Davidson v. State

• Decision Date: 24 September 2018
• Docket Number: S18A0934,S18A0933
• Citation: 304 Ga. 460,819 S.E.2d 452
• Parties: DAVIDSON v. The STATE. Grant v. The State.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

304 Ga. 460

819 S.E.2d 452

DAVIDSON

v.The STATE.

Grant

v.The State.

S18A0933

S18A0934

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: September 24, 2018

Chaunda Brock, Brock Law, LLC, PO Box 93946, Atlanta, Georgia 30377, for Appellant in S18A0933.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Matthew David O'Brien, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Paul L. Howard, Jr., District Attorney, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, S.W., 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Arthur C. Walton, A.D.A., Fulton County Courthouse, 4th Floor, 136 Pryor Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Benjamin David Goldberg, The Law Office of Ben Goldberg, LLC, P.O. Box 427, Mableton, Georgia 30126, for Appellant in S18A0934.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Matthew David O'Brien, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Paul L. Howard, Jr., District Attorney, Stephany Julissa Luttrell, A.D.A., Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Teri Brown Walker, Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, S.W., 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Arthur C. Walton, A.D.A., Fulton County Courthouse, 4th Floor, 136 Pryor Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee in S18A0934.

Blackwell, Justice.

Richard Davidson and Michael Denay Grant were tried separately by Fulton County juries, and both were convicted of murder and the unlawful possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony in connection with the attempted robbery and fatal shooting of Christopher Walker. Davidson and Grant appeal, each asserting that the trial court erred when it admitted certain evidence at his trial. We find no harmful error with respect to Davidson. We conclude, however, that the trial court erred when it admitted a statement against Grant that law enforcement officers elicited from him in a custodial interrogation after he unequivocally invoked his constitutional right to remain silent, and the State has failed to show that this error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, we affirm in Davidson’s case, and we reverse in Grant’s.¹

Sufficiency of the Evidence as to both Davidson and Grant

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, evidence presented at both trials shows that Walker and a friend, Alberto Rodriguez, went to a Taco Bell restaurant in Alpharetta early on the evening of March 12, 2013. As they entered the restaurant, they saw two men standing outside. Rodriguez noticed that one of these men had dreadlocks and appeared to be staring at Walker’s gold chain, and the other man was wearing a striped shirt. Walker and Rodriguez were inside the restaurant for approximately 13 minutes, and when they left, Rodriguez saw the same man with dreadlocks, now seated in a car that was parked in a lot across the street from the Taco Bell and in the company of two other men. Walker and Rodriguez then drove about six miles to Walker’s house in Milton, unaware that they were being followed. They parked in Walker’s driveway, and as they exited their car, they were approached by the man in a striped shirt, who asked them where he could get some marijuana. When they responded that they did not know, the man started to walk away. But he quickly turned and approached them again, commenting that he liked the chain that Walker was wearing. The man in the striped shirt then pulled out a gun and demanded the chain. When Walker refused, Walker and the man struggled, the man held a gun to Walker’s head, and eventually, the man shot Walker in the head. The man then fled to a nearby car—the same car that Rodriguez had observed earlier in the lot across the street from the Taco Bell—which sped away from the scene. Later that night, Walker died as a result of the gunshot wound to his head. An autopsy led to the recovery of bullet fragments, which indicated that Walker had been shot with a .40-caliber bullet.

Investigators retrieved a recording from the video surveillance system at the Taco Bell, and they took notice of three men depicted in the recording, who visited the restaurant close in time to Walker and Rodriguez. When investigators showed the recording to Rodriguez, he identified one of these men as the man with dreadlocks whom he had seen staring at Walker’s gold chain, and he identified another as the man in the striped shirt who shot Walker. Investigators also showed the recording to one of Walker’s neighbors, and the neighbor said that she had seen the man in the striped shirt run through her yard with a handgun around the time of the shooting. Investigators then released the recording to the public and asked for information about the three men depicted in the recording. Danielle Weed responded to this request for information, and she told investigators that she personally knew all three men. She identified the man with dreadlocks as Matthew Goins; she said that the man in the striped shirt was Davidson; and she identified the third man as Grant. At the trials, Weed again identified Goins, Davidson, and Grant in the video recording, and Rodriguez testified that Grant’s car was the car that he had observed both at the Taco Bell and in Walker’s neighborhood.

At his trial, Davidson disputed that he was present at the scene of the shooting. The prosecution offered evidence (under OCGA § 24-4-404 (b) ) that Davidson had robbed a traveling businessman at gunpoint only a few months before Walker was killed. In addition, the prosecution presented evidence that investigators had searched Davidson’s home, where they found .40-caliber ammunition, although a firearms examiner testified that he was unable to determine whether the .40-caliber ammunition was of the same brand as the bullet that killed Walker. The prosecution also presented evidence of a statement made by Goins, in which Goins admitted that he was present at the scene of a killing. Goins, however, said nothing in that statement about Davidson.

Grant did not dispute at his joint trial with Goins that he was present at the scene of the shooting, but Grant argued that he was not a party to the attempted robbery or killing. The prosecution presented evidence that, after Grant was arrested, he made a purportedly incriminating statement to investigators. In that statement, Grant attempted to exonerate Goins, saying that Goins "didn’t know we was doing none of that; he didn’t know we was going to do that; he didn’t know we planned on doing nothing; he was just trying to get home."

Only Grant asserts on appeal that the evidence is legally insufficient to sustain his convictions, but it is our customary practice to review the sufficiency of the evidence in all murder cases, and so, we will consider the sufficiency of the evidence as to Davidson as well. We have separately reviewed the records of Davidson’s and Grant’s respective trials. We conclude that the evidence presented against Davidson is legally sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (III) (B), 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). And although the case against Grant is considerably weaker, we conclude that the evidence presented at his trial also is legally sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Grant is guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. See id. See also Cowart v. State, 294 Ga. 333, 343-344 (6), 751 S.E.2d 399 (2013) (when we assess the legal sufficiency of the evidence under Jackson, we consider all of the evidence presented at trial, even evidence that might have been admitted erroneously).

Davidson’s Claims of Error

2. Davidson claims that the trial court erred when it admitted evidence of the .40-caliber ammunition that was found in his home. Davidson argues that the ammunition was not shown to be connected with Walker’s shooting, and the prejudicial impact of the evidence, therefore, substantially outweighed its probative value, rendering it inadmissible under OCGA § 24-4-403.² We disagree. The probative value of this evidence may have been limited, but the prejudicial impact was limited too. When the evidence was presented, Davidson elicited testimony on cross-examination that investigators also found a .40-caliber handgun in his home, which was excluded as the murder weapon by a subsequent firearms examination. The testimony conveyed clearly to the jury that the .40-caliber handgun found in the Davidson home was not the murder weapon, and the presence of the .40-caliber handgun offered an innocent explanation for the presence of the .40-caliber ammunition. In addition, the testimony clearly conveyed that the connection between the ammunition found in the home and the bullet with which Walker was shot was tenuous, if there were any connection at all. Moreover, the other evidence against Davidson was quite strong. The video recording from the Taco Bell and the testimony of Rodriguez, Walker’s neighbor, and (especially) Weed identified Davidson as the man who shot Walker. In this light, we cannot say that the probative value of the ammunition was so substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice that the trial court abused its discretion when it admitted the evidence. See Olds v. State, 299 Ga. 65, 70 (2), 786 S.E.2d 633 (2016) ("[T]he exclusion of evidence under Rule 403 is an extraordinary remedy which should be used only sparingly." (Citation and punctuation omitted) ).

3. Davidson also contends that the trial court erred when it admitted Goins’s statement. Weed testified at trial that, after she first saw the video recording from the Taco Bell that...