Aeger v. State

• Decision Date: 11 September 2020
• Docket Number: A20A1544
• Citation: 356 Ga.App. 667,848 S.E.2d 677
• Parties: AEGER v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

356 Ga.App. 667

848 S.E.2d 677

AEGER

v.The STATE.

A20A1544

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

September 11, 2020

Joseph Charles Timothy Lewis Esquire, Jack Morris Downie, Vidalia, for Appellant.

Patrician B. Attaway Burton, Christopher Michael Carr, Atlanta, Paula Khristian Smith, Atlanta, Timothy Grady Vaughn, Eastman, Keely Kight Pitts, for Appellee.

Mercier, Judge.

In connection with the fatal shooting of her boyfriend, Phil Davis, Margaret Aeger was indicted for malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault. A jury found Aeger guilty of voluntary manslaughter as a lesser included offense of malice murder, and not guilty of the remaining charges. She appeals the conviction, contending that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict and that the trial court gave an improper jury instruction. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

1. Aeger contends that the evidence was insufficient to support a voluntary manslaughter conviction because the testimony showed that she acted in self-defense. The evidence was sufficient.

In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict and determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Conflicts in the testimony of the witnesses ... are a matter of credibility for the jury to resolve.

Muckle v. State , 307 Ga. App. 634, 705 S.E.2d 721 (2011) (citation and punctuation omitted).

So viewed, the evidence shows the following. Aeger testified that on the evening of December 22, 2013, she returned home from work to find Davis, her live-in boyfriend of nine years, drinking alcohol. At the time, Davis was 74 years old and Aeger was about 51 years old. At Davis's suggestion, Aeger had sold her own home to move in with him.

Aeger testified that upon returning home, she and Davis drank whiskey and talked, then Aeger took a hydrocodone

pill for back pain and went to bed. Davis stayed up. Aeger testified that shortly after she fell asleep, she was awakened by Davis striking her on her face with his hand and yelling at her to "get out." Aeger told Davis that she would leave if he let her get up. Instead of letting Aeger get up, Davis held the right side of her head and yanked her around in the bed. She broke free, got up, and put on her housecoat. Davis then just stood there, glaring at her. Aeger moved toward the bedroom door and Davis stepped across the threshold. Aeger then closed and locked the bedroom door, with her inside and Davis outside the bedroom. Aeger testified that Davis was turning the doorknob, beating on the door and screaming, "bitch open this f------ door!" Aeger grabbed a gun from the nightstand and told Davis that she had his gun and that he needed to "go lay down and sober up." Davis continued beating on the door. Aeger fired a shot into the left doorframe and, when Davis kept trying to get through the door, she fired a shot "forward" into the door. Aeger then "heard a thump and heard [Davis] say, oh."

Aeger testified that she fired the gun through the door because "he was coming through there ... to get me." Asked if she believed that Davis would come "through the door" had she not fired the gun, Aeger replied: "Yes. Because I had experienced that, not with him but in past history[.]" She said Davis had hit and kicked her before, though she had not shown anyone any injuries, had not sustained any serious injuries, and had not contacted police. Aeger testified that she worked in a state prison (from 2009 through 2014) and was trained in firearm use, including in taking defensive stances when shooting, and agreed that she "easily could have shot him if he busted through that door." She admitted that she "had all the weapons in [the] bedroom with" her. Aeger also had a phone with her in the bedroom and, after the shooting, phoned her daughter. Her daughter told her to call 911, which she did. Aeger admitted at trial that when officers arrived she did not tell them that she had feared for her life before firing the gun, though she testified at trial that during the incident she was afraid that Davis was going to either "paralyze ... or kill" her. Aeger testified that she and Davis had not been arguing before Davis entered the bedroom. Asked if Davis had asked her to move out of the house, Aeger testified that he had previously told her that if she did not like him putting her dog outside, she "[could] get out too."

A sergeant with the Vidalia Police Department testified that he and two other officers went to the residence on the morning of December 23, 2013, in response to a "shots being fired" report. They shined flashlights through a french door and saw a person lying on the floor. The officers "asked for the door to be opened" but when their request was refused, they kicked open the door. They entered and found Davis lying on the floor outside the bedroom door, motionless. He appeared to be deceased. The bedroom door appeared to be sturdy, with no defects other than the bullet holes. Aeger was inside the bedroom.

The sergeant testified that he entered the bedroom and saw Aeger, who appeared to be intoxicated. She did not have any visible marks on her, and nothing in the bedroom indicated there had been a struggle. Objects on the night stand were undisturbed. Aeger spontaneously told the sergeant that "she was not going to be hit by another man anymore, that she would kill the m----- f-----, eventually." She told the sergeant that Davis had pulled clumps of hair from the right side of her head and that the hair was all over the bed. The sergeant looked but did not see any injuries to Aeger, any clumps of hair missing from her head or on the bed, or "any large clumps of hair anywhere in [the] bedroom." He heard Aeger tell emergency medical personnel that the left side of her head was injured

. Officers found on the night stand the .38 caliber gun Aeger had used in the shooting. They found no weapons near Davis, and no weapons in the part of the house where Davis was found. Other officers testified that no clumps of hair were found on the bed or in the bedroom. An officer testified that Aeger was walking "fine" at the crime scene and stepped over Davis's body as she walked to an ambulance seeking medical attention.

An agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) testified that she met with Aeger on the morning of December 23, 2013, to document any injuries she might have. Aeger told the agent where she had been injured, but the agent did not see any bruising, marks or large clumps of hair missing, though she did feel a "soft spot" on Aeger's head. GBI testing revealed that Aeger's blood-alcohol level was 0.124 "a few" hours after the incident, and that Davis's blood-alcohol level was 0.164.¹

A police investigator with the Vidalia Police Department testified that he checked the Vidalia Police Department's computer records for the previous 20 years and found no domestic violence reports between Aeger and Davis and no incidents in which the police had been called to the residence. A second police investigator also checked police records and found no evidence of any prior disputes involving the residence, Aeger or Davis. A medical examiner with the GBI testified that Davis died as a result of a gunshot wound

to his chest.

A close friend of Davis testified that he was with Davis nearly every day, and that Aeger's and Davis's relationship was sometimes volatile. The friend testified that he had witnessed arguments between the two, but never any violence, and that Davis had never discussed violence toward women. He added that Davis had a drinking problem and that his desire to stop drinking was a source of friction between Aeger and Davis because Aeger insisted she could continue to drink in his presence. Months before the shooting, Aeger told the friend, "I'm fighting for a place to live here because [Davis] wants me gone."

OCGA § 16-5-2 (a) provides:

A person commits the offense of voluntary manslaughter when [she] causes the death of another human being under circumstances which would otherwise be murder and if [she] acts solely as the result of a sudden, violent, and irresistible passion resulting from serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a reasonable person[.]

Aeger argues that the evidence was insufficient to prove that she was acting as the result of "serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a reasonable person," when the evidence showed that she acted in self-defense.²

As set out above, there was evidence that Aeger and Davis had a sometimes volatile relationship and had argued before; that Davis had told Aeger she would have to move out and that she was fighting to keep her place in the home; that Davis was 74 years old, was not known to be violent and had no police record for violence or other incidents; that both Aeger and Davis were intoxicated that night, and drinking was a source of their conflict; that Aeger sustained no visible injuries that night (though there was a "soft spot" on her head) and had not been seriously injured by Davis previously; that no clumps of hair were found in the bedroom; that Aeger gave conflicting details of the incident, some of which were not supported by officers’ observations at the scene; that Aeger had not previously reported any domestic violence by Davis; that officers saw no evidence of a struggle in the bedroom; that Davis was unarmed at the time of the incident; and that Aeger was trained in firearm use and fired the gun twice through the locked door (including into Davis's chest) when she knew Davis was on the other side of the door.

"Circumstances which are sufficient to show voluntary manslaughter, as opposed to justifiable homicide, include a situation in which sudden passion, or fear, is aroused in the actor, without malice aforethought, and the actor willfully kills his attacker, when it was not necessary...