Copeland v. State
| Decision Date | 22 June 2022 |
| Docket Number | S22A0591 |
| Citation | 314 Ga. 44,875 S.E.2d 636 |
| Parties | COPELAND v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
G. Richard Stepp, G. Richard Stepp, P.C., P.O. Box 749, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30046-0749, 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, Patsy A. Austin-Gatson, District Attorney, Christopher Mark DeNeve, A.D.A., Lee Franklin Tittsworth, A.D.A., Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office, 75 Langley Drive, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30046, for Appellee.
Ladarrwin Davion Copeland was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting deaths of Timothy Rodgers and Ricky Johnson.1 On appeal, Copeland contends that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to try his case, that the evidence was insufficient to sustain his convictions, and that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence related to the search of his cell phone records. Seeing no error, we affirm.
1. Copeland first contends that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to try his case because he had filed a pro se notice of appeal before his trial, and the remittitur from this Court was not filed in the trial court until after the conclusion of the trial. We disagree.
A criminal defendant's "pretrial notice of appeal, if effective, ... deprive[s] the trial court of jurisdiction to try [him] until his appeal [i]s resolved and the trial court receive[s] and file[s] the remittitur from the appellate court." Tolbert v. Toole , 296 Ga. 357, 360, 767 S.E.2d 24 (2014). However, "[a] criminal defendant in Georgia does not have the right to represent himself and also be represented by an attorney, and pro se filings by represented parties are therefore unauthorized and without effect." Id. at 363, 767 S.E.2d 24 (citation and punctuation omitted).
That is what happened here when Copeland filed a pro se notice of appeal when he was still represented by counsel. Indeed, this Court dismissed Copeland's pro se pre-trial appeal on the ground that, "because he was represented by legal counsel at the time his notice of appeal was filed, his notice of appeal [was] a legal nullity." Copeland's pro se notice of appeal therefore had no legal effect and did not divest the trial court of jurisdiction to try his case. See Tolbert , 296 Ga. at 363, 767 S.E.2d 24 ().2
2. Having resolved the threshold jurisdictional question Copeland raised, we now turn to his enumerations of error about the merits of his case and first examine the sufficiency of the evidence. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at Copeland's trial showed the following. In the early morning hours of January 28, 2017, both Rodgers and Johnson were killed with a .32-caliber handgun at a motel in Gwinnett County. The only eyewitness, Nikita Riley, was Copeland's girlfriend and Rodgers's ex-girlfriend. She testified as follows: Although Riley and Rodgers were no longer in a romantic relationship, Riley would receive mail for Rodgers and stayed in contact with him. Rodgers was often verbally abusive towards Riley, and when Copeland would answer Rodgers's calls to Riley, Copeland and Rodgers would argue.
On the night of the shootings, Rodgers repeatedly called Riley because she had received his medication in the mail and he wanted her to bring it to him. At one point, Copeland answered Riley's phone and argued with Rodgers. After the phone call, Copeland told Riley: "Don't ever let nobody get comfortable disrespecting you." Later, Copeland drove Riley in his blue van to the motel where Rodgers was staying.
After arriving at the motel, Riley knocked on Rodgers's door, not realizing that Copeland had followed her to the door. Johnson, who was an employee of Rodgers, opened the door. Copeland shot Johnson once and then pushed Riley into the motel room. Johnson stumbled out to the parking lot, where he fell face down and died from the gunshot wound. Once inside the motel room, Copeland shot Rodgers four times, killing him.
From about 1:45 to 2:00 a.m. on January 28, 2017, the motel resident in the room above Rodgers heard a man and a woman arguing outside of the motel, and then heard a "thud" followed by a woman's scream. Around the same time, some people in a car driving through the parking lot of the motel saw Johnson's body lying in the parking lot. After dropping someone off and approaching the body, they were cut off by a blue vehicle with unusual headlights that was exiting the parking lot.
According to Riley, she did not know that Copeland was going to shoot the victims. As she and Copeland fled the scene in Copeland's blue van, Riley asked Copeland if he was going to kill her, and he said he was not. Riley was scared but did not call the police because she was under the influence of drugs at the time and both she and Copeland had been drinking. The two drove to Riley's cousin's home. Riley began crying and became very upset and told her cousin that Copeland and Rodgers "got into a fight."
The cell phones of both victims were recovered at the scene of the crimes. Investigators later extracted data from the cell phones of Riley, Rodgers, Johnson, and Copeland, and obtained related phone records and cell-site location data from cellular providers. That information demonstrated that Riley's and Copeland's phones were in the same area before the crimes occurred, were in the area of the crimes around the time they occurred, and were also near one another afterwards; that the last phone call to Rodgers's phone was from Riley's phone; and that prior to the murders, Riley and Rodgers were exchanging messages about Riley bringing Rodgers his medicine and mail.
Copeland was taken into custody, told police that he drove a blue van, and admitted that he knew who Rodgers was. However, Copeland denied any involvement in or knowledge of the murders.
Copeland's argument regarding evidentiary sufficiency is confusing because he appears to conflate the test for constitutional sufficiency of the evidence with the statutory requirement that accomplice testimony must be corroborated to sustain a conviction. Specifically, Copeland asserts that "the evidence adduced at trial was insufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to find Appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" of the murders and related offenses. But the primary thrust of his argument appears to be that the testimony of Riley, as an alleged co-conspirator or party to the crimes, lacked the "necessary corroboration."
When evaluating a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence as a matter of federal constitutional due process under Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307, 318-319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), we view the evidence presented at trial in the light most favorable to the verdicts and ask whether any rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted. See Butler v. State , 313 Ga. 675, 679, 872 S.E.2d 722 (Case No. S22A0317, May 3, 2022). In so doing, "[w]e leave to the trier of fact the resolution of conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence, credibility of witnesses, and reasonable inferences to be derived from the facts, and we do not reweigh the evidence." Id. (citations and punctuation omitted). "When we consider the legal sufficiency of the evidence under Jackson v. Virginia , we consider all the evidence presented at trial, without regard to whether some of that evidence might have been improperly admitted." Collins v. State , 312 Ga. 727, 733-734, 864 S.E.2d 85 (2021) (citation and punctuation omitted).
Under Georgia statutory law, "[t]he testimony of an accomplice must be corroborated to sustain a felony conviction." Yarn v. State , 305 Ga. 421, 423, 826 S.E.2d 1 (2019) (citing OCGA § 24-14-8 ). Just as with our evaluation of the sufficiency of the evidence as a matter of constitutional due process, "in considering sufficiency of the corroboration of an accomplice's testimony, we must consider all the evidence admitted by the trial court, regardless of whether that evidence was admitted erroneously." State v. Thomas , 311 Ga. 407, 420, 858 S.E.2d 52 (2021) (citation and punctuation omitted).
"[A]lthough Georgia law requires independent corroboration of an accomplice's testimony to secure a conviction, federal law does not require such corroboration and, thus, a failure to corroborate accomplice testimony does not offend constitutional due process." Goodman v. State , 313 Ga. 762, 767, 873 S.E.2d 150 (Case No. S22A0306, May 17, 2022) (citation and punctuation omitted). Moreover, if the evidence "would have authorized a properly instructed jury to find that a witness was not an accomplice, that finding would eliminate the need for corroboration under OCGA § 24-14-8, and the witness’ testimony alone could be sufficient to convict."
Johnson v. State , 311 Ga. 221, 223, 857 S.E.2d 463 (2021) (emphasis in original). In deciding the issue of whether a witness is an accomplice, it is "for the jury to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence." Id. at 224, 857 S.E.2d 463.
With respect to the sufficiency of the evidence, we reject Copeland's arguments. Although he argues that no physical evidence connected him to the murders other than the evidence of his cell phone data that is the subject of his remaining enumeration of error, we need not exclude that evidence from our sufficiency analysis even if he is correct that it was improperly admitted. See Collins , 312 Ga. at 733-734, 864 S.E.2d 85. Copeland also...
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