Croyle v. State

• Decision Date: 25 June 2021
• Docket Number: A21A0521
• Citation: 360 Ga.App. 157,860 S.E.2d 844
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals
• Parties: CROYLE v. The STATE.

360 Ga.App. 157

860 S.E.2d 844

CROYLE

v.The STATE.

A21A0521

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

June 25, 2021

Jackie Lynn Tyo, for Appellant.

Henry Wayne Syms Jr., Jared Tolton Williams, Augusta, Mary Elizabeth Watkins, for Appellee.

Barnes, Presiding Judge.

Roland Evan Croyle repeatedly rammed a sport utility vehicle (SUV) into the front door of the Twin Peaks restaurant where he and his ex-wife had once worked. After exiting the SUV, Croyle tossed accelerants throughout the restaurant, then set the building on fire. When Croyle was later asked why he had done those acts, he answered that he associated the place with the breakdown of his marriage. At Croyle's ensuing criminal trial that spanned 5 days, the jury rejected his defense that he was not guilty by reason of insanity, and found him guilty but mentally ill on each count of the indictment.¹ After merger, Croyle was convicted of 21 counts of aggravated assault² and one count each of first degree criminal damage to property³ and first degree arson.⁴ Denied a new trial, Croyle contends in this appeal that the trial court erred by allowing certain expert testimony and by rejecting his claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Regarding the latter, Croyle claims that his defense was prejudiced by a stipulation entered with respect to the aggravated assault counts, and by the absence of certain language from the final jury charge. We affirm.

At the outset of the State's case in chief, the prosecutor presented video recordings of the incident that had been captured by several surveillance cameras positioned in and around the premises, as well as the testimony of several law enforcement officers who had responded to the scene, and recordings of statements that Croyle made to law enforcement officers after his arrest. Collectively, this evidence showed that at about 12:45 p.m. on June 26, 2017, a Mitsubishi Montero Sport slammed twice into the front door of the Twin Peaks restaurant. The driver of the SUV, later confirmed as Croyle, was attempting to drive the SUV into the restaurant. The occupants of the restaurant rushed out of the building. After additional, but still unsuccessful attempts to ram the SUV through the front door, Croyle got out of the SUV. He then made multiple trips into the building, transporting from the SUV then tossing about the dining and kitchen areas of the restaurant what was later confirmed to be aerosol cans, two propane tanks, an open cooler filled with fuel, and multiple open 5-gallon buckets of fuel. Croyle ignited a fire both in the kitchen and in the dining area, then briskly returned to the SUV.

Meanwhile, a plainclothes law enforcement officer who happened to have been driving about a block away heard the dispatcher's alert of an "accident into the building" of Twin Peaks and that "someone is trying to set the building on fire." That officer, who had spent the majority of his 30-year career working in the special operations divisions (dealing with tactical solutions, the bomb squad, the SWAT team, etc.), immediately drove to the scene. As he was arriving, he observed numerous individuals running away from the restaurant. The officer parked his unmarked vehicle in a space most distant from the restaurant. Assessing the situation while walking in a nonchalant manner to the building, the officer noted an SUV with a crashed front end positioned at the front entrance of the restaurant; he then saw a lone man exit that entrance. Because the man seemed to be walking about freely, the officer approached him and asked, "What are you doing?" The man, who the officer identified at trial as Croyle, answered, "I'm blowing the building up." The officer sought to engage Croyle, "Why are you doing that?" Croyle responded that the restaurant had caused his divorce. When Croyle turned his back, the officer spotted a long, "half-sword" knife tucked through Croyle's belt loop. The officer attempted to keep their line of communication open without Croyle realizing that he had been approached by police. While they were conversing, an apparent civilian who had taken cover behind one of the vehicles in the parking lot was aiming a firearm at Croyle and shouting commands for Croyle to stop and to freeze; Croyle was intermittently yelling back to the man, "Shoot me. Shoot me." Croyle took off his shirt, revealing "DNR" starkly written across his chest and stomach. Interpreting the lettering as a "Do Not Resuscitate" message, the officer discerned the situation as potentially perilous for both of them. Upon realizing that Croyle was partly distracted by the gunman crouched behind the car, and noticing that Croyle's attention had also become partly diverted to an approaching uniformed deputy sheriff who had his firearm drawn, and further determining that Croyle was not perceiving him (the plainclothes officer) to be a threat, the officer seized an opportunity to tackle Croyle to the ground, landing both of them in a large pool of fuel that had collected during Croyle's transport of the various containers.

The uniformed deputy sheriff handcuffed Croyle. Smoke was billowing out the front door, and the officers dragged Croyle to a safe location. The building quickly became engulfed with flames, and explosions were being heard. Concerned that arriving fire crews would attempt to enter the building, the plainclothes officer demanded from Croyle: "What did you put in the building? ... What about all the people [in there]?" Croyle answered that he had put some aerosol cans in the restaurant; and regarding the people, Croyle insisted, "[T]hey got out."

Croyle was placed in the back seat of the uniformed deputy sheriff's patrol car and transported first to a hospital (because of the fuel on his skin), and then to jail.

The plainclothes officer who had approached Croyle at the scene was asked at trial whether he had been able to hold an intelligent conversation with Croyle on that day; the officer answered,

Absolutely. He knew exactly what he was saying and what his mission was.... He had a well-organized plan. This was not something that he did at a whim, when he was driving by ... [I]t was a well-thought-out plan from beginning to end. I think he made mistakes along the way, but ... it was a plan. It was not a spur-of-the-moment onset. And with us having the conversation, it was just like talking to someone else. I mean, he responded to my questions; why are you doing this? Well, it caused my divorce.

The uniformed deputy sheriff who had handcuffed Croyle testified about several statements that Croyle made to him. For instance, the deputy sheriff testified, "He said that he was supposed to die and he was supposed to take two in the chest and one in the head." The deputy sheriff testified that he understood Croyle as expressing that he had wanted to die by means of police shooting.

A responding sheriff's office investigator testified that when he arrived at the scene, Croyle was still there, but he was unable to speak to Croyle because Croyle had contaminants on him and thus had to be taken to a hospital. The investigator testified that fire crews and other fire department personnel were also there; he began to examine the scene for evidence, which investigation he continued the next day. Numerous photographs taken of the aftermath were shown to the jury.

Two days after the incident, the same investigator, along with an ATF special agent, interviewed Croyle at a police station. Croyle stated that he was 45 years old, recently divorced, and living with his parents. He also said that he had two children whom he could not see because of his ex-wife's mother. Croyle told that he and his ex-wife had once worked at the Twin Peaks, but that he was fired after being wrongly accused of drinking on the job. Croyle expressed being depressed about his life. He stated that he had been prescribed medications for his depression; that he had been participating in group counseling; that he sometimes could not remember things (that other individuals would tell him he had done); and that he found it "hard to think some days." When asked what was going on at about 12:35 on the afternoon in question, however, Croyle readily answered that he had intended to catch on fire, sit in a booth, stab himself in the chest with the knife he had secured "in [his] back," then die. Croyle further revealed that he had planned for the burning building to serve as his funeral pyre. When asked why he had gone to Twin Peaks to kill himself, he explained that the restaurant had been the place where he had lost his respect, where his wife had lost respect for him, where he had realized that he had failed her, where "it hurt me the most," and where he thus needed to die. Croyle recounted that in saying his goodbyes, he had visited his children and given them his wisdom teeth because he had nothing else to give. Croyle further recounted that he had purchased gasoline from a gas station; that he had tried to drive the SUV into the restaurant so that he "could get the gasoline and stuff out easier"; that he had thrown propane tanks and gas cans into the building to fuel the fire; that he had "wanted the pain of being worthless to stop"; and that when he went back outside the restaurant to retrieve the last container of gas from the SUV, he was confronted by two men. A recording of Croyle's police interview was played for the jury.

Next, the State began presenting the accounts of various individuals who had been inside the restaurant when Croyle slammed the SUV into the front door. One such occupant (and an alleged aggravated assault victim), testified that he was eating lunch with his son-in-law when he heard a "real loud" crash "like metal and glass breaking." He immediately stood up and looked in the direction of the sound, and saw an SUV protruding through the restaurant's front door. He recalled, "[A]t first, ... I wasn't sure if it was an accident, but when he backed up and hit it again, that's when...