Mckibbins v. State

• Decision Date: 21 October 2013
• Docket Number: No. S13A1051.,S13A1051.
• Citation: 750 S.E.2d 314,293 Ga. 843
• Parties: McKIBBINS v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

293 Ga. 843

750 S.E.2d 314

McKIBBINS

v.The STATE.

No. S13A1051.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Oct. 21, 2013.

Cynthia Wright Harrison, Harrison Law Firm, LLC, Atlanta, for appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Atty. Gen., Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Ryan A. Kolb, Asst. Atty. Gen., Paula Khristian Smith, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Department of Law, Paul L. Howard, Jr., Dist. Atty., Paige Reese Whitaker, Deputy Dist. Atty., Sheila Elizabeth Gallow, Senior Asst. Dist. Atty., Fulton County District District, for appellee.

BLACKWELL, Justice.

Chaunson McKibbins was tried by a Fulton County jury and convicted of murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, and concealing the death of another. He appeals, contending that the evidence is insufficient to sustain his convictions, that the indictment failed to properly charge kidnapping with bodily injury, that the prosecuting attorney made improper and prejudicial statements in the presence of the jury, and that the trial court erred with respect to certain evidentiary rulings and jury instructions. We find no merit in these claims of error, and we affirm.¹

[293 Ga. 844]1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence shows that McKibbins—with the help of several associates, including Rico Green—stole two kilograms of cocaine from a drug dealer. Later, the cocaine went missing, and McKibbins suspected that Demetrius Robbins had something to do with its disappearance. In early November 2008, McKibbins met with Robbins's brother, explaining that someone had stolen a substantial quantity of cocaine from him, that he believed Robbins was involved, and that “ something needed to be done [with Robbins].”

A few weeks later, on November 18, Robbins went to a house on Wadley Street in Atlanta.² McKibbins and several of his associates—including Green, Earnest Lambert, and Raymond Lambert—were at the same house.³ Robbins eventually wound up in a back room of the house, where he was seen with a black eye, sitting on the floor in his underwear. McKibbins questioned Robbins about the missing cocaine, but Robbins denied that he had taken it. Robbins offered to help find the cocaine, and he said that he just wanted to go home.

That evening, Robbins briefly escaped from the house.⁴ A neighbor later said that she had been awakened in the night by the sound of someone banging on her back door and asking for help. She then heard a gunshot, saw McKibbins drag a man into the street, and saw McKibbins and Earnest Lambert put the man into an SUV.⁵ Two other neighbors gave similar reports, although they did not identify McKibbins specifically. Investigators eventually would find Robbins's blood in the street, as well as on a newspaper in the driveway of a neighbor.

After they put Robbins into the SUV, McKibbins and Earnest Lambert drove Robbins to a house in Riverdale. The next day, McKibbins called Green and asked him to bring food to the Riverdale house, and when Green arrived there, he found McKibbins, Raymond Lambert, and Dartantin Bailey. Green also saw Robbins, who was bloody and still in the SUV. McKibbins also summoned Shawn Sims to Riverdale, and when Sims arrived, McKibbins borrowed the keys to his car. McKibbins later returned the keys to Sims, and Sims was asked to drive his car to the home of McKibbins's sister, where McKibbins often spent the night. Sims did as he was asked, and when he arrived at the home of the sister, he heard Robbins—in the trunk of his car—yelling, “Let me out,” and “I didn't take it!”

In the meantime, McKibbins told Green to obtain some plastic from Douglas Hunnicutt, and Green left Riverdale to do so. Late that evening, McKibbins called Green and directed him to report to the home of McKibbins's sister, explaining to Green that Robbins was making too much noise. After Green arrived, McKibbins retrieved plastic from Green's car, took Robbins out of the trunk of Sims's car, and led Robbins into the basement of the home. McKibbins also asked Green to go pick up “something” from Richard Otey. Soon thereafter, Green met up with Otey, and Otey handed over a chainsaw.⁶ Green returned to the home of McKibbins's sister, where McKibbins took the chainsaw from him and returned to the basement of the home.

The next day, McKibbins again summoned Green to his sister's home. When Green arrived, he saw Earnest Lambert, Raymond Lambert, and John Walker putting plastic bags—which contained Robbins's dismembered body—into a garbage container. Green also saw the chainsaw in the basement, and he observed blood on the basement walls and floor. McKibbins instructed the men to clean and remove all the furniture from the basement. The men moved the furniture into a rental truck, which McKibbins provided. The men later disposed of the furniture, changed clothes, and burned their clothes, all at McKibbins's direction. Green, Bailey, and Walker then loaded the garbage container—with Robbins's dismembered body—into the rental truck, drove to Conyers, and left the garbage container in the backyard of a house that was owned by Green's ex-girlfriend. After returning the rental truck, they went back to Conyers, where they met with McKibbins early the next morning. McKibbins and Green emptied the garbage container, put the body parts into duffel bags and backpacks,⁷ put the duffel bags and backpacks into a freezer, and loaded the freezer onto a second rental truck. McKibbins told Green, Walker, and Bailey to bury the body parts in another location, and they did so.⁸

McKibbins contends on appeal that the evidence is insufficient to sustain his convictions because the only evidence, he says, implicating him in the abduction and killing of Robbins was the uncorroborated testimony of Green, an accomplice. As we have explained before,

[i]n Georgia, a felony conviction cannot be sustained solely by the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice. That said, sufficient corroborating evidence may be circumstantial, it may be slight, and it need not of itself be sufficient to warrant a conviction of the crime charged. It must, however, be independent of the accomplice testimony and must directly connect the defendant with the crime, or lead to the inference that he is guilty. Slight evidence from an extraneous source identifying the accused as a participant in the criminal act is sufficient corroboration of the accomplice to support a verdict.

Threatt v. State, 293 Ga. 549(1), 748 S.E.2d 400, 2013 WL 4779209 (Case No. S13A1002, decided Sep. 9, 2013) (citations and punctuation omitted). See also former OCGA § 24–4–8 (in “felony cases where the only witness is an accomplice, the testimony of a single witness is not sufficient” and must be supported by the testimony of another witness or by “corroborating circumstances”).⁹ Assuming that Green was an accomplice in the abduction and killing of Robbins, we conclude that his testimony was adequately corroborated. Among other corroboration, Robbins's brother testified about McKibbins believing that Robbins had stolen his cocaine; Hunnicutt and another witness testified about the initial encounter between McKibbins and Robbins on November 18; the neighbors of the Wadley Street house—one of whom identified McKibbins specifically—testified about a man being dragged into an SUV; there was evidence that Robbins's blood was found in the street near the house on Wadley Street; the owner of the Riverdale house testified about what happened there; Sims testified about Robbins being in the trunk of his car and being taken to the home of McKibbins's sister; the sister testified about McKibbins and the other men arriving at her home; the sister's daughter testified about a rental truck parked in the driveway of the sister's home and about the condition of the basement after the men left; there was evidence that Robbins's blood was found in the basement of the sister's home; the owner of the Conyers house testified about McKibbins and the other men bringing a garbage container to her home and obtaining a freezer from her; Sims testified about driving McKibbins to a park to bury Robbins's head; a mechanic testified about McKibbins's direction to salvage parts from the SUV; and there were letters written by McKibbins, in which he attempted to influence certain witnesses. The testimony given by Green at trial was sufficiently corroborated to sustain the convictions.

McKibbins also argues that the evidence against him was entirely circumstantial, but it failed, he says, to exclude every hypothesis other than his guilt. “To warrant a conviction on circumstantial evidence, the proved facts shall not only be consistent with the hypothesis of guilt, but shall exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused.” Former OCGA § 24–4–6.¹⁰ But circumstantial evidence need not exclude an unreasonable hypothesis, Smith v. State, 257 Ga. 381, 382, 359 S.E.2d 662 (1987), and as we have explained before, whether a hypothesis is a reasonable one is usually a matter for the jury. Blevins v. State, 291 Ga. 814, 816, 733 S.E.2d 744 (2012). McKibbins contends that the evidence does not exclude the hypothesis that Robbins was killed by the other men who had been with him, but the jury was not required to accept that hypothesis as a reasonable one. Moreover, the jury properly might have inferred that whatever the other men did to Robbins, they did at the direction of McKibbins. See Brown v. State, 291 Ga. 887, 888(1), 734 S.E.2d 41 (2012) (“[Although] mere presence at the scene and approval of a crime not amounting to encouragement is insufficient to authorize a conviction as a party to a crime ... criminal intent may be inferred from conduct before, during, and after the commission of the crime.” (Citation and punctuation omitted)). In all, the evidence was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that McKibbins was guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319...