Goins v. State

• Decision Date: 19 October 2020
• Docket Number: S20A0847
• Parties: GOINS v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

310 Ga. 199

850 S.E.2d 68

GOINS

v.The STATE.

S20A0847

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: October 19, 2020

Richard Carter Armond, The Armond Firm, LLC, 260 Constitution Boulevard, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30046, Attorneys for the Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Matthew Blackwell Crowder, Assistant Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334-1300, Daniel J. Porter, District Attorney, Lee Franklin Tittsworth, A.D.A., Daryl E. Manns, A.D.A., Daniel Sanmiguel, A.D.A., Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office, 75 Langley Drive, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30046, Attorneys for the Appellee.

Nahmias, Presiding Justice.

After a jury trial, Appellant Charmane Goins was convicted of malice murder in connection with the strangling death of Lauren Taylor, and the trial court summarily denied his motion for new trial. In a prior appeal, this Court held that the evidence presented at Appellant's trial was legally sufficient to support his murder conviction, but we otherwise vacated the trial court's order and remanded the case for the court to make factual findings and legal conclusions regarding Appellant's claim that his constitutional right to a speedy trial was violated; we did not address his other claims. See Goins v. State , 306 Ga. 55, 55 & n.1, 829 S.E.2d 89 (2019) ( Goins I ).

On remand, the trial court issued a detailed order rejecting the speedy trial claim and again denying Appellant's motion for new trial. He then filed this second appeal, raising his constitutional speedy trial claim again along with claims that the State failed to preserve allegedly exculpatory evidence and that the trial court erred by admitting evidence from his cell phone, by denying his motion for a mistrial, and by excluding evidence about the victim. We see no reversible error, so we affirm.¹

1. As we explained in upholding the sufficiency of the evidence supporting Appellant's murder conviction in Goins I :

Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence at trial showed the following. Appellant, who was married and lived in Tunnel Hill in north[west] Georgia, began an affair with Taylor in 2013. In August 2014, Appellant told his friend Karl Wyatt that he wanted to end the affair but could not because Taylor was threatening to expose it to his wife and children. Taylor was last seen leaving her friend[ Dallas Regal's] house with Appellant around 1:30 p.m. on October 7, 2014; the next morning, her partially burnt body was found in Deshong Park in Gwinnett County. The cause of death was manual strangulation, after which her body had been doused in gasoline and set on fire.

Appellant told investigators that he dropped off Taylor at a mall in Chattanooga, Tennessee on the afternoon of October 7 and then returned to Chattanooga around 11:00 that night to help Wyatt with car trouble. Wyatt initially confirmed that alibi, but he later recanted and testified that he was not with Appellant that night and that Appellant had asked him to provide the false alibi. Appellant's cell phone records showed that, instead of going to Chattanooga that night as he had claimed, Appellant actually traveled south along I-75 around midnight, and then traveled east along I-285 toward Gwinnett County around 1:00 a.m. In addition, later on the day [Taylor's dead body was found], Appellant pawned a guitar that Taylor had stolen from an ex-boyfriend. Finally, Appellant's former cellmate testified that Appellant had confessed that he killed Taylor by strangling her with the seatbelt while she was sleeping and left her body at a "gang park" that Wyatt had told him about. Appellant testified at trial, giving a new version of his alibi story and claiming that Taylor gave him the stolen guitar as payment for gas.

Goins I, 306 Ga. at 55-56, 829 S.E.2d 89.

2. Appellant contends that his constitutional right to a speedy trial was violated. That claim, which Appellant raised in a pretrial motion to dismiss his indictment and again in his amended motion for new trial, requires the trial court to make findings of fact and conclusions of law under the two-part framework set forth in Barker v. Wingo , 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972), and refined in Doggett v. United States , 505 U.S. 647, 112 S.Ct. 2686, 120 L.Ed.2d 520 (1992). See Heard v. State , 295 Ga. 559, 562, 761 S.E.2d 314 (2014). The first part of the framework requires the court to determine whether the length of time between Appellant's arrest and his trial was presumptively prejudicial. See id. If it was, the trial court is required under the second part of the framework to apply a four-factor balancing test that examines the length of the delay, the reasons for it, Appellant's assertion of his right to a speedy trial, and whether he suffered prejudice as a result of the delay. See id.

In its brief oral ruling denying Appellant's pretrial motion to dismiss and in its July 2018 order summarily denying his motion for new trial, the trial court failed to make the necessary findings of fact and conclusions of law under the Barker - Doggett framework. Accordingly, in the first appeal of this case, we vacated the trial court's judgment in part and remanded the case for the entry of an order containing appropriate findings and conclusions regarding the speedy trial claim. See Goins I , 306 Ga. at 58, 829 S.E.2d 89.

In its 10-page order on remand, the trial court correctly determined that the 32-month delay between Appellant's arrest and trial was presumptively prejudicial. The court then made detailed factual findings and legal conclusions regarding each of the Barker - Doggett factors, and after balancing the factors, the court ultimately rejected Appellant's speedy trial claim. We have carefully reviewed the trial court's order, the record, and the parties’ briefs, and we conclude that the trial court did not abuse its broad discretion by determining that Appellant's constitutional right to a speedy trial was not violated. See, e.g., Heard , 295 Ga. at 563, 761 S.E.2d 314 (explaining that when this Court reviews a speedy trial claim, "[w]e must accept the [trial] court's findings of fact if the record contains any evidence to support them, and we will defer to the court's ‘ultimate conclusion ... unless it amounts to an abuse of discretion’ " (citation omitted)); State v. Buckner , 292 Ga. 390, 393, 738 S.E.2d 65 (2013) (explaining that the weighing of the Barker- Doggett factors "is committed to the substantial discretion of the trial court, and ‘its ultimate judgment is reviewed on appeal only for an abuse of that discretion’ " (citation omitted)).²

3. During the trial, the lead detective on Appellant's case testified that near the beginning of his investigation, he focused on Taylor's friend Regal as a suspect, because the detective "noticed quite a few indicators of deception" when he first questioned Regal about the days before Taylor's death. The detective explained that after he told Regal about Taylor's murder, however, Regal appeared less nervous and more honest, and the detective believed that Regal had initially been deceptive because he had assumed he was being interviewed about some stolen property that Taylor had given him. Regal showed the detective some gasoline-soaked clothing in Regal's house, and the detective observed some scratches on Regal's hands and arms. The detective testified that Regal explained that the clothing and injuries were related to his work as a stone mason. The detective did not collect the clothing or further investigate the injuries.³

Relying on California v. Trombetta , 467 U.S. 479, 104 S.Ct. 2528, 81 L.Ed.2d 413 (1984), and Arizona v. Youngblood , 488 U.S. 51, 109 S.Ct. 333, 102 L.Ed.2d 281 (1988), Appellant contends that the State deprived him of due process by failing to preserve Regal's clothing or better document his injuries. He argues that because Taylor was manually strangled and her body was burned with gasoline, the detective ignored the obvious exculpatory value of the gas-soaked clothing and scratches, and that if the clothing had been collected, Appellant could have conducted DNA or other testing on it, the results of which might have exonerated him.

In evaluating whether a defendant's constitutional right to due process was violated when the State failed to preserve evidence that could be exculpatory,

"a court must determine both whether the evidence was material and whether the police acted in bad faith in failing to preserve the evidence.... Youngblood , 488 U.S. 51 .... To meet the standard of constitutional materiality, the evidence must possess an exculpatory value that was apparent before it was destroyed, and be of such a nature that the defendant would be unable to obtain comparable evidence by other reasonably available means.... Trombetta , 467 U.S. 479 ...."

Krause v. State , 286 Ga. 745, 752, 691 S.E.2d 211 (2010) (citation omitted). See also State v. Mussman , 289 Ga. 586, 590, 713 S.E.2d 822 (2011) (applying this test where the State failed to preserve evidence that "could have been exculpatory, but where it is not known that the evidence would have been exculpatory") (emphasis in original).

This test is ordinarily applied when State officials dispose of potential evidence that was previously in the State's actual or constructive possession. See, e.g., Youngblood , 488 U.S. at 52-53, 109 S.Ct. 333 (sexual assault kit not fully tested and victim's clothing not refrigerated); Trombetta , 467 U.S. at 482, 104 S.Ct. 2528 (suspected drunk drivers’ breath samples not preserved by arresting officers); Hill v. State , 308 Ga. 638, 648-649, 842 S.E.2d 853 (2020) (correctional officer's video of post-crime search lost); Clay v. State , 290 Ga. 822, 839-840, 841-843, 725 S.E.2d 260 (2012) (blood samples taken from defendant destroyed); Mussman , 289 Ga. at 587, 590, 713...