Harris v. State

• Decision Date: 01 June 2022
• Docket Number: S22A0414
• Citation: 313 Ga. 872,874 S.E.2d 73
• Parties: HARRIS v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

313 Ga. 872

874 S.E.2d 73

HARRIS

v.The STATE.

S22A0414

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: June 1, 2022

Leigh Stevens Schrope, Elizabeth Ann Brandenburg, Law Firm of Shein & Brandenburg, 2393 North Decatur Road, Decatur, Georgia 30033, Benjamin A. Davis, Jr., The Davis Law Firm, 3455 Peachtree Road, Suite 500, Atlanta, Georgia 30326, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Kathleen Leona McCanless, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Richard Benjamin Caplan, A.D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Peterson, Justice.

Quantavious Harris appeals his convictions for felony murder and other charges stemming from the 2009 shooting death of Stephen Anim.¹ This is his case's second appearance at this Court. The trial court previously granted Harris's motion for new trial on the ground that his trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance in failing to move to suppress certain text messages, but we reversed. See State v. Harris , 301 Ga. 234, 799 S.E.2d 801 (2017). Following remand for consideration of other issues raised in Harris's motion for new trial, Harris raised additional, new grounds for his motion. The trial court addressed all of the issues presented and denied the motion.

Harris now appeals and raises a host of alleged errors by the court at trial: (1) failing to stop the State from making improper remarks in its closing argument; (2) instructing jurors that they could be "influenced" by the notes of other jurors; (3) admitting hearsay in the form of text messages that were insufficiently authenticated; and (4) admitting evidence of his involvement in a separate armed robbery. He also alleges instances of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Finally, he contends that the trial court should have granted him a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. The State argues that claims of trial court error and trial counsel ineffectiveness that were not raised prior to our previous remand are untimely. We agree that none of these claims were properly within the scope of what the trial court was authorized to consider on remand, and thus the trial court should not have considered them. Accordingly, the ineffective assistance of counsel claims are waived. Additionally, Harris's newly discovered evidence claim was not properly raised before the trial court and thus leaves us nothing to review. But Harris's claims of error by the trial court at trial were not required to have been raised in the motion for new trial in order for this Court to consider them now. Addressing those claims, we conclude that (1) the claim about the State's closing argument was not preserved due to Harris's failure to object at trial, (2) the trial court did not plainly err in instructing jurors about the use of their notes, (3) any abuse of discretion in admitting the text messages was harmless, and (4) the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the similar transaction evidence.²

The evidence from Harris's September 2011 trial was recounted in the first appeal and included the following.

[P]rior to his death, in the late evening of April 21, 2009, the victim, Stephen Anim, was in his taxicab at the H.E. Holmes MARTA station waiting for potential passengers. Also there were Harris and his friend [Samuel] Ellis[,] who approached another taxi driver and asked for a ride. The driver testified that the men were acting odd, even providing him with different destinations. Evidence was presented at trial that neither of the requested destinations provided to the first driver was where Harris or Ellis resided nor the location where the crime eventually occurred. After the first driver denied the men passage, they approached the victim's cab and requested to be taken to Big Bethel Village, a retirement community where, again, neither Harris nor Ellis resided. However, the evidence showed that the neighborhood where Ellis was staying with Harris’ mother and younger brother was walking distance from Big Bethel Village via an inconspicuous cut-through.

Approximately an hour later, Anim was found in the driver's seat of his taxicab sitting outside Big Bethel Village in Fulton County, Georgia. He had suffered a single gunshot wound to the back of his head, which was determined to be his cause of death. A .380 cartridge casing was recovered from the front passenger's side floor of the taxi, and a GPS unit and $700 were missing from the cab.

Harris , 301 Ga. at 238-239 (2), 799 S.E.2d 801.

In a subsequent interview, Harris misled detectives regarding his relationship with Ellis, gave conflicting statements, and made various admissions, including that he sat behind the victim in his taxicab immediately prior to his death and fled from the scene with Ellis after Ellis shot the victim. See Harris , 301 Ga. at 239 (2), 799 S.E.2d 801. Harris was later identified by photo lineup and in a surveillance video recording as being at the H.E. Holmes MARTA station with Ellis. See id. Cell phone tower data contradicted portions of the timeline of events Harris provided to the police in his interview. See id.

The State introduced a series of text messages sent on April 21 and 22, 2009, to and from a phone number associated with Harris, including messages sent from the number on the night of the murder indicating that the sender was about to rob and kill someone. The jury also heard evidence that Harris had committed an armed robbery and aggravated assault of a pizza delivery man seven months prior to Anim's shooting. See Harris , 301 Ga. at 239 (2), 799 S.E.2d 801.

Following the trial court's entry of judgment based on the jury's verdicts, Harris filed a timely motion for new trial through trial counsel and amended the motion through new counsel more than three years later, in February 2015. The initial one-page motion raised only claims that the verdicts were contrary to the law and the evidence and strongly against the weight of the evidence, that the court erred in admitting hearsay, and that the court made unspecified errors in its charge to the jury. The amended motion added only claims of a merger error and that trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance in failing to move to suppress the text messages on the ground that they had been obtained without the necessary warrants. Following an evidentiary hearing, the trial court granted the motion in May 2015 on the ground of ineffective assistance of counsel and concluded that, given this ruling, it need not consider the remaining issues raised by Harris.

The State appealed, and in May 2017 we reversed. We concluded that, although the evidence against Harris was not overwhelming, there was not a reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different without the introduction of the text messages. We remanded the case "with direction that the trial court consider the remaining grounds in Harris’ motion for new trial." Harris , 301 Ga. at 240 (2), 799 S.E.2d 801.

In January 2018, on remand, the trial court entered an order prepared by defense counsel "adopt[ing] the remittitur" of this Court and merging the attempted armed robbery count into Harris's felony murder conviction. Nearly three years later, in December 2020, Harris filed through new counsel what was styled a "Motion for Ruling on Defendant's Pending Motion for New Trial or in the Alternative Motion for Out-of-Time Motion for New Trial."³ The motion sought an evidentiary hearing on the pending motion for new trial, requested additional time to "investigate additional grounds and supplement [the] motion" before the hearing, and asserted ineffective assistance of prior appellate counsel. Harris later filed a brief in support of his request for a hearing that also asserted new grounds for a new trial, including additional instances of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, claims of trial court error, and a claim of newly discovered evidence of innocence. Following an evidentiary hearing in August 2021, the trial court entered an order denying the motion for new trial, addressing the claims of error raised for the first time on remand. Harris now appeals.

1. The State argues generally that Harris's claims of error by the trial court at trial and claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel are not properly before this Court because they were not raised in Harris's motion for new trial prior to remand. We agree with the State that the trial court should not have considered these claims. We also conclude that the trial court should not have considered Harris's claim for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. But Harris's failure to raise the claims of trial court error in a motion for new trial prior to remand does not preclude this Court from considering those claims.

Our previous decision directed the trial court to "consider the remaining grounds in Harris's motion for new trial." Harris , 301 Ga. at 240 (2), 799 S.E.2d 801. OCGA § 5-6-10 provides that, upon remittitur of an appellate court decision to the trial court, "[t]he decision and direction shall be respected and carried into full effect in good faith by the court below." Given our direction in remanding the case, this principle limited the trial court to considering the already raised claims that remained undecided; "[f]or an appellate court to authorize further action by the trial court requires a clear direction, whether express or by necessary implication." State v. Jackson , 295 Ga. 825, 828, 764 S.E.2d 395 (2014) (reversing the trial court's grant of a motion for new trial post-remand on a ground that had been abandoned prior to the original ruling on the motion for new trial); see also Akins v. State , 237...