Chambers v. State

• Decision Date: 12 April 2013
• Docket Number: No. A12A1906.,A12A1906.
• Citation: 739 S.E.2d 513,321 Ga.App. 512
• Parties: CHAMBERS v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

321 Ga.App. 512

739 S.E.2d 513

CHAMBERS

v.The STATE.

No. A12A1906.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

March 29, 2013.

Reconsideration Denied April 12, 2013.

Brian Steel, Atlanta, for Appellant.

Robert D. James Jr., Deborah D. Wellborn, for Appellee.

PHIPPS, Presiding Judge.

In connection with the shooting death of 17–year–old Wendell “ L.J.” Lewis Gilliam, Jr., Philmon Chambers, who also was 17 years of age at the time of the shooting, was charged with aggravated assault (by use of a deadly weapon), felony murder, and murder. A jury found him guilty of aggravated assault, felony murder, and voluntary manslaughter as a lesser included offense of murder. After the trial court merged the three counts, Chambers was sentenced for committing voluntary manslaughter. His motion for new trial was denied.

In this appeal, Chambers contends that the trial court erred by, among other things, denying his motion for new trial, which motion raised the issue of juror misconduct. Specifically, Chambers complained that, during deliberations, a juror shared with her fellow jurors legal definitions, which she had found by using the Internet search engine Google; at least one such definition, Chambers argued, was incompatible with an affirmative defense he pursued at trial—defense of habitation, as it pertains to motor vehicles. Because Chambers has demonstrated on appeal that the state failed to carry its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that he was not prejudiced by the juror misconduct, we reverse the trial court's denial of his motion for new trial. Chambers's remaining claims of error, for purposes of this appeal, are moot.

At the jury trial, the state called several witnesses to testify about what happened at the shooting scene. At about 10:00 p.m. on June 15, 2006, Chambers drove a Honda vehicle into the parking lot of an apartment complex. He and his passenger were following their two friends, who were in an Oldsmobile vehicle, which also had turned into the same parking lot. Standing in or near the parking lot were about 15 to 20 youngsters.

One witness called by the state was 15 years old on the evening in question and recounted that he and his friends had been at an apartment “rapping, sitting around, chilling” until about 10:00 p.m. When they walked outside, the Oldsmobile and Honda were being driven into the parking lot. L.J., who was with this witness at the time, began arguing—“gang related or something like that”—with one of the Honda's occupants. This witness testified, “L.J. start[ed] walking towards the Honda, and he got—like, before he can get closer to the car, I seen the driver driving the [Honda] pull out a pistol and just fire one time and shot L.J., and L.J. came back running towards the breezeway,” before dropping to the ground. L.J. did not have a gun, but immediately after the shot was fired, either L.J. or someone in the crowd threw a bat at the Honda.

Another witness called by the state had been L.J.'s very good friend. He testified that several of the individuals standing in or near the parking lot did not like at least one of the males in the Honda or Oldsmobile. A verbal altercation erupted. The Oldsmobile was being driven away, and L.J. approached the Honda and there were “[w]ords back to back.” Then “L.J. tried to grab [the driver, Chambers], like take him out of the window, pull him out the window. But he was yanking on him, trying to pull him out of the window, and that's when [Chambers] shot one time. [L.J.] jumped ... and took off running.” But L.J. soon dropped to the ground. This witness had not seen L.J. with a gun. Meanwhile, Chambers, who had never gotten out of the Honda, drove away.

Rescue personnel responded to the shooting scene and found L.J. lying on the ground. Medical intervention failed, and L.J. died. An autopsy later showed that a bullet had entered his chest underneath his right armpit, struck his right lung, traveled through his heart, diaphragm, and spleen, then lodged into skin near the lower, left part of his rib cage. Ballistics testing showed that the bullet removed from L.J.'s body matched the gun that police had seized from Chambers's bedroom when he was arrested hours after the shooting. Expert testimony showed that the gun had been approximately three-and-a-half to four feet from L.J. at the time it was discharged. Other expert testimony showed that the nature of L.J.'s wounds was consistent with having been inflicted while he was leaning into a vehicle.

After Chambers was arrested on the night of the incident, he told the police the following in his statement. He had gone to the apartment complex looking for a particular friend, but that after stopping an individual to ask about his friend's whereabouts, approximately eight “guys” approached his car. The guys said they were members of a particular rap group and asked him and the individual whom he had just stopped whether they were members of a certain rival rap group. Chambers and the individual he had just stopped told them no. And although the guys eventually walked away, a person Chambers did not know, later determined to be L.J.,

came up on me and reached into my car. He grabbed me by the shirt trying to pull me out and started to hit me in my chest ... about four times, and that's when I reached down on the floor and grabbed the gun. I then shot it out the window trying to scare the dude and get him up off of me. After the shot went off, he let go and ran away. He did not say anything, and I did not realize that it shot him.

In his defense, Chambers called at trial one witness. Chambers's witness testified that he was 20 years old on the date of the shooting and that he was friends with both Chambers and L.J. That night, this witness was the passenger in the Oldsmobile, whose driver drove into the parking lot to buy marijuana. When the two cars pulled into the parking lot, a group of people were standing at the nearby playground. The witness recounted, “We happened to run into some guys we got into an altercation with earlier.” (Chambers, however, had not been involved in the earlier altercation and knew nothing about it at the time.) Those guys were threatening to attack someone the car occupants knew, but who was not at the scene. The driver of the Oldsmobile began arguing with the crowd of about ten individuals. Chambers, however, was not involved in the argument. L.J. told the two males who had arrived in the Oldsmobile to leave. Still, no words had been spoken between L.J. and Chambers. The Honda's engine was running, and Chambers was seated in the driver's seat. As the driver of the Oldsmobile began to drive away, L.J. walked to the driver's side of the Honda, yelled for Chambers to “Get the F out of the car” and then “just started swinging on him.” About ten people ran to the car. When the shot rang out, L.J. ran from the car, and the people who had gathered about the car scattered. As this witness put it: “[I]t was going to be [Chambers] or it was going to be [L.J. and his friends]. I mean, it was going to be [Chambers] getting pulled out of the car, jumped, beat up, stomped, hit with bats. They had bats. They had all kinds of stuff. It was either going to be him messed up or it was going to be the other way around.” L.J., however, had been holding no bat or any other weapon at the time he was shot.

Chambers took the stand and gave the following account. At the time in question, he had been aware that the two rap groups did not like each other and that the groups had performed songs about each other. Chambers was not a member of either group, although he had written portions of one group's rap songs. Regarding the shooting episode, he recounted that when he arrived at the parking lot, he remained seated in the Honda. About nine guys, some with bats, surrounded his car, asking the whereabouts of one of his friends; Chambers answered that he did not know. L.J. was not among them. Meanwhile, an argument erupted between the driver of the Oldsmobile and the crowd outside, and the Oldsmobile's driver got out of his car. But then L.J. walked over to that driver and shook his hand, after which that driver got back into the Oldsmobile and began driving away. Chambers had put his car into reverse to back away when he noticed someone in the crowd saying something to L.J. Mumbling, L.J. walked to Chambers's side of the Honda, grabbed him, swung at him between two to four times and tried to pull him out of the car window. Chambers was strapped to the car by the seatbelt, however. L.J. next struggled to open the car door. When the car door was opened to about a forty-five degree angle, Chambers reached under his car seat, grabbed his gun with his right hand, and shot out through his open car window. At that instant, L.J. was leaning on Chambers's car door. Chambers testified, “I really felt like, I had no choice.... I wanted all of them away from my car ... I was being attacked.” Chambers testified that he wanted to scare L.J., and he wanted “L.J. and the rest of them to get away from my car so I could go about my business.” Everyone standing near the car ran away, and Chambers drove away with his passenger. Later that night, police arrested Chambers at his home.

As further shown by defense counsel's closing argument and by the trial court's final charge to the jury, Chambers pursued, inter alia, the affirmative defenses of justification, as well as defense of habitation as applicable to motor vehicles. Upon the return of the jury's guilty verdicts, the court proceeded with sentencing Chambers to twenty years to serve.

1. Chambers contends that the trial court erred by denying his motion for new trial on the ground of juror misconduct. Specifically, a juror injected into deliberations extra-judicial information. Chambers argues that the prosecution failed to disprove, beyond a reasonable doubt, by competent evidence, that the juror misconduct of introducing extra-judicial information did...