Jackson v. State

• Decision Date: 03 June 2019
• Docket Number: S19A0343
• Parties: JACKSON v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

306 Ga. 69
829 S.E.2d 142

JACKSON
v.
The STATE.

S19A0343

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: June 3, 2019

Richard Allen Hunt, LAW OFFICE OF R. ALLEN HUNT, 1962 Clairmont Terrace, Atlanta, Georgia 30345, John Walter Kraus, OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC DEFENDER, 146 N. McDonough Street, Jonesboro, Georgia 30236, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Ashleigh Dene Headrick, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, DEPARTMENT OF LAW, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Jeffrey Matthew Gore, A.D.A., DOUGLAS COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, 2nd Floor, 8700 Hospital Drive, Douglasville, Georgia 30134, Tracy Graham Lawson, District Attorney, Elizabeth A. Baker, Deputy Chief A.D.A., CLAYTON COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, 9151 Tara Boulevard, Fourth Floor, Jonesboro, Georgia 30236, for Appellee.

Nahmias, Presiding Justice.

306 Ga. 69

Appellant Jaramus Jackson was convicted of felony murder and a firearm offense in connection with the fatal shooting of Carlos Wallace in 2015. Appellant contends that the evidence presented at his trial was insufficient to support his convictions; the trial court erred by allowing the State to present evidence under OCGA § 24-4-404 (b) that Appellant had shot at someone else in 2005 and the trial court improperly instructed the jury on how to consider this evidence; the trial court erred in failing to give various jury instructions and his trial counsel was ineffective in failing to ask for them; the trial court erred by preventing the defense from cross-examining accomplice witness Ronney Jackson about his 1997 arrest for murder, the State committed a Brady violation by failing to timely disclose the 1997 arrest, and trial counsel was ineffective in failing to question Ronney about the arrest and to object to the Brady violation; trial counsel failed to convey the State’s proposed sentence recommendation if Appellant pled guilty; and trial counsel was ineffective in failing to object to certain questions asked during his cross-examination.

306 Ga. 70

Although it takes many pages to work through all these claims, we find no reversible error. Accordingly, we affirm.¹

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at

829 S.E.2d 147

Appellant’s trial showed the following. Appellant and his cousin Ronney worked together at Brenntag Mid-South, an industrial chemical distributor in East Point. Ronney had a 15-year-old son who had a tense relationship with Wallace, the victim. In early 2015, Ronney’s son and daughter lived with their mother, Candice Lowery, and Wallace. Lowery and Wallace also had a child together. In mid-2015, Wallace refused to let Ronney’s son continue living in their home, and the son then moved in with Ronney. On November 24, 2015, Ronney’s son and Wallace had an altercation that involved "hand to hand combat." Ronney and Wallace exchanged verbal threats after the fight. On the morning of November 25, while Appellant and Ronney were both at work, Ronney’s son called Ronney and said that Wallace and four other guys were at the car wash where the son was working.

According to Ronney’s trial testimony and a statement he made to the police after his arrest, he then asked Appellant to tell his supervisor that he was taking an early lunch, but he and Appellant did not clock out. Appellant drove Ronney in Appellant’s black Mustang to the car wash to confront Wallace. As they arrived, Ronney saw Wallace get into a gold Malibu and drive away. Ronney told Appellant, "don’t worry about it, I’ll see him another time," but Appellant said, "[I] didn’t drive all the way out here for nothing." The two men then followed Wallace’s car for about two minutes until Wallace parked in the driveway in front of his house.

306 Ga. 71

According to Ronney, Appellant parked his Mustang on the street, blocking half of the driveway, and Ronney got out of the car. Ronney walked up to the driver’s side door of Wallace’s car and banged on the car doors and windows. Ronney also tried to open Wallace’s car door, but it was locked. Wallace, who was unarmed, started slowly backing his car out of the driveway while laughing. Appellant, who was standing behind the parked Mustang, then started shooting at Wallace. Wallace accelerated, backing over his mailbox and into a neighbor’s yard across the street. Appellant took a few steps toward Wallace’s car and continued shooting as Wallace drove away. Appellant and Ronney then got into the Mustang, and Appellant drove them in the opposite direction to return to Brenntag.

Through the open blinds on his roommate’s bedroom window, Ashton Holman saw Wallace’s gold Malibu parked in the driveway in front of Wallace’s house and a black Mustang parked near the street end of the driveway. Holman saw two black men who were outside the Malibu and one man sitting in the driver’s seat. The first man outside the Malibu, a heavyset man wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans, attempted to pull the driver out of his open car door while the second man stood next to the driver’s door of the Mustang. The second man was slimmer and taller than the heavyset man. The second man also "appeared to have dredlocks [sic] or cornrows, or it might have been like a do-rag but he had something on his head," and he was wearing "some reflective pants and a dark shirt." Holman explained that the pants looked like mechanics overalls with a reflective stripe down the side.² When the Malibu began backing out of the driveway, the man standing near the Mustang started shooting at the car, and he continued shooting while the driver backed the Malibu over a mailbox and into another neighbor’s yard. The shooter then stepped toward the Malibu and continued shooting as the car moved forward, turned right onto a nearby street, and drove away.³ The two men then got into the Mustang, turned left on the same nearby street and drove away.⁴

306 Ga. 72

Brenntag was about a 20-minute

829 S.E.2d 148

drive from Wallace’s home. Records from a thumbprint scanner at Brenntag showed that Appellant and Ronney clocked out together for their lunch breaks at 11:52 a.m.

One .40-caliber bullet had struck Wallace in the torso. He drove about two miles before crashing his car into a light pole. Someone nearby called 911 at 11:31 a.m., and police arrived at the scene of the crash a few minutes later. An officer asked Wallace who shot him, and Wallace said it was his "baby’s mother’s other baby daddy" and spelled out the name "Q-U-A-N-Z-E-E Jackson." (Ronney, whose full name was Ronney LaQuanzee Jackson, was often referred to as "Quanzee.") Wallace was taken to a hospital, where he was put into a medically induced coma from which he did not awaken. In the ensuing weeks, Wallace underwent numerous surgeries, and doctors had to amputate both of his legs above the knees. He died of complications related to the gunshot wound on December 19, 2015.

Soon after the shooting, Appellant began driving his girlfriend’s car to work instead of his Mustang. According to Ronney, he and Appellant talked about the shooting almost every day, and Appellant always took responsibility for the shooting. At some point, Charles Thompson, Appellant’s supervisor at Brenntag, overheard Ronney tell Appellant, "I didn’t know that you was going to start shooting," and Appellant respond, "cuz, I’m not going to let you go down for something I done."

Two weeks after the shooting, on December 9, the police questioned Ronney; he claimed that he was not at the scene of the shooting. On the morning of December 18, the police searched Appellant’s residence. They found one live .40-caliber bullet inside a plastic tub and several items of reflective clothing. During the search, Appellant claimed that he did not own a gun or a black Mustang. That same day, Appellant made a phone call to Ronney, who put the call on speakerphone; the call was overheard by their co-worker Donald Jaffee. Appellant told Ronney that "folks had just left his house" and that Ronney needed to remove a box from the boiler room at Brenntag; Jaffee testified that he understood "folks" to mean the police. Appellant also called his supervisor Thompson to ask if he would be "willing to remove a weapon," but Thompson refused. That afternoon, Appellant went to the police station and admitted that he owned a black Mustang; he claimed that a mechanic had been looking at it during the search, but he refused to provide the mechanic’s name. When the police arrested Ronney the next day, he told them that he was at the crime scene but Appellant was the shooter.

On December 21, Jaffee reported the telephone conversation he had overheard to Arthur Welch, his supervisor. Jaffee and Welch then went to the boiler room and found a box that contained a .40-caliber

306 Ga. 73

Ruger handgun and .40-caliber bullets. Ballistics testing showed that this gun fired the bullet found in Wallace’s body. The box had on it three fingerprints from Jaffee and one fingerprint each from Appellant, Welch,...