Jenkins v. State

Citation313 Ga. 81,868 S.E.2d 205
Decision Date19 January 2022
Docket NumberS21A1127
Parties JENKINS v. The STATE.
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia

David Edward Clark, Clark & Towne, PC, 1755 North Brown Road, Suite 200, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30043, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Mark Samuel Lindemann, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Patsy A. Austin-Gatson, District Attorney, Lee Franklin Tittsworth, A.D.A., Christopher Mark DeNeve, A.D.A., Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office, 75 Langley Drive, Lawrenceville, Georgia 30046, for Appellee.

LaGrua, Justice.

Appellant Devon Jenkins was convicted of felony murder and other crimes in connection with an August 6, 2014 home invasion in Gwinnett County in which the victim, Adam Schrier, was shot and killed and two other victims, including a child, were injured. On appeal, Appellant contends that the evidence was legally insufficient to support his conviction for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, that the trial court erred in admitting other-act evidence prohibited by OCGA § 24-4-404 (b), and that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to request a limiting instruction on the other-act evidence.1 For the reasons that follow, we affirm Appellant's convictions.

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at Appellant's trial showed that during the early morning hours of August 6, 2014, several intruders forcibly entered Schrier's home in Duluth. Schrier shared the home with his four-year-old daughter, E.S., his girlfriend, Jami Smith, and Smith's eight-year-old daughter, M.S. That morning, Smith woke up at 5:30 a.m. and was smoking a cigarette in the basement-level garage when she heard banging noises above her from the main floor of the house. Smith stepped inside the house and yelled for Schrier. She started to walk up the stairs leading from the basement to the main floor when she heard Schrier cry out, followed by booming sounds. Smith called for Schrier again, and then a man – whom Smith identified at trial as Appellant – appeared in the doorway at the top of the basement stairs, pointing a gun at her. Appellant charged at Smith and hit her in the head multiple times with the butt of his gun, asking, "Where's the f***ing money at?" When Smith responded that she did not know what he was talking about, Appellant shot her in the left leg and dragged her up the stairs, continuing to ask where the money was.

When they reached the main floor, Smith saw another man pulling M.S. downstairs from the second floor of the house where the bedrooms were located.2 The men forced Smith and M.S. into the living room where Schrier, who had been shot in the chest, was lying on his back on the floor. Appellant directed Smith and M.S. to lie down on their stomachs on the floor next to Schrier and demanded that Smith give the men $40,000 they had been told was in the home. Smith again said she did not know anything about the money, but said she had $60 in her purse upstairs, which the men took.

The men bound Smith's and M.S.’s arms and legs with duct tape. As the men were doing so, M.S. knocked the tape away, and Appellant started shooting at Smith and M.S. Smith tried to cover M.S. to protect her, and a bullet grazed Smith's shoulder and entered M.S.’s arm. The men finished binding Smith's and M.S.’s arms and legs and left the house. Smith could not stand because of the gunshot wound to her leg, but she was able to free M.S.’s legs from the duct tape. M.S. then retrieved Smith's cell phone from upstairs, and Smith called 911. Police officers and paramedics soon responded, and Smith and M.S. were transported to a hospital and treated for their injuries. Schrier died at the scene from a gunshot wound to the chest.

Following the home invasion, neighbors of Schrier reported seeing a light-colored or white Dodge pickup truck parked outside Schrier's home with the engine running and the lights off. One of the neighbors, who was suspicious, wrote down the Tennessee tag number of the truck and later reported it to police.

The home invasion was the result of a series of drug-related incidents that occurred in July and August 2014. In mid-July, law enforcement officers conducted a drug raid at the Gwinnett County apartment of Becky Banner, a woman who was trafficking methamphetamine supplied by a drug cartel. During the drug raid, Becky's son, Bryan Banner, who also trafficked methamphetamine, drove to his mother's residence. When Bryan arrived, he saw a K-9 unit at the door to his mother's apartment and realized what was happening. He immediately drove to Becky's other residence in Gwinnett County and retrieved five kilograms (11 pounds) of methamphetamine that Becky was storing in a Chevrolet Blazer parked outside the second residence. After retrieving the drugs, Bryan asked Schrier – a close friend – to hide the drugs for him. Schrier agreed and stored the drugs in a storage unit near his home.

Over the next week, Bryan sold most of the methamphetamine Schrier was storing for him. One of the individuals who purchased the drugs was Jamie Staples, Becky's then-boyfriend and a minor drug dealer connected to the trafficking operation. Staples knew Bryan had taken all of the drugs hidden in the Blazer, but he mistakenly believed that Bryan was storing the remainder of the drugs and all the money from the drug sales inside Schrier's home. The week before the August 6 home invasion, Staples met with Brian Brewner, one of Appellant's co-indictees who was also a drug dealer, to discuss stealing the rest of the methamphetamine and any money generated from the drug sales from inside Schrier's home. Brewner then approached Appellant and Pierre Scott, one of Appellant's co-defendants, to solicit their help in stealing the money and drugs from Schrier's home.

On the night of the home invasion, Brewner met with Appellant and Scott at a La Quinta hotel in Gwinnett County where Brewner was staying with his girlfriend, Charlice Roberts. Appellant was also staying at this hotel with his girlfriend, Summer Lawrence. During this meeting, the men finalized the plot to invade Schrier's home to steal the drugs and money. After the meeting, Roberts noted that Appellant was carrying a gun and was visibly excited about getting some money.

Around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. on August 6, Appellant left the hotel room he was sharing with Lawrence, and Lawrence saw him get into a white pickup truck with Scott and his other co-defendant, Jamie Stokes. Appellant was carrying a large black duffel bag. After sunrise that morning, Appellant returned to the hotel and went to sleep without speaking to Lawrence. The next day, after moving to another hotel, Appellant told Lawrence that the night they left, he shot a man after they tried to rob him and "the man tried to fight him." He also said that "he didn't shoot the girl, and he didn't shoot the older kid." Appellant insisted he did not want Lawrence "to get caught up in it," and he wanted to go to Chicago.

On the night after the home invasion, Bryan Banner contacted the police and told them he had information on the "possible home invasion/homicide" at Schrier's home. Bryan implicated Jamie Staples in these crimes, suggesting that the motive was to steal methamphetamine and money generated from the sale of methamphetamine Schrier had been storing at or near his home.

On August 15, investigators with the Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office learned that the white Dodge pickup truck seen parked outside Schrier's home near the time of the home invasion had been rented from a Chattanooga, Tennessee rental car company in July by a woman named Shana Woods. When investigators interviewed Woods, she informed them that she had rented the Dodge Ram for Brian Brewner to use.3 Investigators also discovered that, on the afternoon of August 6, the pickup truck had been parked at the Congress hotel – a hotel adjacent to the La Quinta hotel in Gwinnett County where Appellant and Brewner were staying the night before the home invasion. Surveillance video from the Congress hotel also showed that on the morning of August 6, a white Dodge pickup truck, followed by a white Toyota Camry with tinted windows, pulled into the hotel parking lot at 6:35 a.m. Shortly after pulling into the parking lot, three men exited the pickup truck and got into the Camry, which then drove away. At that time, Brewner's girlfriend, Roberts, owned a white Toyota Camry with tinted windows.

On August 21, Staples was arrested on unrelated drug charges. Staples implicated Brewner in the home invasion and told the police where they could find Brewner. Later that night, police officers located Brewner and Roberts in the parking lot of a hotel in DeKalb County. As the police officers approached, Brewner fled the area in a white SUV, but Roberts remained and was brought in for questioning. During Roberts's interview, she told the police officers that Brewner and Appellant were involved in the home invasion. Warrants were then issued for Appellant's and Brewner's arrest. Police officers also released information about the arrest warrants to the media, which increased media coverage and publicity about the home invasion.

On the night of August 27, Sneh Sean Savice, an acquaintance of Appellant who regularly purchased marijuana from him, picked up Appellant in Atlanta to give him a ride to Lawrenceville. When Appellant first got into Savice's car, Savice heard Appellant do a Google voice search for a Duluth homicide or home invasion. While they were traveling, the men encountered a roadblock with a number of police cars, and Appellant told Savice to turn around. Savice made a U-turn in the middle of the street, at which point the police officers started pursuing his car. Savice was initially driving the speed...

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1 cases
  • Early v. State
    • United States
    • Georgia Supreme Court
    • May 3, 2022
    ...The " ‘exclusion of evidence under Rule 403 is an extraordinary remedy that should be used only sparingly.’ " Jenkins v. State , 313 Ga. 81, 90, 868 S.E.2d 205 (2022) (citation omitted). Appellant's statement, "I'm a murderer," during the jail video was highly probative because he was charg......

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