Brown v. State
| Decision Date | 12 February 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. S92A1297,S92A1297 |
| Citation | 262 Ga. 728,425 S.E.2d 856 |
| Parties | BROWN v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Walter Lee Brown, pro se.
John R. Parks, Dist. Atty., Americus, Michael J. Bowers, Atty. Gen., Susan V. Boleyn, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Dept. of Law, Mary H. Hines, Staff Atty., Atlanta, for State.
This appeal is from appellant's convictions for malice murder, aggravated assault, and simple assault. 1
1. The testimony adduced at trial established the following facts. On the date of the crimes, a man armed with a pistol 2 entered a bank in Montezuma, Georgia, fatally shot a teller, left the bank briefly, then returned. Upon his return, the robber forced another teller at gunpoint to give him the money from several teller drawers. A third teller, the victim of the simple assault, feared for her life and took refuge under a desk when the robber shot the first teller, remaining there throughout the robbery. The robber left the bank, taking with him money which included bait money, the serial numbers of which had been recorded. Some of that bait money and a weapon identified as that which fired the fatal shot were recovered from appellant's possession during the execution of several search warrants. Photographs taken from videotape produced by surveillance cameras in the bank were published in the local newspaper, resulting in the identification of appellant by several of his co-workers. In addition, a police officer who had known appellant for 25 years and had previously arrested him for armed robbery, identified appellant from the surveillance photographs.
On appeal, appellant contends that his conviction for malice murder was not supported by the evidence because there was no evidence of malice. We disagree: evidence that appellant shot the murder victim immediately upon his entry to the bank, without provocation of any kind, and then returned to the bank and conducted a robbery while the victim lay alive but bleeding, even forcing another teller to step over the wounded teller's body to get money from a drawer, was sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find the implied malice necessary to convict appellant of malice murder. Chester v. State, 262 Ga. 85(1), 414 S.E.2d 477 (1992). Furthermore, we find the evidence as a whole sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find appellant guilty of all the offenses with which he was charged. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).
2. In several enumerations of error, appellant complains of the denial of his motion to suppress physical evidence seized in searches of his home and car conducted pursuant to warrants.
a. Appellant's complaint that the searches were tainted by an unlawful arrest is based on his assertion that his warrantless detention for 35 minutes prior to the execution of several search warrants was an illegal arrest. We disagree.
A "warrantless arrest" is constitutionally valid if at the time of the arrest the arresting officer has probable cause to believe the accused has committed or is committing an offense. [Cits.] Probable cause exists if the arresting officer has knowledge and reasonably trustworthy information about facts and circumstances sufficient for a prudent person to believe the accused has committed an offense. [Cit.]
Johnson v. State, 258 Ga. 506(2), 371 S.E.2d 396 (1988). Here, appellant was stopped as he left his home at a time when the issuance of search warrants for his home, car, and person was imminent. Testimony at the hearing on appellant's motion to suppress established that appellant was stopped to prevent him from leaving the jurisdiction or destroying evidence. See OCGA § 17-4-20(a). At the time appellant was stopped, the officers had knowledge that appellant had been identified from the videotapes of the robbery by several co-workers and by a police officer who had known him for...
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