Matthews v. State

• Decision Date: 17 May 2021
• Docket Number: S21A0318
• Citation: 858 S.E.2d 718,311 Ga. 531
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: MATTHEWS v. The STATE.

311 Ga. 531

858 S.E.2d 718

MATTHEWS

v.The STATE.

S21A0318

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: May 17, 2021

Ashleigh Bartkus Merchant, The Merchant Law Firm, P.C., 701 Whitlock Avenue Suite J43, Marietta, Georgia 30064, 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 30334-1300, Joyette Marie Holmes, District Attorney, D. Victor Reynolds, John Richard Edwards, A.D.A., Cobb County District Attorney's Office, 70 Haynes Street, Marietta, Georgia 30090-9602, for Appellee.

Ellington, Justice.

A jury found Freeman Matthews guilty of malice murder, battery, and possession of a knife during the commission of a crime in connection with the stabbing death of Adrianne Young and also found him guilty of financial transaction card theft and obstruction of an officer.¹

On appeal, Matthews challenges the sufficiency of the evidence and contends that the trial court erred in admitting his custodial statement and excluding evidence that pointed to a third-party suspect. Matthews also contends that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. For the reasons explained below, we affirm.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdicts, the evidence shows the following.

Evidence from the crime scene. At around 10:15 p.m. on April 11, 2009, a passerby called 911 when she discovered Young lying face down in a pool of blood in the parking lot outside Young's apartment in the Mission at Galleria apartments in Smyrna. At that point, Young was making a gurgling sound. A Smyrna police officer arrived a few minutes later and found that Young was not breathing and did not have a pulse.

The responding officer found a bent, serrated knife blade with no handle lying on Young's back close to her neck. The blade appeared to have been part of a steak knife. Young had bloody wounds on the top and back of her head and multiple stab wounds to her chest and shoulders. There was a set of Acura car keys near Young's body. The officer used the keys to locate Young's Acura in a parking space near Young's body. The grill and hood of the car were still warm 15 to 20 minutes after the responding officer arrived at the crime scene. Investigators found near Young's body a plastic shopping bag containing a Walmart receipt, a package of apples, the separate top and bottom halves of a jewelry box, and a pair of earrings. However, no purse or wallet was found at the scene.

Autopsy. During an autopsy, a medical examiner found a total of 11 stab wounds to Young's upper chest, upper back, shoulders, and the back and top of her head. One four-inch-deep wound entered below Young's right collar bone; the aorta and the sac around the heart were lacerated. The medical examiner estimated that this wound would have caused death within about ten minutes. Three other wounds to her back and shoulders were three to four inches deep. The knife blade found on Young's body was long enough to inflict the wounds. There was also a bruise on Young's face and another on her throat.

Use of Young's debit card. Investigators determined that, at 10:50 p.m. on the night Young was killed, while officers were still processing the crime scene, a transaction was attempted using Young's Bank of America debit card at an ATM in a Citgo convenience store on Concord Road in Smyrna. As recorded by the store's surveillance cameras, at 10:49 p.m. that night, two men entered the parking lot on foot. One of the men, who was wearing a black and white cap with a distinctive hexagonal logo, went to the ATM machine and interacted with the machine for about one minute. The two men then left the store.

Matthews's arrest and confession. The convenience store's security video showing the two men was released to the local news media a few days after the murder, and a still photograph clipped from the video was published in the local newspaper. The maintenance supervisor at the Concord Chase apartments in Smyrna saw the photo, called the Smyrna police, and identified the men in the photo as residents of Apartment 2406 at Concord Chase.

On April 16, the maintenance supervisor called the police again and reported seeing movement in Apartment 2406. Investigators and officers staked out the apartment while awaiting a search warrant. At approximately 1:00 p.m., Matthews and LaRoyce Garnto ran out the back door. Garnto immediately submitted to being arrested by the officers; Matthews ignored officers’ commands to stop and ran away. Several officers surrounded him, and, when he did not comply with commands to get on the ground, one officer forced him to the ground. Matthews resisted being handcuffed and yelled, "I know I'm going to be gone a long time; shoot me, shoot me."

An investigator questioned Matthews for several hours, ending just after midnight. An audio-video recording of the last two hours of the interview was played at trial. In that recorded interview, after initially denying being at the scene at all and then recounting events to place all of the blame on Garnto, Matthews stated the following. Before Young's death, Matthews had been dating her, and she had also been dating another man named Robert. Matthews and Young argued about her other relationship, and she told Matthews that she wanted to break up with him. On the night Young died, Matthews and Garnto took a bus to Cumberland Mall, which was near Young's apartment complex. They walked to the parking area outside Young's apartment and were standing there when Young drove up and parked. She had a plastic bag and a package of apples. Matthews confronted Young about her breaking off their relationship. Young cursed Matthews, and he hit her in the face and the throat. Young fell to the ground, and they struggled. Matthews stabbed her in the chest with a serrated knife with a brown handle. Matthews and Garnto walked home, stopping at the Citgo convenience store on Concord Road, where they unsuccessfully tried to use Young's debit card at the ATM.

At trial, the investigator who interviewed Matthews testified that certain details that Matthews volunteered, including that Young was attacked in the parking lot, that there was a plastic container of apples at the scene, and that she was stabbed in the chest, had been withheld from the public.

Physical and location evidence. After arresting Matthews and Garnto, investigators executed a search warrant of their apartment. In the kitchen, they found four brown-handled steak knives of the same size, type, and manufacturer as the knife blade found on Young's body. In a dumpster adjacent to the apartment building, investigators found a trash bag that contained a black and white cap with the same logo as the one worn by one of the men in the Citgo security video. The bag also contained two of Young's Bank of America debit cards, one of her credit cards, a traffic citation she had received, and other documents with her name on them, mingled with correspondence addressed to Matthews at 2406 Spring Brook Trail.

Regarding the relative location of Matthews's and Garnto's apartment, the Citgo convenience store where Young's debit card was used shortly after she was stabbed, and Young's apartment, an investigator testified as follows: traveling between Matthews's apartment and Young's apartment along the main road (Concord Road/Spring Road) is a distance of about four miles. The Citgo convenience store on Concord Road is along that route and a short walk from Matthews's apartment. The two men who were at the Citgo convenience store attempting to use Young's debit card entered and left the property on foot in the direction of the direct route from Young's apartment to Matthews's apartment along the main road.

Another investigator testified as follows. Matthews's cell phone records, including cell tower and sector data, show that, at 8:44 p.m. on the evening Young was killed, Matthews's phone was in the area served by the cell tower nearest Matthews's apartment. Then, Matthews's phone traveled east along Concord Road/Spring Road and by 9:37 p.m. was in the area served by a cell tower near Cumberland Mall. By 11:11 p.m., Matthews's phone had traveled west along Concord Road/Spring Road and returned to the area of Matthews's apartment.

Matthews's relationship with Young. Cheryl Young, the victim's mother, testified as follows. She and her daughter were very close, and they confided in each other. A few days before Young was fatally stabbed, she told her mother that she was changing her phone number "because [men] just didn't want to understand that, when she says she is through, it was over and she didn't want to have anything to do with them." Young told her mother that she was having difficulties with someone, and "the guy [Young] mentioned, his name was Freeman." Young's mother did not know if Freeman was the last name or first name, but "that is what [Young] would always say, ‘Freeman.’ "

Robyn Hollis testified as follows. Young and Hollis had been friends for five or six years at the time of Young's death. Hollis considered Young a close friend, and they would confide in each other about things that were going on in their lives. Before her death, Young mentioned having meals with "her guy Freeman" to Hollis. The day before her death, Young told Hollis that she had gotten a new phone number. When Hollis asked Young why she was changing her number, Young said, "Because when I tell these [men] that I am through with them, I am just through with them.... I am just done, and he don't understand that." Although Young did not refer to Matthews by name in that conversation, Hollis understood that she was talking about Matthews because she knew they were seeing each other and because she knew Young and "when she is messing with one guy, she is only messing with that one guy. She does not play around."

Pat...