Holmes v. State

• Citation: 311 Ga. 698,859 S.E.2d 475
• Decision Date: 01 June 2021
• Docket Number: S21A0377
• Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
• Parties: HOLMES v. The STATE.

311 Ga. 698

859 S.E.2d 475

HOLMES

v.The STATE.

S21A0377

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: June 1, 2021

Patrick Gregory Sellars, Katherine Morgan Mason, Lucy Dodd Roth, for Appellant.

Natalie Spires Paine, District Attorney, Joshua Bradley Smith, Assistant District Attorney; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Michael Alexander Oldham, Assistant Attorney General, for Appellee.

Peterson, Justice.

Dequan Holmes appeals his convictions for felony murder, aggravated assault, and two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime for the shooting death of Javares Alston and the non-fatal shooting of Danielle Willingham.¹ He argues that the evidence was insufficient to convict him and that the trial court committed plain error when it charged the jury to "consider with great care and caution" Holmes's out-of-court statements. Holmes, who was a juvenile at the time the crime was committed, also challenges his sentence of life without parole, arguing that it violates the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court. We hold that the evidence was sufficient to convict Holmes and that any error in the trial court's instruction to the jury did not amount to plain error because the instruction did not affect the outcome of his trial. We also conclude that Holmes's sentence of life without parole was not prohibited by United States Supreme Court precedent, especially in the light of that Court's recent decision in Jones v. Mississippi , ––– U.S. ––––, 141 S.Ct. 1307, 209 L.Ed.2d 390 (2021). We therefore affirm.

The evidence presented at trial showed the following. According to Willingham, he and Alston shared a mobile home as roommates. Sometime after 2:00 a.m. on June 28, 2012, Willingham was awakened by loud knocking on the front door. Peeking out, he saw by the light of a porch lamp a person whom he later identified as Holmes, standing outside the door and saying, "I got your money. I was just playing." Willingham knew that Holmes and Alston socialized, but he had never been introduced to Holmes. Willingham went to Alston's bedroom and relayed what Holmes said. Alston told Willingham that he had been robbed recently. Alston went to the door and opened it, with Willingham standing behind him. Holmes again said, "I got your money. I was just playing." But Holmes then pulled a gun out of his pocket and began shooting. Willingham was shot in his thigh while running for cover but managed to hide in the bathroom; Alston tried to run but collapsed in the hallway after Holmes shot him three times. Holmes continued to shoot until the gun was empty and then left. Willingham testified that neither he nor Alston had a knife or any other weapon when they opened the door. He also said that he did not confront Holmes and did not believe that Alston did either, nor did he hear any scuffle after Holmes pulled out the gun.

Willingham called 911 after finding Alston face down on the floor and unresponsive. Paramedics attempted to resuscitate Alston, but he was pronounced dead on the scene. The police did not find any weapons on Willingham or near Alston's body at the time. An autopsy confirmed that Alston died of his gunshot wounds.

After leaving the scene, Holmes called a close friend, Eugene Butler, to pick him up at the mobile home park, telling Butler that he had "messed up" and "got him one." Butler's girlfriend, Princess Brown, drove Butler to meet Holmes at the mobile home park. Holmes told Brown and Butler that some "work" was stolen from him and two people owed him money, he was heated about it, he went to their door to collect the money, and when they refused to pay, he shot them. He told Butler that he shot one person in the head or chest and killed him, but the second person did not die. Holmes appeared nervous and scared, saying "I messed up," "I don't know what I did," "I lost my mind," and "I got me one." He also laughed and said that he was "crazy" and "that's what they get."

Holmes testified at trial. He said that he regularly sold drugs to people in the mobile home park, including Alston and Willingham, that he had sold crack cocaine to other customers the day before the shooting, and that he went to the mobile home on the night of the shooting with crack cocaine in his pocket to sell "drugs" to Alston at Alston's request. Holmes claimed that Alston opened the door and invited him in but then pulled a knife on him as he was entering, saying, "give me that ‘S’ before I kill you." Holmes told Alston "all right," but when Alston reached up, Holmes grabbed his pistol and shot Alston while Holmes was running out of the mobile home. Holmes admitted on cross-examination that he lied when giving statements to the police after the shooting. The State later introduced recordings of Holmes's four police interviews. During the first three interviews, Holmes denied shooting Alston, but he admitted doing so, in self-defense, during the final interview. And not once during his four interviews did he mention selling drugs to Alston; instead, he told the police that Alston owed him money and told him to come at 2:00 a.m. to collect it.

1. Holmes argues that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions because the State failed to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted in self-defense. We disagree.

When evaluating the sufficiency of evidence as a matter of federal due process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the proper standard of review is whether a rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. See Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). This Court views the evidence in the "light most favorable to the verdict, with deference to the jury's assessment of the weight and credibility of the evidence." Hayes v. State , 292 Ga. 506, 506, 739 S.E.2d 313 (2013) (citation and punctuation omitted).

In his trial testimony, Holmes admitted that he shot Alston and Willingham but claimed that he shot them in self-defense. But the jury could have rejected Holmes's claim that he was acting in self-defense. See Mims v. State , 310 Ga. 853, 855, 854 S.E.2d 742 (2021) ("[T]he defendant's testimony, in which he claimed he was justified or provoked into acting, may itself be considered substantive evidence of guilt when disbelieved by the jury, as long as some corroborative evidence exists for the charged offense." (citation omitted)); see also Shaw v. State , 292 Ga. 871, 872 (1), 742 S.E.2d 707 (2013) ("[I]ssues of witness credibility and justification are for the jury to decide, and the jury is free to reject a defendant's claim that he acted in self-defense." (citation and punctuation omitted)). Here, there was both corroborative and direct evidence that Holmes shot Alston, and not in self-defense. Willingham testified that he and Alston were unarmed when they opened the door for Holmes; the police found no weapons on Alston or Willingham or at their mobile home; Brown and Butler informed the police that Holmes told them he shot the victims because they refused to pay him; and Holmes's credibility as a witness was undermined by his in-court admission that he lied to the police and his assertions of innocence in prior police interviews.

2. Holmes contends that the trial court committed plain error in charging the jury to "consider with great care and caution" his out-of-court statements. We disagree.

The relevant part of the challenged jury charge was as follows:

You should consider with great care and caution the evidence of any out-of-court statement allegedly made by the Defendant offered by the State. The jury may believe any such statement in whole or in part, believing that which you find to be true and rejecting that which you find to be untrue. You alone have the right to apply the general rules of testing the believability of witnesses and to decide what weight should be given to all or part of such evidence.

Holmes argues that this pattern charge violated his right to due process because the trial court did not clarify that the jury's duty to consider his statements with "great care and caution" applied only to incriminatory statements. Without such a limitation, Holmes argues, the jury was effectively told that it should apply a heightened level of scrutiny to Holmes's exculpatory statements and his trial testimony. Holmes claims that the charge relieved the State of its duty to prove all elements of the charged crimes beyond a reasonable doubt because his trial testimony was the only evidence of his sole defense (self-defense) and the trial court did not instruct jurors to consider conflicting statements of other witnesses with the same scrutiny.

Holmes did not object to the charge at trial, so we review this claim only for plain error. See OCGA § 17-8-58 (b) (failure to object to a jury charge "shall preclude appellate review of such portion of the jury charge, unless such portion of the jury charge constitutes plain error which affects substantial rights of the parties"). To establish plain error, Holmes "must point to an error that was not affirmatively waived, the error must have been clear and not open to reasonable dispute, the error must have affected his substantial rights, and the error must have seriously affected the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings." Denson v. State , 307 Ga. 545, 547-548 (2), 837 S.E.2d 261 (2019) (citation and punctuation omitted). To show that an error affected his substantial rights, Holmes must make an "affirmative showing that the error probably did affect the outcome below." McKinney v. State , 307 Ga. 129, 135 (2) (b), 834 S.E.2d 741 (2019) (citation and punctuation omitted). If Holmes fails to meet any one of the elements of the plain error test, his claim...