from Jones's rejection of inferences based on proximity, we have treated the jurisdictional fact of venue consistent with this general principle, allowing jurors to draw reasonable inferences from circumstantial evidence in deciding whether a crime was committed in the county alleged. See, e.g., Raines v. State,
*297Faust v. State,
(d) Before we overrule that holding, however, we must consider the question of stare decisis.
Under the doctrine of stare decisis, courts generally stand by their prior decisions, because it promotes the evenhanded, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles, fosters reliance on judicial decisions, and contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process. Stare decisis, however, is not an inexorable command. ... In reconsidering our prior decisions, we must balance the importance of having the question decided against the importance of having it decided right . To that end, we have developed a test that considers the age of [the] precedent, the reliance interests at stake, the workability of the decision, and, most importantly, the soundness of its reasoning.
Nalls v. State,
Beginning with the most important factor, our discussion above has demonstrated that the reasoning in Division 3 of Jones- reasoning supported by no citation of pertinent authority - was flawed as a matter of both law and logic. That holding is " 'neither ancient nor entrenched.' " Willis v. State,
Finally, as to workability, the holding in Division 3 of Jones has led appellate courts to strain to distinguish that case or to hunt for other reasonable (but often more attenuated) inferences from the evidence to support the jury's venue finding. See, e.g., Propst,
(e) In our search for any sort of legal support for the holding in Jones, we discovered that this Court has trod this same path before. In an 1876 case, the Court announced a holding similar to Jones's - and equally unsupported by authority - which was followed in a few cases over the next 40 years. The Court was not consistent in following that holding, however, and ultimately rejected it in the 1930s. The Jones Court was apparently oblivious to this history, and thus to the fact that it was actually overruling sub silentio the position on which our Court had settled in the 1930s.
In Gosha v. State,
Sixteen years later, in Futch v. State,
Over the next two decades, the Court followed these holdings to reverse convictions in three other cases, citing only Gosha or Futch and offering no further reasoning. See Green v. State,
Beginning just two years after Gosha, however, the Court started another line of cases that allowed juries to make reasonable inferences about nearby locations in determining whether venue was proved beyond a reasonable doubt. In Dumas v. State,
**873A few years later, in Smiley v. State,
In the 1930s, the Court resolved the conflict between these two lines of cases - in the same way that we decide today's case. In Lee v. State,
Subsequent decisions expressly recognized that the no-inferences-based-on-proximity holdings of Gosha and Futch were no longer good law. See Martin v. State,
**874Carrigan v. State,
To sum up, it took this Court more than 50 years to correct Gosha's unsupported and unsupportable holding that a jury can never reasonably infer that a crime committed near a location in one county was committed in the same county. It has taken us fewer than 20 years to correct the same misbegotten holding in Division 3 of Jones. In an effort to ensure that the Court does not venture down the wrong path for a third time, we expressly overrule all cases following those holdings in Gosha and Jones and disapprove all cases that have cited those holdings favorably.
**875(f) Having overruled Division 3 of Jones, we can easily conclude that the evidence in *301this case was sufficient to support the jury's finding that venue for the murder count (and the associated firearm count) was proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be in Fulton County. Read in context, the record shows that the police witnesses who testified that "490 Angier Avenue" is in Fulton County were referring not to the precise real estate dimensions of the apartment building with that street address, but rather to the crime scene that included the spot on the sidewalk or street just in front of the building where Appellant shot and killed Evans. But even if the witnesses were being that precise, the jurors could quite reasonably infer that the sidewalk and street just in front of that property were also located in Fulton County, there being no reason founded on the evidence to conclude otherwise.
Judgment affirmed.
All the Justices concur, except Melton, C.J., and Ellington, J., who concur in judgment only in Division 3 (e).
The victim was killed shortly after midnight on January 4, 2012. On October 18, 2013, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Appellant for malice murder, two counts of felony murder, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and criminal solicitation. Appellant pled guilty to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and then, at a trial from August 14 to 18, 2014, the jury found him guilty of the remaining charges. The trial court found Appellant to be a recidivist under OCGA § 17-10-7 (a) and (c) and sentenced him to serve life in prison for malice murder, a consecutive term of five years for possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, a consecutive term of five years for criminal solicitation, and a concurrent term of five years for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The court merged the aggravated assault count and purported to merge the felony murder counts into the malice murder conviction, although the felony murder verdicts actually were vacated by operation of law, as discussed in Division 2 below. Appellant filed a timely motion for new trial. After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court summarily denied the motion on January 12, 2017. Appellant filed a timely appeal, and the case was docketed in this Court for the August 2018 term and submitted for decision on the briefs.
Appellant includes the felony murder and aggravated assault charges in his venue enumeration, but he was not convicted of or sentenced for those charges, so his claim regarding them is moot. See Bolling v. State,
Trial courts regularly instruct jurors in criminal cases that "[c]ircumstantial evidence is the proof of facts or circumstances, by direct evidence, from which you may infer other related or connected facts that are reasonable and justified in light of your experience. ... The law does not require a higher or greater degree of certainty on the part of the jury to return a verdict based upon circumstantial evidence than upon direct evidence." Georgia Suggested Pattern Jury Instructions, Vol. II: Criminal Cases § 1.30.20 Direct and Circumstantial Evidence. See also Weyer v. State,
See In the Interest of M.C.,
Although we uphold the convictions in this case, we emphasize again that to avoid venue becoming an issue on appeal, prosecutors should not forget to ask what is usually just the question or two needed to establish directly the county in which each crime alleged was committed. See, e.g., Raines v. State,
Our research into the common law of venue and the law of other jurisdictions has been less extensive, but we have found no support for the holding of Jones. It appears that the general rule which is the rule to which we return Georgia law today is that "[l]ike any other fact, venue may be proved by circumstantial evidence, and it is enough if the fact of venue is properly inferable from all the evidence." Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice & Procedure § 307 (4th ed. Sept. 2018 update).
We note that Lee, Carrigan, Johns, and Brown also invoked the "slight evidence exception" regarding proof of venue, which we disapproved in Division 2 of Jones because in a criminal trial, the State bears the burden of establishing venue beyond a reasonable doubt and the burden never shifts to the defendant to disprove venue. See
The following cases are overruled: Jones,
