Jones v. State

• Decision Date: 17 December 2019
• Docket Number: NO. 2018-KA-01158-COA,2018-KA-01158-COA
• Parties: Audrey JONES a/k/a Audrey Marquez Jones, Appellant v. STATE of Mississippi, Appellee
• Court: Mississippi Court of Appeals

287 So.3d 995

Audrey JONES a/k/a Audrey Marquez Jones, Appellant

v.STATE of Mississippi, Appellee

NO. 2018-KA-01158-COA

Court of Appeals of Mississippi.

December 17, 2019

ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLANT: OFFICE OF STATE PUBLIC DEFENDER, BY: GEORGE T. HOLMES, Jackson, PHILLIP W. BROADHEAD, Oxford

ATTORNEY FOR APPELLEE: OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, BY: KAYLYN HAVRILLA McCLINTON, Jackson

BEFORE BARNES, C.J., McDONALD AND C. WILSON, JJ.

McDONALD, J., FOR THE COURT:

¶1. In 2018, Audrey Jones was convicted of robbing David McCullough and Charlotte Mears in their apartment and then kidnapping Charlotte by making her drive with him to an ATM to withdraw money. For the convictions on two counts of armed robbery in violation of Mississippi Code Annotated section 97-3-79 (Rev. 2014), the Hinds County Circuit Court sentenced Jones to a twenty-five-year term, with ten years suspended and fifteen years to serve, and a consecutive thirty-five-year term, with ten years suspended and twenty-five years to serve, all in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC). The court placed Jones on five years of probation following each term. For the kidnapping conviction in violation of Mississippi Code Annotated section 97-3-53 (Rev. 2014), the court sentenced Jones to a thirty-five-year term in the MDOC's custody, with ten years suspended and twenty-five years to serve, and placed Jones on five years of probation. The circuit court set that sentence to run concurrently with his armed-robbery sentence of a thirty-five year term. Jones appeals. He argues that the court improperly admitted a photographic lineup and surveillance-video evidence in violation of the rules of discovery. He also claims that he was denied a fair trial when the court allowed the State to present evidence of another separate crime for which he had not been tried or convicted. After reviewing the record and relevant precedent, we find that the court erred in admitting the evidence of the second crime because its probative value was substantially outweighed by the undue prejudice caused to Jones. We therefore reverse Jones's convictions and sentences and remand for a new trial.

Facts

¶2. On April 16, 2016, a gunman followed Charlotte and her ex-husband and roommate David into their apartment. The gunman ordered them to get on the floor while he looked through the apartment. He found some laptops and bank cards and demanded their passwords and PIN numbers. Ultimately, he ordered David into the bathroom, took David's cell phone, and left the apartment with Charlotte.

¶3. The gunman forced Charlotte to drive her car to a bank and withdraw $500 from an ATM. This was captured on the bank's surveillance video. When the PIN number that David had given for his bank cards did not work, the gunman became angry and said he planned to return to the apartment and beat David. Meanwhile, David had left the bathroom and gone to other apartments to find help. At a neighbor's apartment, he was able to call his daughter and the police. Anxious about Charlotte's safety, David did not wait for the police to arrive. He drove around to find her himself.

¶4. After leaving the bank, Charlotte drove according to the gunman's directions. He ordered her to park, took the keys, and threatened to kill her if she left the car. He then got out of the car and went over a fence. When Charlotte realized that she was not far from her own apartment complex, she mustered the courage to get out and run. She waved down a vehicle driven by Tameka Reed and Gregory Scott. They took her home where she found the police and her daughter. Ultimately, David returned from his futile search and was reunited with Charlotte.

¶5. David and Charlotte told the police what had happened. They described the gunman as a black man who wore a black, green and yellow knit cap. The police inspected Charlotte's car and took fingerprints. They also fingerprinted the apartment and the iPad that the gunman had handled. The results of the fingerprint tests did not come back from the lab until the middle of the trial. None of the fingerprints matched Jones's.

¶6. On April 20, 2016, the police asked Charlotte to review two separate photographic lineups that did not include a picture of Jones, but she could not identify the gunman in either of them.

¶7. Incident to a subsequent robbery whose suspect was captured on surveillance footage at a bank and nearby gas station, police identified a suspect and a vehicle that belonged to Jones. After Jones was arrested, authorities executed a search warrant on Jones's home. They seized almost one hundred items, but nothing that belonged to Charlotte or David.

¶8. On April 29, 2016, the police asked David and Charlotte to review more photographic lineups. Charlotte refused, but David went and identified Jones as the gunman.

¶9. In November 2016, Jones was indicted and charged with two counts of armed robbery and one count of kidnapping. Jones filed a motion for discovery that, among other things, requested the disclosure of all physical evidence that would be used against him and any exculpatory material. Prior to trial, he also filed a motion in limine to exclude past criminal convictions, pending charges, and other evidence of prior bad acts.

¶10. On the first day of the trial, May 7, 2018, the State announced that it had just acquired the ATM video showing Charlotte's forced withdrawal. The State also told the court that it was still waiting on the test results of the fingerprints collected from an iPad at the victims' home. The State explained that all the evidence was not ready because as of the Friday before, Jones was contemplating pleading guilty. Jones's attorney said that he had no issue with the late disclosure of the ATM video because it had been referenced in discovery, and he just wanted to view it before making an announcement to the court. The video showed Charlotte driving in her car up to an ATM and withdrawing money. It was impossible to identify who was in the car with her. When the court reconvened, Jones's attorney announced that he was ready to proceed.

¶11. The court then considered Jones's motion to exclude evidence of other bad acts. The State told the court that at the time of Charlotte and David's robbery, there was a "crime spree" going on: there were other robberies in the same area, and a kidnapping and rape occurred where the perpetrator also had forced his way into people's apartments, placed one into a bathroom, threatened the other, and took bank cards. After Jones's attorney objected to any testimony regarding the other cases, the State said:

We weren't going to go into--these were the allegations, simply that there were several open cases going on at the same time in which the description and the MO [modus operandi] of the case -- commission of the case -- were very similar; and that in the last case, it resulted in the identification of the defendant; and that's how the arrest was finally made.

The court accepted the State's representations and denied Jones's motion but cautioned the State to talk to its witnesses to insure that they did not "blurt out what the nature of the charges were." The State agreed, and the trial commenced.

¶12. Testifying for the State were the victims, David and Charlotte, the responding police officer Jennifer Avery, and Tameka Reed, who had picked up Charlotte and driven her home. David described what happened and continued that he had identified Jones as the gunman in a photographic lineup that was entered without objection. David also identified Jones in court.

¶13. When Charlotte testified, she described as a light-skinned black man with "little dreads on top of his head." She said he looked nice, and she could not believe he was doing this. She also identified Jones in court as the gunman.

¶14. During Charlotte's testimony, the State sought to enter the ATM video of her and the gunman's visit to the ATM. Jones's attorney objected, not because of any late disclosure, but because Charlotte, he argued, could not authenticate the video. The court overruled the objection, and the video was entered into evidence and played before the jury. While Charlotte is clearly shown on the video, it is impossible to determine the person in the passenger seat.

¶15. Charlotte also testified that on April 20, 2016, she visited police headquarters and spoke to Detective Maurice Young. She said she was presented a two-page photographic lineup but that she did not recognize anyone on them. The State then showed Charlotte a photographic lineup and sought to introduce it into evidence.¹ Jones's attorney objected that the photographic lineup had not been provided in discovery. The court overruled the objection and admitted the second photographic lineup into evidence. The lineup itself does not include Jones's picture, and Charlotte testified that she could not identify the gunman in the lineup.

¶16. Reed, whom Charlotte had flagged down for assistance, testified that when Charlotte got in her car, Charlotte said she had been kidnaped by a man with dreads. But Reed also admitted that she did not put that in the statement she gave to police on the day of the crime.

¶17. Prior to calling its next witness, outside of the presence of the jury, the State informed the court that the results of the fingerprint evidence had come in during lunch, and none of the fingerprints collected matched Jones's. Jones's attorney moved to dismiss the charges because the results had not been provided to the defense prior to trial. The State argued, among other things, that at the beginning of the trial Jones had agreed to proceed even though the fingerprint results had not yet been received. The court took the matter under advisement, but the issue was never revisited, and the fingerprint evidence was never introduced.²

¶18. The State's next three witnesses testified to evidence obtained through the investigation of the later robbery that bore some similarities to David and...