Dixon v. State

• Decision Date: 28 April 2009
• Docket Number: No. S09A0223.,No. S09A0222.,S09A0222.,S09A0223.
• Citation: Dixon v. State, 677 S.E.2d 76, 285 Ga. 312 (Ga. 2009)
• Parties: DIXON v. The STATE. Holodick v. The State.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

677 S.E.2d 76

285 Ga. 312

DIXON v.The STATE.

Holodick v.The State.

No. S09A0222.

No. S09A0223.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

April 28, 2009.

David C. Butler, Marietta, for appellant(case no. S09A0222).

Mitchell D. Durham, Marietta, for appellant(case no. S09A0223).

Patrick H. Head, Dist. Atty., Dana J. Norman, Asst. Dist. Atty., Marietta; Thurbert E. Baker, Atty. Gen., Reggie Allen Lampkin, Asst. Atty. Gen., Department of Law Atlanta, for appellee.

MELTON, Justice.

In these related appeals, co-defendantsJames Dixon¹ and Lawrence Holodick² appeal their convictions for the murder of their roommate, John Michael Carter.For the reasons set forth below, we affirm in both cases.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the record shows that Dixon, Holodick, and Carter lived together in a house they rented from their employer.Carter and his roommates often did not get along with each other, and, during the week before Carter's murder, Holodick got into a physical fight with Carter, and Dixon threatened to "push [Carter's] nose into his brain" and choke him.On the night of July 2, 2004, the three men were seen drinking in their driveway after work, and they later moved inside to continue drinking and playing a guitar in the basement of their home, as they often did on weekends.The music stopped abruptly at 12:30 a.m., although the men usually partied until much later, and, at some point that night, a fight began.Carter was stabbed twice in the back of the neck so violently that the blade of the knife broke.After falling to the floor, Carter was then severely beaten by alternating swings of a guitar and its metal stand.Carter was also beaten with a board of shelving.Bits of the guitar embedded in Carter's skin, and the blood splatter evidence at the scene along with the use of multiple weapons indicated that Carter was beaten by more than one person at the same time.³

That night, Dixon, wearing only a pair of blue shorts and no shoes, walked two and a half miles to a co-worker's apartment and arrived there at approximately 1:30 a.m. Dixon had never been to the co-worker's house before, and he had not been invited or expected that night.Acting nervously, Dixon asked his co-worker for drugs, but the co-worker only gave him beer.Dixon then left and arrived back at his house around 3:00 a.m.⁴The next morning, Dixon went to work while Holodick remained at the house in order to clean.Dixon told his co-workers with whom he carpooled that Carter was either drunk or not at home.On the morning of July 4, 2004, Holodick, who had bruises on his arms, went to a neighbor's house and told the neighbor that he had just discovered Carter's body in the basement and that he could not find Dixon.Holodick admitted that he was at home on Friday and Saturday.Dixon never returned home Saturday after work, but instead traveled to Tifton, Georgia, where he was later found by police.Pieces of the guitar were discovered in the garbage can in front of the home, and the knife handle and the remains of the guitar were later discovered in the woods across the street from the crime scene.After forensic testing, a drop of Carter's blood was found on the blue shorts Dixon had been seen wearing.

This evidence was sufficient to enable the jurors to find both Dixon and Holodick guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted beyond a reasonable doubt.Jackson v. Virginia,443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560(1979).

1.Both co-defendants contend that the trial court erred by failing to sever their trials.

"It is incumbent upon the defendant who seeks a severance to show clearly that [ ]he will be prejudiced by a joint trial, and in the absence of such a showing, the trial court's denial of a severance motion will not be disturbed."(Footnote omitted.)Green v. State,274 Ga. 686, 688(2), 558 S.E.2d 707(2002).Factors to be considered by the trial court are: whether a joint trial will create confusion of evidence and law; whether there is a danger that evidence implicating one defendant will be considered against a co-defendant despite limiting instructions; and whether the defendants are asserting antagonistic defenses.[Cit.]

Rhodes v. State,279 Ga. 587, 589(3), 619 S.E.2d 659(2005).

Both defendants contend that their defenses were antagonistic to each other.However, the presence of antagonistic offenses, standing alone, does not require severance absent some showing of harm.Wicks v. State,278 Ga. 550(3), 604 S.E.2d 768(2004).As proof of harm, Holodick contends that, due to the joint trial, Dixon's counsel was allowed to elicit an improper statement incriminating Holodick, and both defendants contend that the joint trial stripped them of peremptory strikes they would have otherwise enjoyed.Neither of these grounds has merit.

With regard to Holodick's argument regarding an incriminating statement, the record shows that, during the investigation of the crimes, a detective took certain statements from Frederick O'Neal, a jail cell informant.O'Neal was not available to testify at trial.During cross-examination, Dixon's trial counsel asked the detective to read O'Neal's statement in order to refresh his memory.The detective mistakenly thought that he was being asked to read the statement out loud and stated: "It just states what [O'Neal] told me regarding they were all there, Larry, Jimmy, and Mike were in the basement drinking."

The State immediately objected to the hearsay statement, the questioning stopped, and the trial court sustained the objection.Thereafter, Holodick further objected wrongly contending that a Bruton⁵ violation had occurred and requesting a mistrial.The trial court denied the motion for a mistrial, and, instead, it gave a curative instruction to the jury instructing them to disregard any testimony from O'Neal.Holodick then stated that he did not object to the curative instruction.Under these circumstances, Holodick has not preserved his right to challenge the statement from O'Neal."If the trial court's curative instructions were not sufficient, [Holodick] should have sought additional relief."(Citations omitted.)Weems v. State,268 Ga. 515, 516(2), 491 S.E.2d 325(1997).Moreover, even if Holodick preserved the argument, there was no harm.O'Neal's statement did not directly implicate Holodick in the murder, as there was no indication of when he may have been in the basement of his home.Moreover, other admissible testimony, including Holodick's own, placed him in the home at the time of the murder, making O'Neal's statement merely cumulative.See, e.g., Copeland v. State,266 Ga. 664, 666(3)(b), 469 S.E.2d 672(1996).

Both defendants contend that their trials should have been severed because each defendant would have received a greater number of peremptory strikes if they had been tried separately rather than together.⁶The defendants, however, have failed to show that they were harmed by not receiving more peremptory strikes than they did.The defendants were entitled to be tried by an impartial jury, and they have not shown that the jury they received was not impartial or that any of the jurors who considered their case were unqualified.Moreover,

[i]f one defendant on trial could have a fair and impartial jury by the exercise of [14] peremptory challenges, how then could another defendant on trial with him not have a fair and impartial jury merely because the crime for which they were on trial was allegedly committed by both defendants?

Albert v. State,235 Ga. 718, 719(1), 221 S.E.2d 413(1975).Therefore, irrespective of the number of peremptory strikes each of the defendants received, they received an impartial jury made up of qualified jurors.As such, there was no harm.

2.Both defendants argue that OCGA § 17-8-4(b) unconstitutionally violates their rights to equal protection under the law.SeeU.S. Const. Amend. XIV, Sec. 1("No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.");Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. II ("No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws.").More specifically, the defendants argue that there is no rational basis for each co-defendant in a joint trial to receive fewer peremptory strikes than a defendant in a solo trial.

As we pointed out in Rodriguez v. State,275 Ga. 283, 284-285(1), 565 S.E.2d 458(2002),

[t]he person who is asserting the equal protection claim has the burden to establish that he is similarly situated to members of the class who are treated differently from him.If the person asserting the violation cannot make the foregoing showing, there is no need to continue with an equal protection analysis.

(Punctuation and footnotes omitted.)

In this case, the defendants contend that co-defendants as a class must be treated the same as the separate class of defendants tried individually.However, equal protection does not require identical treatment of different classes."[T]he equal protection clause [does not] exact uniformity of procedure.The legislature may classify litigation and adopt one type of procedure for one class and a different type for another."Dohany v. Rogers,281 U.S. 362, 369, 50 S.Ct. 299, 74 L.Ed. 904(1930).Therefore, the co-defendants' argument fails on this basis.

Moreover,

[t]here are ... valid reasons for discriminating between the peremptory challenges of single defendants and codefendants. ...[T]he reason is based upon the different problems involved in obtaining jurors.To allow each codefendant the full number of peremptory challenges would frequently cause undue delay and needless burden upon the public.As pointed out in State v. Reed,47 N.H. 466(1867): "If ten or twenty men were indicted for a misdemeanor, like a riot, and each had his two peremptory challenges, a larger attendance of jurors would be required than in a capital trial."Other courts also have recognized that if codefendants were given the...