Horton v. State

• Decision Date: 05 October 2020
• Docket Number: S20A0799
• Citation: 849 S.E.2d 382,310 Ga. 310
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: HORTON v. The STATE.

310 Ga. 310

849 S.E.2d 382

HORTON

v.The STATE.

S20A0799

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: October 5, 2020

Jackie Lynn Tyo, Office of the Appellate Defender, 104 Marietta Street NW, #600, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Brandon A. Bullard, The Bullard Firm, LLC, 3455 Peachtree Road NE, Fifth Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30326, Attorneys for the Appellant.

Samuel H. Altman, District Attorney, Middle Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, PO Box 590, Swainsboro, Georgia 30401-0590, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Eric Christopher Peters, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Sq SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Jessica Black Wilson, A.D.A., Middle Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, 200 Courthouse Square, Suite 1, Lyons, Georgia 30436, Attorneys for the Appellee.

Boggs, Justice.

Quentin Lee Horton was convicted of malice murder, arson in the first degree, and related crimes in connection with the stabbing death of his neighbor Jeffrey Hagan and the burning of Hagan's home. Horton was sentenced to serve life in prison plus five years without the possibility of parole, and he appeals, asserting five enumerations of error. For the reasons stated below, we affirm.¹

1. Construed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdicts, the evidence presented at Horton's trial showed that Horton lived in a travel trailer behind his mother's mobile home on Webb Circle near Metter in Candler County; he had access to his mother's home as well. Hagan lived in a mobile home next door to Horton's mother. At 3:20 a.m. on Sunday, February 8, 2015, a Candler County deputy sheriff responded to a 911 call from a neighbor reporting that Hagan's home was on fire, and found the structure already "fully engulfed in flames." Metter Fire-Rescue firefighters arrived, and because of the presence of cars in the driveway they were concerned that individuals could be trapped in the home. While the initial effort "to push the fire back" was still under way, a search team entered the home but abandoned the search almost immediately because of the unstable floor and heavy smoke. As they retreated, they stumbled over Hagan's severely burned body on the kitchen floor. It did not appear that he was alive, but firefighters immediately dragged him from the home, sprayed his body with water to cool it and remove insulation and other debris that had fallen on him from the collapsing structure, and called emergency medical personnel, who confirmed that Hagan was dead. Firefighters also found Hagan's dog dead inside the home.

While investigators initially assumed that Hagan's death was a result of the fire, an autopsy performed on the following Tuesday, February 10, revealed that Hagan had 14 stab wounds

to the chest and neck. The forensic pathologist determined that Hagan died as a result of the stab wounds before the fire, due to the absence of soot in his airways.

A fire investigator from the state Fire Marshal's office testified that the fire was arson, intended to destroy evidence of a homicide. While he had made an initial visit in the early morning hours of Sunday, while the fire was still smoldering, he returned on Tuesday after he was told that the death was a homicide. He found signs that an accelerant was used in the living room of Hagan's home and called in a second investigator with a certified accelerant-detection dog trained to detect petroleum products. The dog alerted on three locations in the living room area, where the floor had collapsed, and when the fire investigators dug down into the area to obtain samples to send to the crime lab, they smelled "some type of accelerant" such as diesel fuel or gasoline. The samples tested negative, but the fire investigators explained that a dog can detect much lower levels of gasoline than laboratory equipment and that such an intense fire would destroy much of the evidence. A crime scene specialist photographed the scene and found a gasoline can at the rear of the house, lying on its side in the carport area. There were other gas cans nearby, but they were undisturbed and covered with dust.

Local investigators canvassed the neighborhood immediately after the fire and learned that Horton was apparently the last person to see Hagan alive on the night of the fire. After the results of the autopsy were known, a GBI agent interviewed Horton on Tuesday, February 10, but did not reveal that the death was now being investigated as a homicide. Horton told the agent that on the day of the fire, he had contacted a man named David Brown about obtaining some cigarettes, but had not heard from him so he asked Hagan if he had any. Hagan waved him over to his house, gave him a pack of cigarettes, and showed him a new .22 rifle on an AR platform. Horton said they made plans to "sight in" the new rifle and were talking when David Brown arrived. Horton went back to his trailer to talk with Brown about the cigarettes and about selling him his travel trailer. Horton then returned to Hagan's residence, where they both began to drink heavily. At some point, a man named Kenneth Holloway called Hagan and wanted to come over, and Horton said he did not want to be there with Holloway so he returned home, sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. the same evening.² In a second interview on the same day, the GBI agent revealed to Horton that the case was being investigated as a homicide and that the .22 rifle he mentioned previously had not been recovered from the remains of the home.

Horton gave a further description of the rifle, but added that other than seeing it before he met with Brown, "he didn't really handle it or see it much more after that." Horton also told the agent that he had a .22 rifle in his trailer and gave consent for the agent to search, but the rifle that the agent found was not the AR-type rifle Horton had described earlier. Horton also told the agents that he had been wearing a black sweat suit on the night of the fire, that he and Hagan had had no disagreements, and that he did not see or hear the fire.

Early the following morning, at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Wednesday, February 11, Horton called 911 and reported that there was a strange white truck in Hagan's driveway. When sheriff's deputies arrived, Horton told them that there was no truck, but he wanted to talk to them about the .22 rifle missing from Hagan's house. Horton explained that he "was laying on the couch that night and it was bothering him and he decided to get up and go find the gun." He led investigators to a bedroom in his mother's home and lifted a mattress to reveal the rifle – which showed no fire or water damage – and a magazine for the rifle, as well as a box of .22-caliber ammunition. He then went with investigators to the sheriff's department and gave a written statement, in which he stated he was going to bed, pulled the mattress off the bed, and found the rifle.

While Horton's mother originally told investigators that she knew nothing about the fire or Hagan's death, on Wednesday, February 11, Horton's sister called the sheriff's office and said that her mother had something to tell them.³ Two investigators went to Mrs. Horton's home and interviewed her in the presence of her daughter. She informed them that on the night of the fire, she was about to go to bed when she heard a pounding on the back door. It was Horton, "covered from head-to-toe in blood" and "very distraught." He was frantic and saying, "Oh, God, oh, God, he's dead over there, I've killed him, I've killed Jeff." He told her that he must have passed out and when he came to, Jeff and the dog were both dead, and he supposed he must have killed the dog as well. Mrs. Horton told investigators that she used two rags to wipe the blood off his face, and that he cleaned up outside and gave her his clothes, which she laundered twice.⁴ She said that he then told her that he was going back to Hagan's home "to finish it" or "to burn the house." Mrs. Horton added that when Horton was drinking liquor, he turned "from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde." The investigator acknowledged that Mrs. Horton stated she "suffered from some dementia" but that she seemed to be aware of her circumstances and apologized to investigators for not contacting them earlier.

An investigator testified that Mrs. Horton gave two more statements which provided some additional information but were consistent with her original statement. At the preliminary hearing in this case, Mrs. Horton testified under oath to Horton's exclamation that he had "killed Jeff," his report that he had "passed out or something," and that when he woke up it was "like a bear in the room." She mentioned that she had taken her prescription medication on the night of the fire and that it caused her to hallucinate, and testified that Horton was not covered "from head-to-toe" in blood, but that he had "some blood on him."

When Horton was confronted by investigators with his mother's statement that he had appeared at her door with blood on him and stated that he killed Hagan, he denied that any of that took place and insisted that any blood on him could have been dog's blood from breaking up a dog fight, that it would not be Hagan's blood, and that he would not have killed Hagan. At one point, according to an investigator, he questioned whether Hagan was even dead. He said that his mother would exaggerate and that he had told her about watching fights on television "where men tear each other apart." When asked why he didn't mention a dog fight on the night of the incident, "[h]e said that, well, I'm not saying it happened or it didn't happen; it's just that's one of the things that happens, that's how I can get blood on me." He continued to deny that he or his mother put Hagan's rifle into her home, and stated that someone else must have put it there.

At trial, Horton's mother was a reluctant witness, stating that ...