Jones v. State

• Decision Date: 22 October 2018
• Docket Number: S18A0775
• Citation: Jones v. State, 304 Ga. 594, 820 S.E.2d 696 (Ga. 2018)
• Parties: JONES v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

304 Ga. 594

820 S.E.2d 696

JONES

v.The STATE.

S18A0775

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: October 22, 2018

Troy Edward Golden, DOUGHERTY CIRCUIT PUBLIC DEFENDER'S OFFICE, P.O. Box 1827, Albany, Georgia 31702-1827, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Matthew Min-soo Youn, Assistant Attorney General, DEPARTMENT OF LAW, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Melinda April Wynne, A.D.A., Gregory W. Edwards, District Attorney, DOUGHERTY COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, P.O. Box 1827, Albany, Georgia 31702, for Appellee.

Warren, Justice.

Rico Jones was found guilty of felony murder, five counts of cruelty to children in the second degree, and one count of possession of marijuana in connection with the drowning death of Camyria Arnold.¹Jones contends that the evidence was insufficient to sustain his convictions and that the trial judge erred by expressing an opinion about the evidence in violation of OCGA § 17-8-57.We agree that the evidence was insufficient to support Jones’s convictions for cruelty to children in the second degree by smoking marijuana in the children’s presence, and we reverse the convictions for those three counts.The evidence was legally sufficient to support the jury’s guilty verdicts on the remaining counts, however, and we identify no violation of OCGA § 17-8-57.We therefore affirm Jones’s remaining convictions.

1.Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence presented at trial showed the following.On December 26, 2010, at around 7:00 a.m., Jones drove his girlfriend, Porsha Harper, to work at a Waffle House.The two had one child together, one-year-old P.J., who rode in the car with Jones when he took Harper to work.Harper also had two other children, three-year-old Camyria and five-year-old N.H., whom Jones left at home asleep in the family’s Albany apartment.

A few hours after Jones dropped Harper off, Jones returned to the Waffle House with N.H. and P.J. in the car and told Harper that he had taken Camyria to the hospital.Jones told Harper that when the children got up that morning, he discovered that Camyria and N.H. had wet the bed.He disciplined the two children by spanking them with a belt and then gave them a bath.After the children got out of the bath, Jones told Camyria and N.H. to lie down for a nap.Jones then fell asleep for "five to ten minutes" before waking up to P.J. crying.When he woke up, Jones said, he noticed Camyria walking strangely, as though she were dizzy or drunk, and she looked drowsy.As Jones explained it, he thought Camyria might have swallowed some medicine, so he put his finger down her throat and she threw up a little bit of water and red fluid.Jones said that he then held Camyria under a cold shower for one or two seconds to try to wake her up.He said that Camyria seemed more alert for a few minutes, but then began acting drowsy again, so he rushed her to the hospital.

Upon arrival at the hospital, Camyria was unresponsive, barely breathing, and had a core body temperature of 91 degrees, indicating that her body was shutting down and she was "about half dead."Her eyes were fixed and dilated, suggesting significant brain injury.The attending physician, Dr. Raymond Gutierrez, heard "rales" or crackling sounds when he listened to her breathing, indicating that she had fluid in her lungs.Camyria vomited a pink-tinged watery emesis, which also can be a sign of fluid overloading the lungs.²Dr. Gutierrez ordered a CT scan, which showed swelling of the brain, and a chest x-ray, which showed inflammation and "infiltrates"(foreign matter) in the lungs.Blood tests showed that Camyria had a critically low sodium level.She had fresh purple-and-red linear bruises on her inner left thigh and outer right thigh and hip, and also had fresh bruises on her abdomen.

When Harper arrived at the hospital, she noticed what looked like belt marks on Camyria’s thighs.She told Jones that he had whipped Camyria too hard.Camyria’s grandmother, who had come to the hospital, also noticed bruises on Camyria’s neck, legs, arm, and chest.The grandmother had checked Camyria for bruises the day before, as she did every time she saw Camyria, and had found none.

When Dr. Gutierrez asked Jones what had happened, Jones’s responses were evasive and his demeanor was "stoic" and "flat"; he did not seem upset.Jones told Dr. Gutierrez that he had put Camyria in the bathtub with her sibling and then had fallen asleep.Dr. Gutierrez asked if Camyria had swallowed anything or been sick before Jones brought her to the hospital, and Jones responded that she had not.After Harper arrived at the hospital, Dr. Gutierrez told Harper and Jones that Camyria probably would not survive.Harper was very upset, but Jones did not respond.Because the hospital in Albany was not equipped to care for critically ill children, Camyria was transferred to a hospital in Macon, where she passed away on December 27, 2010.

Dr. Yameika Head, an expert in Child Abuse Pediatrics, examined Camyria’s body at the hospital.Dr. Head found unusual rectangular-shaped bruises on Camyria’s outer left thigh and the left side of her neck.She also found a deep bruise on the outside of her right thigh and bruising on the inside of both thighs, which is a part of the body where children do not usually get bruises.Dr. Head also reviewed Camyria’s medical records and discussed the child’s history with Camyria’s biological father and paternal grandmother.Based on all of this information, Dr. Head was "very concerned" that Camyria had suffered "inflicted trauma or child abuse, until proven otherwise."

A Georgia Bureau of Investigation medical examiner, Dr. Melissa Sims, performed an autopsy on Camyria.Dr. Sims determined that Camyria’s death was caused by complications from asphyxia, which means that the body is unable to receive or use oxygen.Camyria’s inflammation of the lungs, brain swelling, and low sodium level all were consistent with an asphyxial event.Forms of asphyxia include, among others, hanging, strangulation, choking, drowning, smothering, and positional asphyxia.In Dr. Sims’s opinion, the most likely asphyxial event in Camyria’s case was drowning.A freshwater drowning, which can occur in a bathtub, will cause water to pass through the membranes of the lungs and into the blood supply, diluting the blood and lowering a person’s sodium level.Dr. Sims determined that the manner of death was homicide, and that Camyria would have had to be submerged from one to three minutes to deprive her of oxygen long enough to cause the injuries seen during her autopsy.

At trial, Dr. Gutierrez testified that his clinical impression was that Camyria had been drowned by being submerged and held under water.He testified that a neurologically typical three-year-old who fell in water would push herself up out of the water and would not simply lie in the water and drown.Dr. Gutierrez acknowledged that a very low sodium level was a dangerous and potentially fatal condition for a child, and that a sodium level that low could cause swelling of the brain.He also agreed that low sodium could cause a child to appear drowsy or drunk, but explained that splashing cold water on a child in that condition would not cause her to improve, even for a few minutes.

Dr. Gutierrez determined that Camyria’s sodium level dropped quickly, given Jones’s statement that Camyria had not been sick before that morning.A sudden drop in sodium level could occur from drowning or if a person drank six gallons of water all at once.But all of her other symptoms were consistent with having been held under water and drowned.Dr. Gutierrez testified that being held under water would have been "horrific" and painful for Camyria.

Dr. Joseph Burton, an expert in forensic pathology, testified on behalf of the defense.Dr. Burton disagreed with Dr. Sims’s conclusion that Camyria’s death was caused by an asphyxial event.Instead, Dr. Burton opined that Camyria’s autopsy findings were explained by low sodium.A very low sodium level will cause brain swelling, which in turn will cause a person to stop breathing and die.Low sodium has a range of potential causes, including drinking too much water, a blood clot in the brain, diarrhea, vomiting, excessive sweating, kidney disease, or tumors on the pituitary or adrenal glands.Dr. Burton agreed, however, that drowning also could cause low sodium, and that Camyria’s history and medical records did not reveal any of the other causes of low sodium that he mentioned.

In addition, three of the State’s witnesses testified about the potential effect of marijuana smoke on children.Dr. Gutierrez testified that long-term exposure to marijuana smoke could be harmful to children and that studies show that young people who smoke marijuana have diminished cognitive function later in life.Dr. Head, the Child Abuse Pediatrics expert who examined Camyria’s body in the hospital, testified that secondhand marijuana smoke can lead to problems with cognitive function or asthma in children.And Investigator George Camp, a GBI-certified narcotics officer with specialized drug training in marijuana identification who was exposed to marijuana smoke as part of training, testified that for him personally, marijuana smoke causes a "slight euphoric high" followed by a migraine headache.

2.Jones contends that the evidence introduced at trial was insufficient for the jury to find him guilty of felony murder and five counts of cruelty to children in the second degree.We disagree with respect to the conviction of felony murder and the two predicate counts of second-degree child cruelty that merged into it and affirm that conviction because the evidence is legally sufficient to support it.We agree, however, that the evidence is legally insufficient to support Jones’s convictions for three counts...