Lewis v. State
| Decision Date | 20 September 2022 |
| Docket Number | S22A0757 |
| Citation | 314 Ga. 654,878 S.E.2d 467 |
| Parties | LEWIS v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Stanley W. Schoolcraft, III, Office of the Public Defender, 289 Jonesboro Road, Suite 245, McDonough, Georgia 30253, for Appellant.
Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Matthew Blackwell Crowder, Assistant Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Richard Benjamin Caplan, A.D.A., Kevin Christopher Armstrong, Senior A.D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street SW, Third Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, General Counsel, FSIG, 41 Islanders Retreat, Savannah, Georgia 31411, for Appellee.
After a jury trial in May 2011, Didrekeus Lewis was convicted of malice murder and other crimes for the shooting death of Marvin Printup.1 Lewis raises five claims of error on appeal: (1) that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions; (2) that the trial court erred when it denied Lewis's motion to suppress evidence that Yvette Varner identified a man in a photo lineup as "Weasel"; (3) that the trial court erred when it denied Lewis's motion for mistrial made after a detective summarized a pre-trial statement from a witness, Abdul Aziz, that the trial court had ruled was inadmissible before trial; (4) that the trial court erred by denying Lewis's motion to suppress evidence that Aziz identified a man in a photograph as "Weasel"; and (5) that Lewis received ineffective assistance of counsel.
We conclude that the evidence is sufficient to support Lewis's convictions; that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the photograph shown to Varner was not impermissibly suggestive; and that Lewis's claim that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion for mistrial is without merit. We also conclude that Lewis's claim that the trial court erred in failing to suppress Aziz's identification of a man in a photograph as Weasel is waived because Lewis failed to obtain a ruling on the issue at a pre-trial hearing and did not object to the evidence at trial. Finally, trial counsel was not constitutionally deficient in failing to object at trial to the photographic lineup shown to Varner; by failing to object to the photograph of Lewis shown to Aziz; or by failing to make a meritless objection about the prosecutor's closing argument. We therefore affirm.
1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at Lewis's trial showed the following. Varner rode with Marvin Printup to a gas station on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive at approximately 4:00 a.m. on September 11, 2010. Varner testified that she and Printup, who was also known as "Kool-Aid," went to the gas station to "pick up [her] friend" Paul Sadeghy.2 Varner testified that she went into the convenience store, where she saw Paul arguing with someone. Varner added that she did not know who he was arguing with, but when asked whether she had previously told a detective that Paul was arguing with a person she knew as "Weasel," Varner said, Shortly thereafter, however, she testified that The prosecutor then asked Varner if she had told a detective that she had known "Weasel" all of his life. Varner testified that According to Varner, Printup came into the store and "started arguing" with the "guy that Paul was arguing with." When asked what happened next, Varner testified that Varner added that the "guy" was "Weasel"; that he was the person that Paul and Printup were arguing with; that the argument "was all about money with Paul and Weasel"; and that According to Varner, she heard "about three, no more than four shots." Varner added that she and Paul got "in the car with Bobby, and ... left." Bobby was a friend of Varner's who arrived at the gas station just before the shooting. Varner also testified that she was with Printup all day and did not see him with a gun and that, after the shooting, Weasel left the gas station in a green car.
During her testimony, Varner said that she could not remember whether Printup went back to the car with her and Paul to leave the gas station. She also testified that, although she heard a shooting, she did not see it and did not know who did the shooting. Moreover, in her testimony, Varner did not identify Lewis as "Weasel" or "Weasy." The State, however, introduced into evidence two prior statements that Varner made to police officers in which she described seeing Printup being shot by "Weasel" at his car and in which she identified Lewis as Weasel. In a written statement made within a week of Printup's shooting, Varner said the following:
In that videotaped statement, Varner also described Weasel, saying that he was "approximately 5 foot 5, 5 foot 6 in height," with "a light brown complexion," and "a tattoo somewhere on his face."
During her videotaped statement, Varner also identified a photograph of Lewis, explaining that he was the person she knew as "Weasel" and said that she had known Weasel "all his life." The State also introduced other evidence that "Weasel" was Lewis. In this regard, Aziz, who was working as the manager of the gas station on the night of the crimes, testified at trial that he did not remember identifying a photograph shown to him by a detective as a person he knew as "Weasel." However, a detective testified that, after Printup's shooting, he showed a photograph of Lewis to Aziz and Aziz identified the person in the photograph as being a person that he knew as "Weasel."3 The detective added that Aziz told him that "Weasel" came to the store several times a night.
The State also introduced surveillance video from the gas station that was recorded on the night of Printup's shooting. Although no witness at trial identified the people shown in it, the video depicted an altercation that corresponded to the altercation Varner described in her trial testimony and prior statements to detectives, culminating with a man who was wearing a white t-shirt shooting another man by a car parked near a gas pump. A responding police officer testified that he found four shell casings by the gas pump where the shooting occurred.
The computer aid dispatch ("CAD") report for the 911 call that followed Printup's shooting was introduced into evidence at trial. The custodian of records for the 911 call center for the City of Atlanta Police Department testified that a CAD report "gives you all the information that the callers give the 911 taker on that call when they call in." She added that the CAD corresponding to the 911 call from the gas station on the night of Printup's shooting contained a description of the shooter as a "light skinned, late 20-year-old," wearing a "white t-shirt," and having a "tattoo under eye." The report also said that the shooter left the scene in a "gold or green vehicle."
Printup suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen, which caused multiple injuries to his abdominal cavity, including injuries to his intestines and pancreas. After a seven-month hospitalization, Printup eventually went into septic shock and died. A treating physician testified that Printup would not have died had he not been shot at the gas station. In addition, the medical examiner who performed Printup's autopsy testified that the cause of death was "delayed complications of [a] gunshot wound to the torso."
In addition to the evidence recounted above, a recording of a phone call that Lewis made from jail to his girlfriend was admitted into evidence at trial. On the phone call, Lewis says "they don't have nothing on me if they are looking for that b***h Sweet Meat," referring to Varner by her nickname. He also expressed worry about whether law enforcement had obtained video footage from the gas station. During that call, Lewis referred to himself as "Weasel."
2. Lewis contends that the evidence was legally insufficient to support his convictions. We disagree.
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