Griffin v. State

• Decision Date: 17 May 2021
• Docket Number: S21A0448
• Citation: 858 S.E.2d 688,311 Ga. 579
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: GRIFFIN v. The STATE.

311 Ga. 579

858 S.E.2d 688

GRIFFIN

v.The STATE.

S21A0448

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: May 17, 2021

Ryan Christopher Locke, Locke Law Firm LLC, 750 Piedmont Avenue NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30308, 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 D. Wellborn, A.D.A., Sherry Boston, District Attorney, DeKalb County District Attorney's Office, 556 North McDonough Street, Suite 700, Decatur, Georgia 30030, for Appellee.

Melton, Chief Justice.

Rufus Griffin appeals his convictions for the malice murder of Kerry Freeman and related offenses, contending, among other things, that the trial court made certain evidentiary errors and that trial counsel rendered constitutionally ineffective assistance.¹ We affirm.

1. In relevant part, the evidence presented at trial shows that, on August 22, 2016, Travis Williams, a friend of Freeman, became concerned about Freeman after Williams witnessed two unknown men riding around in Freeman's car, which Freeman generally did not loan to anyone.² One of the men in Freeman's car was wearing Freeman's clothes. Two days later, Williams, along with another friend, went to Freeman's apartment to check on him. The apartment door was cracked open,³ and Freeman, who had been fatally stabbed in the back, was lying on the floor just inside. Williams called 911, and, after police officers allowed Williams to go inside the apartment, he noticed that a knife that Freeman kept by his bed and a television had been removed from the bedroom.

Later, Williams was alerted that someone had called a "chop shop" to inquire about selling Freeman's car. Police officers tracked the number of the "chop-shop" caller to Rolanda Jemison, who was living at a hotel with her son, Lance Jemison. Before Freeman's stabbing, Lance had moved from Alabama to live with Rolanda at the hotel, and he brought Griffin with him. Following interviews, police determined that Rolanda gave Lance the phone used to call the "chop shop." Further investigation revealed that Lance, in turn, occasionally allowed Griffin to use the phone. Rolanda also informed a police officer that, after Freeman's death, Rolanda saw Griffin in Freeman's car.

According to Lance, on August 22, 2016, Griffin, who was wearing new clothes,⁴ brought a silver Ford Taurus to Lance and allowed him to use it.⁵ Lance later discovered that the car belonged to Freeman, who had been found dead. Lance returned the car to Griffin and confronted him. Griffin told Lance that he killed a man for the car because the man "made a pass at him" and made him uncomfortable.

Eventually, Griffin was arrested at the hotel, and he had another cell phone in his possession that he later denied owning. When Griffin was being booked into jail, he named Rufus and Robby Griffin from Alabama as his emergency contacts. While in jail, Griffin made two calls to the number shared by Rufus and Robby, and this phone number was found in the contact list of the cell phone recovered at the time of arrest. Griffin also made two calls from jail to his mother and at least one call to his girlfriend. The number associated with Griffin's mother was in the phone's contact list as "Mom," and the number for Griffin's girlfriend was listed as "Baby Doll."⁶

Although data could not be extracted from the cell phone because it was an older model, the phone's location history could be analyzed. That process showed that early-morning calls made on August 22, 2016, from the cell phone pinged off the cell tower closest to Freeman's apartment. Records also showed that, later that day, Griffin called the Georgia Electronic Benefits Transfer office in order to find out the balance of Freeman's account.

Additional evidence showed that, after Griffin's arrest, he was housed in the same jail as Carlos Anderson. Griffin admitted to Anderson that he had an altercation with a "client,"⁷ they got into a scuffle, and Griffin stabbed him and took his car. Griffin explained that he disposed of the knife, and, after driving around in the car, sold it in exchange for drugs.

2. Griffin first contends that, during deliberations, the jury improperly reviewed and considered texts contained in the cell phone he possessed at the time of his arrest. We disagree.

At trial, the State introduced Griffin's cell phone into evidence.⁸ In addition, the jury was shown photographs taken of the cell phone's contact list in order to prove that the phone contained personal contacts for the individuals Griffin had called from jail. Following the admission of the cell phone, which had been charged prior to trial, Griffin made no objection to its being sent out with the jury during deliberations. In the jury room, the jurors turned on the cell phone and examined its contents. Later, after the verdict was entered, the jury foreperson informed the trial court that the jury reviewed text messages found on the phone. The foreperson explained that the phone was already on, but they also used one juror's power cord to plug it in at a later point.

Between trial and the time of the hearing on Griffin's motion for new trial, the cell phone was misplaced by the State and could not be found. It is undisputed that the State did not purposely dispose of this evidence. During the motion for new trial hearing, the prosecutor testified that, prior to trial, he reviewed all of the texts on the phone. The prosecutor had no recollection of the content of individual text messages, but he recalled that "there was nothing that stood out in [his] mind as controversial or something that [he] thought would impede the case." He testified that the texts included only "chatter" that neither helped nor harmed Griffin. The prosecutor further testified that he would have notified the defense if there had been any exculpatory information contained in the texts, and, if there had been any inculpatory texts, he would have used them at trial.

Based on this evidence, Griffin's contention that the jury improperly reviewed texts from the cell phone is misplaced, because the cell phone was admitted into evidence and sent out with the jury without objection. A similar situation occurred in Drammeh v. State , 285 Ga. App. 545, 548 (2), 646 S.E.2d 742 (2007).⁹ There, like here, a cell phone was admitted into evidence without objection. During deliberations, jurors sent a note asking if they were allowed to consider evidence they had "discovered" on the cell phone. The defendant objected, arguing that review of the cell phone's contents was "tantamount to allowing the jury to conduct an independent investigation of the crime, thereby violating his constitutional rights to due process and a public trial, as well as the right to confront witnesses against him." Id. at 548-549 (2), 646 S.E.2d 742. The Court of Appeals rejected this contention, as the defendant cited no legal authority to support his argument. Instead, the Court of Appeals determined that the defendant's claim failed because the phone had been admitted into evidence as a whole, without objection or stipulation. In other words, any objection to the contents of the cell phone was waived, as the cell phone, in its entirety, was admitted into evidence. See id.¹⁰ In this case, the cell phone was admitted as a whole and without objection to its being used during deliberations. As such, contrary to Griffin's arguments, the contents of the cell phone were subject to the jury's review at that point. See Drammeh , supra, 285 Ga. App. at 548-549 (2), 646 S.E.2d 742.¹¹

To the extent that Griffin's contention could be construed as alleging an evidentiary error made by the trial court by admitting the whole cell phone into evidence, that contention would be subject to plain-error analysis in the absence of a specific objection at trial.

First, there must be an error or defect — some sort of "[d]eviation from a legal rule" — that has not been intentionally relinquished or abandoned, i.e., affirmatively waived, by the appellant. Second, the legal error must be clear or obvious, rather than subject to reasonable dispute. Third, the error must have affected the appellant's substantial rights, which in the ordinary case means he must demonstrate that it "affected the outcome of the trial court proceedings." Fourth and finally, if the above three prongs are satisfied, the appellate court has the discretion to remedy the error — discretion which ought to be exercised only if the error " ‘seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.’ "

(Punctuation and emphasis omitted.) State v. Kelly , 290 Ga. 29, 33 (2) (a), 718 S.E.2d 232 (2011) (quoting Puckett v. United States , 556 U.S. 129, 135 (II), 129 S.Ct. 1423, 173 L.Ed.2d 266 (2009) ). Thus, beyond showing a clear or obvious error, "plain-error analysis ... requires the appellant to make an affirmative showing that the error probably did affect the outcome below." (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Shaw v. State , 292 Ga. 871, 873 (2), 742 S.E.2d 707 (2013).

Here, Griffin has not made such an affirmative showing that any error probably did affect the outcome of his trial. Relying solely on the fact that the State had misplaced the cell phone, Griffin chose not to present any evidence about the contents of the phone at the hearing on his motion for new trial.¹² However, the State did provide testimony about the cell phone's contents from the prosecutor who handled Griffin's trial, and the trial court accepted this testimony as credible. In addition, with two confessions to the crime having been made by Griffin, the evidence against Griffin was substantial. Under these circumstances, there was no plain error. See Shaw , supra, 292 Ga. at 873 (2), 742 S.E.2d 707.

3. Griffin maintains that trial counsel provided...