Nelson v. State
| Decision Date | 19 February 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. S92A1355,S92A1355 |
| Citation | 262 Ga. 763,426 S.E.2d 357 |
| Parties | NELSON v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Stanley Smith, Nelson, Gillis & Smith, PC, Dublin, for Mike Nelson.
Ralph Walke, Dist. Atty., Dublin, Michael J. Bowers, Atty. Gen., C.A. Benjamin Woolf, Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, for the State.
The appellant was found guilty in Laurens County Superior Court of the malice murder of his wife, Patsy Mimbs Nelson, and theft by taking of the automobile the victim had been driving when she disappeared. The appellant received consecutive sentences of life imprisonment for murder and twenty years for theft by taking. 1 The appellant sets forth twenty enumerations of error on this appeal. We affirm.
1. In his first and thirteenth enumerations of error, the appellant contends that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to prove that he killed the victim. The evidence authorized the jury to find the following facts. On February 16, 1989, the appellant severely beat his wife. The next day, the victim told co-workers that the appellant had beaten her while they were at a pond near their Laurens County home, and that she was afraid the appellant was going to kill her. That same day, the victim and her children moved out of the appellant's house, and into the home of the victim's friend, Carrie Pullen. The appellant refused to allow Pullen's husband to retrieve clothes and toys belonging to the victim and her children from the appellant's house. On February 24, 1989, the victim went to the appellant's house to pick up her and the children's belongings, having been told by the appellant that he would not be there and the door would be unlocked. She drove to the appellant's house in a car she had rented after leaving the appellant. The victim was never seen alive again. When the victim had not returned to Pullen's home by February 27, 1989, Pullen and the victim's ex-husband, Henry Mimbs, reported to authorities that the victim had been missing since February 24, 1989.
The appellant admits that on February 24, 1989, he drove the car which the victim had rented to the home of a friend, Jimmy Willis, and that he and Willis hid the car in a wooded area in nearby Johnson County. On February 25, 1989, the appellant borrowed a shovel from a neighbor, ostensibly to repair a hole in his driveway. The appellant returned the shovel the same day, without having done any work on the driveway. On February 26, 1989, the appellant and Willis went to where they had hidden the rental car and moved it to a nearby ravine. The appellant contended at trial that a man named "Billy" paid him to steal the car and hide it for insurance purposes.
On May 3, 1989, the victim's badly decomposed nude body was found in a shallow grave near where the appellant had initially abandoned the rental car. The victim's body was wrapped in a blanket belonging to the appellant that he generally kept in the trunk of one of his cars, both of which were at the appellant's house on the afternoon of February 24, 1989. Jewelry which the victim was wearing on the day she disappeared was found in a metal box under the appellant's bed. The charred remains of the victim's shoes and items the victim had carried in her purse were found in a burned trash pile just outside the door to the appellant's house. When considered in the light most favorable to the verdict, we find that the evidence was sufficient to permit a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the appellant is guilty of the crimes charged. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).
2. In his first, ninth and fourteenth enumerations of error, the appellant contends that the evidence was insufficient to prove that venue was proper in Laurens County. OCGA § 17-2-2 provides, in part:
(c) Criminal homicide. Criminal homicide shall be considered as having been committed in the county in which the cause of death was inflicted. If it cannot be determined in which county the cause of death was inflicted, it shall be considered that it was inflicted in the county in which the death occurred. If a dead body is discovered in this state and it cannot be readily determined in what county the cause of death was inflicted, it shall be considered that the cause of death was inflicted in the county in which the dead body was discovered.
. . . . .
(h) Crime in more than one county. If in any case it cannot be determined in what county a crime was committed, it shall be considered to have been committed in any county in which the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that it might have been committed. (Emphasis supplied.)
In Felker v. State, 252 Ga. 351, 314 S.E.2d 621 (1984), a murder case, it could not be conclusively determined where the cause of death was inflicted or where the death occurred, and the body of the murder victim was found in a different county from that in which the case was tried. We held that because subsection (h) applies by its terms to "any case," use of subsection (h) to determine venue in a homicide case is not precluded. Id. at 367, 314 S.E.2d 621; see also Jackson v. State, 258 Ga. 810, 812, 375 S.E.2d 454 (1989). The evidence in this case is ample to allow the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder might have been committed in Laurens County, and, therefore, was sufficient to support the jury's finding that venue was appropriate in Laurens County.
3. The appellant alleges several errors regarding the admissibility of evidence. In his fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth enumerations, the appellant contends that certain evidence admitted at trial was inadmissible hearsay. With respect to the testimony of the investigating officer, "it was error to permit the ... officer to testify, under the guise of explaining his conduct," Howard v. State, 262 Ga. 78, 80, 414 S.E.2d 198 (1992), to statements made to him by Pullen and Mimbs during the course of his investigation. See Teague v. State, 252 Ga. 534, 314 S.E.2d 910 (1984). The error was harmless, however, because both Pullen and Mimbs testified during the course of the trial and their testimony was in accord with that of the officer. Howard, 262 Ga. at 80, 414 S.E.2d 198.
The appellant argues generally that testimony by Henry Mimbs and by Lawona Joiner, the victim's employer, about...
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