Hassel v. State

• Decision Date: 24 February 2014
• Docket Number: S13A1382
• Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
• Parties: HASSEL v. THE STATE.

HASSEL
v.
THE STATE.

S13A1382

Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided: February 24, 2014

HUNSTEIN, Justice.

Appellant Eric Hassel was convicted of felony murder and related offenses in connection with the November 18, 2006 shooting death of David Morris Lumpkin. Hassel appeals the denial of his motion for new trial, asserting insufficiency of the evidence, ineffective assistance of counsel, and evidentiary error. Finding no error, we affirm.¹

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Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, the evidence adduced at trial established as follows. In the early morning hours of November 18, 2006, David Morris Lumpkin was shot and killed at a residence on Moreland Avenue in Athens, Georgia. The residence was inhabited by its owners, Jerome Hemphill and Deborah Echols, as well as various family members, friends, and occasional homeless visitors who stayed there overnight or resided there on a temporary basis. Drug transactions often took place in the driveway of the residence and at other locations nearby. Appellant Eric Hassel, a convicted felon who dated Hemphill's sister, had lived at the house in the past and continued to be a frequent visitor there.

Hassel and his friend Rodney Shepard were friends with Terrence White, who, a few days prior to the shooting, had been robbed at gunpoint of his car, money, jewelry and drugs. Victim Lumpkin's girlfriend had heard rumors that Lumpkin was involved in the robbery, which Lumpkin admitted to her and

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others that he had helped set up. There was evidence that White himself suspected Lumpkin of participating in the robbery.

At the time of the shooting, Lumpkin and several other people were asleep in the living room at the Moreland Avenue house. Minutes before the shooting, witness Kathleen Robinson heard a knock on the door and observed Timothy Bradford open it, allowing Hassel and Shepard to enter. Robinson testified that Shepard began talking to Bradford, Hassel then exited the house, and Shepard and Bradford exited soon thereafter. Several minutes later, Robinson testified, Bradford reentered alone, leaving the door open, and a few minutes after that, a person dressed in black came inside, shot Lumpkin, and then fled.

Witness Daniel Gbum, who was present at the Moreland Avenue house that night, testified that, prior to the shooting, Hassel had twice asked him to try to get Lumpkin to come outside the house, but that Lumpkin had refused both times. Gbum also testified that, at one point while he was standing outside the house with Hassel, Shepard arrived and whispered, "Where is he? Where is he?" to which Hassel responded, "He's coming, he's coming."

Lumpkin's girlfriend, Latoya Brown, testified that a neighbor on Moreland Avenue had told her he saw Hassel and Shepard running down the

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driveway away from the house immediately after the shooting.² Brown also testified that, earlier on the evening of the shooting, Hassel had appeared, uninvited, at a party she and Lumpkin were hosting, looking for Lumpkin. When she and Lumpkin arrived back at the Moreland Avenue house after the party, Hassel was there. Hassel asked Lumpkin to walk down the street with him, which Lumpkin refused to do. Later, Brown testified, she was dozing in the living room when she heard Hassel's voice and, minutes later, the blast of the gunshots that killed Lumpkin.

Binika Hankton, a friend of Hassel and Shepard, testified that, on the day before the shooting, she had been at her home with Hassel, Shepard, White, and others, and that White was in possession of an automatic handgun. Hankton also testified that, shortly after the time of the shooting, Shepard and Hassel, who was wearing black, returned to her house in a frantic state. Hankton told detectives that she saw Hassel hand an automatic handgun to Shepard. Hankton testified that Hassel then grabbed a bag, and the two exited through the back

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door.

Hankton, who cooperated in the investigation, recorded several conversations she had with Shepard after the shooting, in which she described being worried about the police questioning her and he acknowledged his and Hassel's involvement in the shooting. In one of the recordings, which was played for the jury, Shepard told Hankton that he and Hassel had discarded the murder weapon in some trees behind her house. Upon receiving this information, the GBI searched Hankton's yard and located an automatic handgun in a wooded area behind her home. Forensic testing matched this gun with the shell casings found at the scene of the shooting and the projectiles recovered from Lumpkin's body.

Hassel wrote a letter to Hankton shortly after the shooting, after being arrested on an unrelated shoplifting charge, stating:

I need bail money [sic] tell your boys I expected to be out already. . . I heard rumors you are telling stories. Please keep quiet. . . . I want it clear that I understood that I'd be treated better than this. My end of the bargain is being upheld. Others need to step up 4 [me] . . . something 2 let me know [what's] up.

Another statement by Hassel was admitted through witness Deborah

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Echols, who testified that Hassel told her in December 2006 that

they wasn't [sic] supposed to kill [Lumpkin]. It wasn't supposed to happen at my house. They were supposed to lure him out the yard, down the driveway, and ask him where the drugs and the money and the jewelry was [sic]. . . . [Hassel] said he told [Shepard] not to kill [Lumpkin] there in - you know

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