Collett v. State

• Decision Date: 20 May 2019
• Docket Number: S19A0324
• Citation: 828 S.E.2d 362,305 Ga. 853
• Parties: COLLETT v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

305 Ga. 853

828 S.E.2d 362

COLLETT

v.The STATE.

S19A0324

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: May 20, 2019

Debra Kay Jefferson, P.O. Box 1473, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30046, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Meghan Hobbs Hill, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Scott L. Ballard, District Attorney, Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, Fayette County Justice Center, One Center Drive, Fayetteville, Georgia 30214, Benjamin David Coker, District Attorney, Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, P.O. Box 871, Thomaston, Georgia 30286, Brittany Ashton Fallin, A.D.A., Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, P.O. Box 57, Griffin, Georgia 30224, for Appellee.

Peterson, Justice.

Shane Collett appeals his convictions for malice murder and concealing the death of another in connection with the 2012 death of nine-year-old Skylar Dials.¹ Collett challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support these convictions and argues that the trial court erred by failing to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offense of reckless conduct or on mistake of fact. We affirm because the evidence was sufficient and the instructions were unwarranted.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence at trial shows that Dials lived with her guardians, Renas and Robert Lupas, and their family in Spalding County. On the morning of December 21, 2012, Dials left her home to play with her friend C.P., who lived next door with her family and Collett.

When Dials failed to return by 3:00 p.m., Ms. Lupas became concerned and went over to C.P.’s house. Collett answered the door and told them that Dials was not there. C.P. and her mother said Dials never came to the house. The Lupases and neighbors began searching for Dials and calling out her name. Collett pretended to help but never went near the brush piles behind the house where Dials’s body was later found. Failing to find her, Ms. Lupas called the police, who conducted an extensive search for Dials.

During the course of the search, the police interviewed Collett several times; each time he denied ever seeing Dials but changed the particulars of his story. During these interactions Collett made little to no eye contact with investigators and expressed no emotion. He also peered through the back window of his house while police searched for Dials.

Around 2:00 a.m on December 22, 2012, the police found Dials’s body in a brush pile behind her home. Her sweater was torn and pulled up near her head. She had scratch marks and bruising on her face and neck. Police recovered Dials’s clothes, and examiners later identified multiple fibers from Collett’s room on Dials’s sweater, including a clump of fibers from the blanket on his bed. Examiners determined that this concentration of fibers would not have appeared by mere accident or momentary transfer, but required prolonged contact. There was also no evidence that Dials had been moved after having been placed in the brush pile.

After finding Dials’s body, the police questioned Collett once more, and he changed his story yet again. After being advised of his rights, Collett said that Dials had come to the house while he was asleep and that she surprised him, causing him to jump up and knock her to the floor, rendering her unconscious. He claimed that he then moved her from the bedroom to the brush pile. He claimed that she was still breathing at the time and that she was not in the pile when he went to check on her later.

The medical examiner found that the injury to Dials’s head was not severe enough to have caused unconsciousness. Based on the marks on her neck, bleeding under the skin around her eyes, and swelling of her brain, the medical examiner determined that Dials’s cause of death was asphyxiation resulting from prolonged neck compression. The medical examiner opined that it would have taken several minutes for Dials to reach unconsciousness and then die. He did not believe the trauma could have been accidental.

1. Collett challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to convict him of malice murder and concealing the death of another in connection with the death of Dials.² We disagree.

In cases like this one where convictions are based on circumstantial evidence, the evidence must be "consistent with the hypothesis of guilt" and "exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused." OCGA § 24-14-6. Not every hypothesis is reasonable, and the reasonableness of alternative hypotheses raised by a defendant is a question principally for the jury. Akhimie v. State , 297 Ga. 801, 804 (1), 777 S.E.2d 683 (2015). Where the jury is authorized to find the evidence sufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis save that of the accused’s guilt, "this Court will not disturb that finding unless it is insupportable as a matter of law." Id. When reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, this Court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict. Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U. S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.E.2d 560 (1979).

Collett argues that he did not know that Dials was dead when he placed her body in the brush pile and that the State failed to prove (1) that doing so was an act known to cause a substantial certainty of death, (2) that he desired to cause her death, or (3) the exact scene or manner of death.

But the evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts indicates that Collett...