Early v. State
| Decision Date | 03 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | S22A0265 |
| Citation | 313 Ga. 667,872 S.E.2d 705 |
| Parties | EARLY v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
David Timothy Douds, Western Judicial Circuit, Public Defender's Office, 440 College Avenue, Suite 220, for Appellant.
Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Michael Alexander Oldham, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Deborah Gonzalez, District Attorney, Robert D. Schollmeyer, Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, 325 E. Washington Street, Suite 370, Athens, Georgia 30601, for Appellee.
Appellant Darrall Early was convicted of felony murder and aggravated assault in connection with the shooting death of Ramonte Harris. In this appeal, he contends that the trial court erred by admitting a jail video recording into evidence and by failing to merge the aggravated assault count when sentencing him. Seeing no merit in these contentions, we affirm.1
1. The evidence presented at Appellant's trial showed the following. Shortly before 5:00 p.m. on February 2, 2019, Harris's girlfriend, Jodi Gibbons, drove him to an apartment complex in Athens so he could buy
some cocaine. Gibbons testified as follows. She dropped off Harris outside building D of the apartment complex and waited in her car while Harris went inside apartment D-5, where he, Appellant (who was his best friend), and others who lived in the area often hung out. About five minutes later, Harris came outside onto the walkway in front of apartment D-5 with Appellant following behind him. Harris said something like "so you're going to shoot me." Appellant then shot Harris, and Harris said, "damn bro, you're going to shoot me." Harris tried to walk down the stairs directly in front of apartment D-5 but began to collapse. Gibbons did not see Harris hit Appellant, nor did she see Harris with a weapon.
Another witness, who was in her car in the parking lot, saw Harris and Appellant on the walkway "having a normal conversation like they always d[id]." She did not hear any arguing, and she did not see Harris hit Appellant. She heard a "pop" and saw Harris begin to collapse as Appellant ran away. A third witness, who was standing outside near building D, heard a gunshot, saw Harris at the top of the stairs, and heard him say "you shot me" and "someone call the ambulance." The witness testified that after the shooting, he saw Appellant running. Finally, a witness who was sleeping inside apartment D-5 was awoken by the sound of arguing. He heard Harris say "you ain't going to do s**t to me" and "not going to shoot me." He then heard a gunshot and ran outside the apartment, where he saw Harris bleeding and holding his chest near the staircase.
Harris was taken to a hospital, where he died later that evening. A medical examiner concluded that Harris's cause of death was a gunshot wound to the right side of the chest. The bullet traveled front to back and downward, coming to rest in Harris's back.2
Within an hour after the shooting, investigators received information that Appellant had fled the apartment complex in a white pickup truck with black racing stripes and chrome rims. When an officer saw a truck matching that description and initiated a traffic stop, the truck slowed down, the passenger door opened, and Appellant fled on foot as the truck sped away. He ran down a road behind a shopping plaza, but officers eventually apprehended him.
At the police station, an investigator took photographs of Appellant, which showed a small abrasion on his lip. The investigator did not see any serious injuries on Appellant. Later that night, Appellant was interviewed by a detective, and the recorded interview was played for the jury. Initially, Appellant denied shooting Harris. Appellant then claimed that he saw a man named "Fredo" shoot Harris and flee carrying a gun.
When the detective confronted Appellant, he hung his head, began to cry, and said "I'm sorry." Appellant claimed that Harris had been using heroin just before the shooting, Appellant told Harris to stop using heroin, and they argued; after Harris became angry and punched Appellant in the face two times, Appellant shot Harris. In a written statement, Appellant added that the shooting took place inside the apartment. He claimed that after Harris hit him twice in the face, he "fe[l]l down by the couch[,] pulled out [his] gun[,] and shot one time." Appellant also claimed that he hid the gun in a sewage drain near the apartment complex.
Later during the interview, Appellant said that the drugs Harris used "d[id] something to him" and Appellant had never seen that side of him. Appellant claimed that he was "terrified." Appellant added that as he grabbed his gun, which was on his hip, Harris grabbed the top of the weapon; Appellant then "blacked out," and he did not know the gun was in his hand until he went outside.
After the interview, officers searched the location where Appellant claimed he hid the gun, but the gun was never recovered. During a search of the crime scene shortly after the shooting, investigators found a .40-caliber shell casing under the stairs below apartment D-5 and blood on the walkway near the apartment. Appellant was on probation as a felony first offender at the time of the shooting.
At trial, the State also presented a jail deputy sheriff's body-camera recording, which showed Appellant in jail about six months after his arrest for the charged crimes. At one point during the video, Appellant said, "I'm a murderer." Appellant did not testify. His counsel argued that Appellant shot Harris in self-defense or the shooting amounted only to voluntary manslaughter.
2. Appellant claims that the trial court abused its discretion and violated his constitutional rights by admitting the jail deputy's body-camera recording into evidence. This claim lacks merit.
(a) Before trial, Appellant's counsel filed a "Motion in Limine to Exclude Testimony and Video from Jail," arguing, among other things, that the evidence was unfairly prejudicial in violation of OCGA § 24-4-403 ("Rule 403"), and showed only his bad character in violation of OCGA § 24-4-404 (b) ("Rule 404 (b)"). At a hearing on the motion, Appellant's counsel played the body-camera video for the trial court. The video was about two minutes long and in the lower right corner had a date stamp of August 7, 2019 (about six months after Appellant's arrest for the charged crimes). The video showed Appellant, who was wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, being handcuffed by the deputy in a common area of the jail, while several other deputy sheriffs stood nearby. The deputy then led Appellant and another inmate to a small cell on the opposite side of the common area and removed the handcuffs from Appellant's wrists. Appellant and the deputy spoke for a few moments, and as the other inmate entered the cell and the deputy removed his handcuffs, Appellant said "I'm a murderer" and cursed. Both men then argued with the deputy for a few moments. The video ended with another deputy closing the cell door.
Appellant's counsel argued that the trial court should exclude the body-camera video and testimony about the incident because it was highly prejudicial, as the video showed Appellant in handcuffs and a jumpsuit in jail after his arrest, being disciplined for a matter unrelated to this case. Counsel asserted, and that Appellant was "expressing ... frustration [about] being put into the hole."
Counsel also argued that the evidence "could even be characterized as extrinsic acts" that showed Appellant's bad character. The prosecutor responded that the deputy who would authenticate the video recording at trial would not testify about Appellant's "going to the hole" and that the State was offering the evidence only to show that Appellant admitted that he was a "murderer."
At the end of the hearing, the trial court ruled that the probative value of Appellant's statement was not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, noting that the fact that Appellant was in jail for the charged crimes was not overly prejudicial. The court also said:
I couldn't tell from the video what ... was going on, other than two people were being taken into a different cell and there was some conversation ... going around. There was no reference that I could see to any specific incident that led up to them being cuffed while they're inside the jail.
The prosecutor then agreed to instruct the deputy to limit his testimony to the fact that Appellant was being put in a cell when he made the statement. Appellant did not request any limiting instruction to the jury.
On direct examination during the trial, the deputy authenticated the video recording and briefly testified that his body camera recorded him placing Appellant into a cell during an "encounter" with Appellant on August 7, 2019. The prosecutor then played the entire video for the jury. The deputy affirmed that the video was a fair and accurate depiction of the encounter, and the prosecutor ended the examination.
In its order denying Appellant's motion for new trial, the trial court ruled that the admission of the jail video was proper. The court noted that the video showed Appellant "being placed into a cell and having a conversation with staff and another inmate" when he made "an unsolicited statement about being a ‘murderer.’ " The court then concluded that the video was admissible under Rule 403, that the fact that Appellant was shown in jail did not put his character at issue, and that the video did not suggest "that [he] had committed an extrinsic bad act or that [he] was being disciplined by the jail staff."
(b) Appellant argues here that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting the...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Williams v. State
... ... "As to the second ... part of the test, an error is plain if it is clear or obvious ... under current law. An error cannot be plain where there is no ... controlling authority on point or if a defendant's theory ... requires the extension of precedent." Early v ... State , 313 Ga. 667, 672-673 (2) (b) (872 S.E.2d 705) ... (2022) (citation and punctuation omitted). "To show that ... an error affected his substantial rights, [the appellant] ... must make an affirmative showing that the error probably did ... affect the ... ...
-
Commonwealth v. Gallaway
...was not deprived of his right to have the jury presume him innocent. Id. (citation omitted).Most recently, in Early v. State , 313 Ga. 667, 872 S.E.2d 705 (2022), the Georgia Supreme Court rejected the appellant's claim therein that the trial court, in allowing the state to introduce body-c......
- In re Golub
-
Jones v. State
...when, as in this case, the defendant has failed to establish one of them." (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Early v. State , 313 Ga. 667, 672 (2) (b), 872 S.E.2d 705 (2022)."A voluntary manslaughter charge is required when there is slight evidence that the defendant acted ‘solely as the ......
-
Legal Ethics
...on dishonesty, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation).49. In re Golub, 313 Ga. at 693-94, 872 S.E.2d at 704.50. Id. at 694-95, 872 S.E.2d at 705.51. In re Palmer, 313 Ga. 115, 117, 868 S.E.2d 234, 235 (2022).52. See GA. RULES OF PRO. CONDUCT r. 5.5.53. In re Palmer, 313 at 116, 868 S.E.2d at......