Coleman v. Mallory

• Decision Date: 14 August 2017
• Docket Number: S17A0818 S17A0819.
• Citation: Coleman v. Mallory, 804 S.E.2d 24 (Ga. 2017)
• Parties: COLEMAN v. The STATE. Mallory v. The State.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

301 Ga. 720

804 S.E.2d 24

COLEMAN

v.The STATE.

Mallory

v.The State.

S17A0818 S17A0819.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided August 14, 2017

Joseph Scott Key, MILLER & KEY, PA, 79 Lawrenceville Street, McDonough, Georgia 30253, for Appellant in S17A0818.

Stephen Randall Scarborough, STEPHEN R. SCARBOROUGH, P.C., 100 Peachtree Street NW, Suite 2095, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellant in S17A0819.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Aimee F. Sobhani, Assistant Attorney General, DEPARTMENT OF LAW, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Emily Kathleen Richardson, A.D.A., DOUGLAS COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, 8700 Hospital Drive, 2nd Floor, Douglasville, Georgia 30134, Brian Keith Fortner, District Attorney, DOUGLAS COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, 8700 Hospital Drive, 3rd Floor, Douglasville, Georgia 30134–2264, for Appellee in S17A0818 and S17A0819.

S. Taylor Johnston, Assistant Attorney General, DEPARTMENT OF LAW, 40 Capital Square NW, Atlanta, Georgia 30334, for Appellee in S17A0818.

Blackwell, Justice.

Horace Coleman and Quantez Mallory were tried jointly by a Douglas County jury and convicted of malice murder in connection with the beating death of Bobby Tillman. Coleman and Mallory each filed separate appeals, which we consolidate for purposes of this opinion. Coleman contends that the trial court erred when it denied his motion for a mistrial after the prosecution elicited purportedly inadmissible testimony from a jailhouse informant. Mallory argues that the trial court erred when it denied his Batson ¹ challenge during jury selection and that his due process rights were violated because he lacked access to prospective jurors' criminal histories maintained by the Georgia Crime Information Center ("GCIC"). Both Coleman and Mallory also contend that the trial court's questioning of the State's forensic pathologist constituted an erroneous comment on the evidence. Upon our review of the record and briefs, we see no error, and we affirm.²

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence presented at trial shows the following. Two high-school-age sisters decided to have a small gathering with their mother's permission. The girls invited approximately 12 friends (including Tillman) to their house in Douglasville, but news of the party spread on social media, and more than 100 people showed up. Coleman and Mallory were among the many individuals who came to the party uninvited. Due to the oversized crowd, the girls' mother and her boyfriend called the police and told everyone to leave the premises. As people left the house, crowds congregated outside and spilled onto the street. Soon, fights broke out among some of the girls at the party. Emmanuel Boykins (who was later also indicted) tried to break up one of the fights and was hit. He was overheard saying he did not want to retaliate against a female, but instead was going to hit the first man he saw.

Meanwhile, Tillman was passively standing by a car, across the street from the house. Boykins ran up to Tillman and began punching him. Almost immediately, Coleman, Mallory, and Franklin joined in the attack. When Tillman fell to the ground, the attackers kicked him in the chest and stomped on him multiple times. The beating continued even as some of the bystanders attempted to pull the attackers off Tillman. When the attackers stopped, Tillman was shaking and foaming at the mouth. He was unresponsive when the paramedics arrived and was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital.

When the police came to the scene, they rounded up the partygoers, boarded them onto a bus, and took them to a police station for questioning. Eyewitnesses identified the attackers by their appearance. Coleman was described as an attacker who had dreadlocks with gold or yellow tips and who wore a green hoodie, a blue hat, and two or more rosary necklaces. Mallory was described as having a "fade" or "box" haircut and wearing a white jacket with red stripes down the sleeves. Both Coleman and Mallory were also identified as the perpetrators via photographic lineups. An autopsy revealed that the ultimate cause of Tillman's death was laceration of the heart caused by a blunt impact to the chest.

2. Coleman and Mallory do not dispute that the evidence was sufficient to sustain their convictions for malice murder. Nevertheless, as is our customary practice in murder cases, we independently have reviewed the record with an eye toward the legal sufficiency of the evidence. We conclude that the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Coleman and Mallory each was guilty of malice murder.

See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (III) (B), 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).

3. Coleman argues on appeal that the trial court erred when it denied his motion for a mistrial after the prosecution elicited purportedly inadmissible hearsay testimony from a jailhouse informant. The record reflects that the prosecutor asked the informant whether he had encountered any trouble in jail as a result of his agreement to testify, upon which the informant responded: "I've had people say that [Coleman] wanted them to come beat me up because I got him some time." The informant also stated that he was involved in a fight where someone said "this is for [Coleman]." The trial court sustained a hearsay objection to this testimony but refused to grant Coleman's request for a mistrial, opting instead to give a limiting instruction to the jury and rebuke the prosecution.

Assuming that the informant's testimony was indeed inadmissible, we see no error in the trial court's refusal to grant a mistrial. "Whether to declare a mistrial is a question committed to the discretion of the trial judge, and the denial of a mistrial is reversible error only if it appears that a mistrial was essential to preserve the defendant's right to a fair trial." McKibbins v. State, 293 Ga. 843, 848 (3), 750 S.E.2d 314 (2013) (citation and punctuation omitted). Here, a mistrial was not necessary to preserve Coleman's right to a fair trial. Almost immediately after the informant uttered the offending statements, the trial court conferred with the parties and then gave a lengthy curative instruction to the jury, telling the jurors that the informant's testimony was inadmissible, that it did not prove that Coleman had done anything, and that they should "disregard that evidence in its entirety, not hold it against Mr. Coleman in any way, [and] not weigh it or consider it in any manner in your deliberations in this case." We ordinarily presume that a jury follows such instructions. Adams v. State, 274 Ga. 854, 855 (2), 561 S.E.2d 101 (2002).

Not only did the trial court give curative instructions, but it also rebuked the prosecution in front of the jury, stating: "I'm rebuking the state in your presence, and telling them they are not to go into this. It was inappropriate for the state to ask a question that resulted in that answer being given." In this light, any harm stemming from the informant's purportedly inadmissible statements was substantially mitigated, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to grant a mistrial.³ See McKibbins, 293 Ga. at 850 (3) (c), 750 S.E.2d 314 (trial court did not abuse its discretion when it denied a mistrial after improper statement by prosecutor, "especially because the trial court promptly admonished the prosecuting attorney and told the jury to disregard the statement").⁴

4. Mallory contends that, during jury selection, the trial court erred by rejecting his Batson challenge to the prosecutor's peremptory strikes of black potential jurors. The resolution of a Batson challenge at the trial court level involves three steps: "(1) the opponent of a peremptory challenge must make a prima facie showing of racial discrimination; (2) the proponent of the strike must then provide a race-neutral explanation for the strike; and (3) the court must decide whether the opponent of the strike has proven the proponent's discriminatory intent." Toomer v. State, 292 Ga. 49, 52 (2) (a), 734 S.E.2d 333 (2012) (citation and punctuation omitted). At the second step, all that is required is for the proponent of the strike to provide a facially race-neutral explanation for the strike; this explanation need not be "persuasive, or even plausible." Id. at 54 (2) (b), 734 S.E.2d 333. It is only at the third step that the trial court "makes credibility determinations, evaluates the persuasiveness of the strike opponent's prima facie showing and the explanations given by the strike proponent, and examines all other circumstances that bear upon the issue of racial animosity." Heard v. State, 295 Ga. 559, 567 (3), 761 S.E.2d 314 (2014) (citation and punctuation omitted). "A trial court's finding as to whether the opponent of a peremptory strike has proven discriminatory intent is entitled to great deference and will not be overturned unless clearly erroneous." Younger v. State, 288 Ga. 195, 198 (2), 702 S.E.2d 183 (2010).

Mallory specifically contends that the trial court erred at the third step of Batson because it failed to make an express finding as to whether purposeful discrimination was shown.⁵ We are unpersuaded. A careful review of the record reveals that the trial court did not simply stop at step two of the Batson inquiry, but implicitly engaged in the third step. For each of the six black jurors struck from the venire, the prosecution gave an ostensibly race-neutral explanation for the strike, which completed the second Batson step. The trial court then heard arguments from the defense about why the prosecutor's explanation was inadequate as to each juror. After hearing from both the prosecution and the defense, the trial court made its own findings (for each juror separately) about...