Hampton v. State

• Decision Date: 18 May 2020
• Docket Number: S20A0482
• Citation: 308 Ga. 797,843 S.E.2d 542
• Parties: HAMPTON v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

308 Ga. 797

843 S.E.2d 542

HAMPTON

v.The STATE.

S20A0482

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: May 18, 2020

David T. Lock, David T. Lock, LLC, P.O. Box 14286, Savannah, Georgia 31416, Attorneys for the Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Leslie Anna Coots, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Matthew Breedon, A.D.A., Margaret Ellen Heap, District Attorney, Office of the District Attorney Eastern Judicial Circuit, P. O. Box 2309, Savannah, Georgia 31402, Attorneys for the Appellee.

Nahmias, Presiding Justice.

Appellant James Angelo Hampton was tried together with Dwayne Abney and convicted of three counts of malice murder and several other crimes in connection with the shooting deaths of Kiana Marshall, Isaiah Martin, and Alexis Kitchens. On appeal, Appellant contends that the trial court erred by admitting the hearsay testimony of a jailhouse informant and by excluding the testimony of Appellant's proposed alibi witness. We see no reversible error, so we affirm.¹

1. As this Court explained in the appeal of Appellant's co-defendant Abney² :

Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the trial evidence showed that in early October 2015, Marshall allowed Jamaica Bell and Diamond Butler to move in with her in a house she was renting in Savannah. Things did not go well, and Marshall complained about Bell and Butler being messy and inviting guests with guns over to the house. Bell and Butler failed to pay their promised share of the rent, so on the morning of October 21, 2015, Marshall asked them to move out. At some point that day, Martin (Marshall's brother) and Kitchens (Marshall's friend) went to the house to make sure Bell and Butler left. Martin told the women to remove their things from the house or Marshall would call the police.

Butler called Appellant, [a first-offender probationer,] who arrived sometime later with Abney driving a dark grey Honda Accord. Appellant, Abney, Butler, and Bell left the house in Appellant's car and made a few stops, including at a convenience store around 11:30 p.m. Butler saw that Appellant and Abney both had firearms; Appellant had a 9mm handgun, and Abney had a .380 handgun. After hearing that Marshall was planning to call the police if the women did not remove their belongings from the house that night, Bell and Butler, along with Appellant and Abney, returned to the house and began to pack their things. Bell and Butler could not fit all of their belongings into the trunk of Appellant's car, so they asked Marshall, who had arrived at the house by this point, if they could come back later to retrieve the remaining items. Marshall said no. Appellant, while alone with Butler, asked if she wanted him to "wet that s**t," meaning shoot up the house, and Butler said yes. The group left Marshall's house; Butler thought they were going to return so that she could shoot up the house.

Appellant dropped off Bell and Butler at [Travarius Gray's] house where Appellant had been staying. Butler tried to stay in the car because she wanted to go shoot at Marshall's house, but Appellant insisted that she stay at [Gray's] house. Appellant and Abney then drove back to Marshall's house, went inside, and shot Martin, Marshall, and Kitchens. The three victims were shot multiple times and died from their injuries. Marshall's neighbors reported hearing multiple gunshots around 12:30 a.m. on October 22, 2015, and one neighbor saw a grey Honda Accord drive away quickly after the shooting.

Appellant and Abney returned to Butler and Bell about 20 minutes after dropping off the women. Appellant told Butler that he had "killed all three of them." Abney, Appellant, Butler, and Bell then smoked marijuana, drank, and listened to music. Bell and Butler left Abney and Appellant that morning.^[3]

Butler met Appellant and Abney later that day. While Appellant drove around in a brown Ford Explorer, the group discussed the murders. Appellant again admitted to killing the three victims, and Abney agreed with Appellant's account of the shooting. While in the vehicle, Abney had a .380 handgun; Appellant stated that his 9mm gun was "gone."

Police had already been looking for Appellant and the brown Ford Explorer because Appellant had shot at someone else several weeks earlier while driving the vehicle. When a police officer saw the Ford Explorer, he turned on his police lights and sirens to initiate a traffic stop, but Appellant accelerated. The officer gave chase, and Appellant told Abney and Butler that they could get out and run. Abney agreed, and so when Appellant stopped the Explorer, Abney, Appellant, and Butler fled on foot, running in different directions. The officer apprehended Abney after a short chase, backtracked along Abney's flight path, and recovered a .380 handgun. Appellant was found and arrested the next day.

While searching the murder scene, police recovered eight 9mm shell casings with a "BHA" brand name that were later determined to have been fired from the same gun, a Hi-Point 9mm pistol. The bullets recovered from the three victims were consistent with being fired from a Hi-Point 9mm pistol. During a search of Appellant's residence, police recovered an empty box of BHA 9mm ammunition. Police also found a photo on Appellant's cell phone [taken about an hour before the murder] showing him holding a [Hi-Point] pistol[.]

Abney v. State , 306 Ga. 448, 449-451, 831 S.E.2d 778 (2019).

A firearms examiner testified that BHA is a rare brand of ammunition. One "Federal" brand 9mm shell casing was also found at the crime scene, and a container holding Federal brand bullets was found in Appellant's bedroom.

According to Appellant's cellmate, while in jail awaiting trial, Appellant told the cellmate that he killed three people because "somebody got kicked out the house or something." Appellant described how Marshall was positioned when he shot her (which was the same position in which her body was found); said that he used a Hi-Point 9mm pistol with eight rounds; and said that the police would not be able to find the pistol. While Appellant and Abney were in jail, Appellant gave Abney two letters detailing a false alibi that Appellant wanted Abney to support, which involved the two of them spending the evening buying drugs and smoking marijuana at home.

Abney told a fellow inmate, Eric Washington, that when he and Appellant went inside Marshall's house, Appellant shot and killed Marshall, Martin, and Kitchens. Abney also told Washington that he planned to use a false alibi and sought Washington's advice about whether it would be successful. Abney's proposed alibi was that after he and Appellant dropped off Butler and Bell at Gray's house, Appellant dropped Abney off at his girlfriend's house, where he stayed for the rest of the night. Abney said that he had explained the alibi to his girlfriend and asked her to support it, which was confirmed by audio recordings from the jail of phone conversations between him and his girlfriend. Abney's false alibi did not match the false alibi that Appellant asked Abney to support, and it did not include Appellant at all.⁴

Appellant and Abney did not testify at their trial. Appellant's theory of defense was that no physical evidence linked him to the crimes, that the witnesses who testified that he was involved were not credible, and that someone else committed the murders.

Appellant does not dispute the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions. Nevertheless, as is this Court's general practice in murder cases, we have reviewed the record and conclude that, when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial and summarized above was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find Appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979) ; Abney , 306 Ga. at 452, 831 S.E.2d 778. See also Vega v. State , 285 Ga. 32, 33, 673 S.E.2d 223 (2009) (" ‘It was for the jury to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence.’ " (citation omitted)).

2. During the trial, Appellant filed a motion to exclude Washington's testimony about Abney's jailhouse statements on the ground that it would violate Appellant's Confrontation Clause rights under the United States and Georgia Constitutions. See U.S. Const. amend VI ; Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. XIV. After hearing a proffer of Washington's proposed testimony, the trial court ruled that Abney's statements were "admissible hearsay." Washington then testified consistently with the proffer. Appellant now contends that the trial court erred by admitting Washington's testimony because it violated his Confrontation Clause rights and because it was inadmissible hearsay.

The trial court did not explicitly rule on Appellant's Confrontation Clause challenge, but in any event, Washington's testimony did not fall within the scope of the Confrontation Clause. Abney's statements to Washington were subject to a Confrontation Clause challenge, including one involving a co-defendant's statements, see Bruton v. United States , 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), only if the statements were testimonial. See Allen v. State , 300 Ga. 500, 504, 796 S.E.2d 708 (2017). "A statement is testimonial if its primary purpose was to establish evidence for use in a future prosecution." Id. Abney made the challenged statements to Washington to get advice about his false alibi, not to establish evidence for use in a future prosecution. Appellant's constitutional claim is therefore meritless.

As for Appellant's hearsay claim, pretermitting whether he properly raised the claim and whether the trial court erred in admitting the disputed...