Downer v. State
| Decision Date | 20 September 2022 |
| Docket Number | S22A0632 |
| Parties | DOWNER v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Thea Adele Delage, Jerilyn Lyshette Bell, Office of the Georgia Capital Defender, 104 Marietta St. NW, Suite 600, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellant.
Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Eric Christopher Peters, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334,
George R. Christian, District Attorney, James E. Staples, Jr., A.D.A., Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, 295 Llewellyn Street, Suite 250, Clarkesville, Georgia 30523, for Appellee.
Following a bench trial in 2016, William Douglas Downer was found guilty of felony murder, armed robbery, and other crimes in connection with the death of Michael Larry Hill.1 On appeal, Downer asserts that (1) the evidence was insufficient to sustain his convictions; (2) his custodial statements should have been suppressed; (3) the trial court erred in admitting hearsay statements through two witnesses; (4) the State withheld exculpatory evidence; and (5) the trial court erred in denying his post-trial motion for DNA testing. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence presented at trial showed that for several months in 2012, Downer lived in a camper on Albert Buford Brown's property in Habersham County, where Brown lived with his girlfriend, Joyce Higgins, and her adult son, Jamie Higgins. As part of his plea deal, Brown testified extensively about his and Downer's roles in the crimes. Brown explained that he occasionally saw Hill, who lived across the street from Brown's parents, when he would visit his parents’ home, also in Habersham County. A few days prior to Hill's death, Brown, who was not working at the time and needed money, overheard Hill saying that he had "some guns and some money."
On August 30, 2012, when Brown thought that Hill would be out of town, Brown told Downer what Hill had said. The two men, who were "doped up" on methamphetamine, dressed themselves in dark-colored hoodies and gloves to "black[ ]" themselves out, and Brown drove them to Hill's home in Joyce's white Chevrolet Cavalier. Brown brought a knife and a baseball bat that he kept in a shed on his property. They arrived around 2:00 a.m. after parking down the street and walking through Hill's back yard.
Brown picked the lock to Hill's back door with his driver's license. Downer tripped as he entered the home, and Hill – who was not out of town – immediately came out of his bedroom. Hill moved toward Brown to grab him, and Brown shoved Hill back toward the bedroom. After Downer hit Hill twice with the bat, Hill lay moaning for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, Brown rummaged through the home and took Hill's wallet, a weed eater, a couple of rings, and a jar of change and brought the items to the car. When he returned, he saw Hill lying face down on the floor, apparently deceased, with Downer standing over him. At Downer's direction, Brown pulled the car to the side of the road in front of Hill's house, opened the vehicle's trunk, and entered the back door where Downer had already positioned Hill's body. The two men carried Hill's body to the trunk of the car.
They drove back to Brown's home because they "didn't know where else to take [Hill]" and backed the car up to a "burn pit" located about 40 yards behind the house, next to a shed that Brown used as a "shop." Around 4:00 a.m., they put Hill's body inside the pit, "[t]hrew some tires on him and some gas and set them on fire." They also burned the clothes they were wearing. The fire burned until approximately 8:00 a.m. when Brown and Downer put water, wood chip shavings, and dirt on the fire to extinguish it. Brown took Hill's rings to a store but was unsuccessful in selling them, so he gave one to Downer in exchange for marijuana and the other one, along with the weed eater, to an acquaintance in exchange for methamphetamine.2 Brown then returned to his home, consumed more drugs, and covered Hill's body with more wood shavings. Brown did not see Downer again until around midnight the next day, August 31, when they smoked more methamphetamine together. In the days following Hill's death, Brown lit several fires in the burn pit in an attempt to get rid of the body and the smell, using gasoline, kerosene, and "anything he could think [of]." Brown also took the carpet out of the car they used to transport Hill's body and vacuumed and cleaned the car using bleach. Brown admitted at trial that he gave several conflicting stories to officers.
Jamie testified that on August 29, the day before Hill's death, he towed Downer's camper to someone else's nearby property after an altercation with Downer over money. Jamie explained that, earlier that day, Downer, Brown, and Joyce were riding in a car that ran out of gas. Downer refused to use his own money to buy gas, so Jamie was forced to bring the group his last seven dollars to purchase gas so that they could get back home. The following day, just after Hill's death, Brown gave Jamie cash to pay him back for the gas he had purchased. Jamie also saw Brown give five dollars to Joyce. Jamie thought it was suspicious that Brown "had a wad of cash," which Brown told him he found in an abandoned house.
In the following week, Jamie's suspicions grew when he noticed the "[m]ost horrible smell you'll ever smell in your life" on the property. Jamie questioned Brown about the smell, and Brown told him it was a dead animal. However, when Jamie asked Brown to help him find and move the dead animal, Brown refused to show him where the animal was located. Jamie also found it suspicious that Downer and Brown built up the burn pit "all the sudden" beside the shed, putting concrete blocks around the pit, and mounted a light on the shed that pointed directly at the burn pit. He also observed both Downer and Brown burning "stuff" in the pit, which was smoldering each day he returned home from work that week. He specifically saw Brown "messing" with the burn pit and occasionally saw Downer on the property during this time. At some point, Joyce told him that Brown was "emotionally upset" and had told her "that he was going to go to hell because him and [Downer] had buried a man outside the shed."3 Jamie shared this information with his brother, and they decided to confront Brown while Downer was not there. Brown initially denied the allegation, but when Jamie and his brother started digging in the fire pit, Brown confessed that Hill's body was located in the pit. Jamie immediately called the police, and Brown was arrested the same day, September 5, 2012.
Sergeant Matthew Wurtz, who was assigned to respond to the missing persons report that had been filed for Hill,4 was the first officer to arrive at Brown's home. Based on what Jamie told him, Sergeant Wurtz read Brown his rights under Miranda5 before speaking with him and examining the burn pit, where he discovered "a pile of stuff that was surrounded by concrete block[s] kind of in a circular shape where stuff had been burning." The burn pit smelled distinctly of burnt flesh and was still smoldering. Officers discovered a charred and muddy skull with brain matter, loose bones with flesh and muscle tissue attached, and a metal VFW card with Hill's name on it. In the nearby shed, officers found a black and gold Louisville Slugger baseball bat with dark stains that were later confirmed to be Hill's blood. Officers impounded the white Chevrolet, which had dark stains in the trunk, and which smelled strongly of a household cleaner.
An examination of Hill's home revealed an area where blood had pooled at the bedroom door, bloodstains consistent with dragging someone through the home to the back door, a blood stain on Hill's bed that seeped through the sheets and into the mattress, and wipe marks of blood on the bedroom wall. An autopsy of Hill's remains, confirmed via DNA testing, indicated that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head
that occurred around the time of his death, before his body was burned by fire. An additional examination by an expert in forensic anthropology and traumatic analysis of human remains also showed that injuries to Hill's skull and jaw were consistent with blunt force trauma due to the depressed nature of the fractures.
Downer was located and arrested on September 6, 2012, and during his initial custodial interview, Downer stated that the Army ring he was wearing was given to him by Brown, which he tried to sell at a pawn shop. Downer denied killing Hill or participating in the crimes, but he admitted that he put mulch on the burn pit with Brown and moved the cinderblocks around the perimeter of the burn pit. During a second interview on September 11, 2012, Downer again denied any involvement with Hill's death.6 However, he also made statements that he and Brown used drugs together; that he was at Brown's mother's house two or three weeks before the murder; that he helped Brown unload two car loads of mulch the past Tuesday or Sunday using Brown's white car; that Brown then burned the mulch; that Brown "probably" put the body in the burn pit on Tuesday night; that he saw smoke coming out of the burn pit on Monday; and that he burned his clothes in the burn pit.
A search of Downer's cell phone showed that someone texted Downer on the evening of September 5: "don't come here the law is everywhere GBI too," and cell phone records showed that Downer then called Brown several times that night, beginning at 9:56 p.m., and several times again on September 6. Joyce testified that one evening around the time that he moved off their property,7 Downer called Brown. Brown then told her that he was going to meet Downer at the store. Sometime later that evening after midnight, she saw three...
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