Noel v. State

• Decision Date: 14 September 2015
• Docket Number: No. S15A1170.,S15A1170.
• Parties: NOEL v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

297 Ga. 698

777 S.E.2d 449

NOEL

v.The STATE.

No. S15A1170.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Sept. 14, 2015.

Timothy Maurice Mays, Mays & Associates, LLC, Atlanta, for appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Atty. Gen., Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Meghan Hobbs Hill, Asst. Atty. Gen., Paula Khristian Smith, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Paul L. Howard Jr., Dist. Atty., Paige Reese Whitaker, Fani L. Willis, Joshua Daniel Morrison, David K. Getachew–Smith, Asst. Dist. Attys., for appellee.

Opinion

THOMPSON, Chief Justice.

Appellant Rodney Noel appeals from the denial of his motion for new trial which was filed after a jury found him guilty of charges of felony murder, aggravated assault, aggravated battery and cruelty to a child in connection with the death of Terrell Williams, his girlfriend's nine-month-old child. On appeal, appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence on numerous grounds and claims that the trial court erred by refusing to charge the jury on the affirmative defenses of accident and justification.¹ For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the judgments of conviction but remand the case for resentencing.

The evidence presented at trial authorized the jury to find that a few days before the crimes, appellant, Terrell, and Terrell's mother, Crystal Williams, drove to Atlanta from Chicago so that appellant could renew his prescriptions for pain medications prescribed for a back injury. Because they arrived late in Atlanta, appellant missed his Friday doctor's appointment and they checked into a hotel for the weekend. Terrell appeared healthy and alert and behaved normally during the trip to Atlanta and throughout the weekend.

On Monday morning, Williams played with Terrell in the hotel room while appellant went to his rescheduled doctor's appointment. Laverne Pickett, a hotel maid who saw Williams and Terrell that morning, testified that Terrell was alert and happy. When appellant returned from his appointment, Williams fed Terrell approximately six ounces of formula from a bottle and gave him ice cream, all of which he ate in a normal manner. Williams then left Terrell with appellant so that she could do laundry for the trip home. Shortly thereafter, Brenda Sanders, a hotel maid, heard Terrell crying out loudly. Pickett, who was cleaning the room next to appellant's, heard appellant scream at Terrell to “shut up,” then she heard a thump and Terrell quieted down. Pickett knocked on appellant's door to see if everything was alright, and appellant, who cracked open the door, told her everything was fine. Pickett looked around the door and saw Terrell in a car seat. A short time later, another witness saw appellant crouching over Terrell and screaming for help. That individual called 911 and relayed instructions to appellant so that he could perform CPR. When medical personnel arrived, Terrell was unresponsive and his eyes were fixed and dilated.

Terrell died several days later after being removed from life support. An autopsy revealed the cause of death was a combination of brain injuries

that resulted in swelling of the brain and hemorrhages of the lining and surface of the brain. The autopsy further revealed that Terrell had bruises consistent with being grabbed, held, or swung around by the thigh and he had hemorrhaging of the optic nerve and retinal hemorrhages, too many in number to count. Experts for both the State and the defense agreed that the blunt impact head injuries Terrell suffered were unlikely to have been caused by accident as there were multiple impacts caused by a substantial amount of force. The State's experts testified that the only type of force that could have caused the victim's injuries was a rapid, repetitive, and violent shaking coupled with impact and that such injuries could not have been caused by jostling, choking, the administration of CPR, or disease. They also testified that the injuries Terrell received would have rendered him unconscious and unable to eat almost immediately.

Appellant initially told police that he heard Terrell choking and found him unresponsive, so he shook him, ran cold water over him in the shower, placed him over the air conditioner, and tried to perform CPR. At the hospital, however, appellant denied shaking Terrell and explained that he had merely “jostled” the car seat with Terrell in it. Appellant testified at trial, where he consistently denied that he had shaken Terrell or engaged in any conduct causing his death.

1. In several enumerations of error, appellant claims the evidence was insufficient to convict him of the charged crimes, citing to conflicting witness testimony and expert evidence questioning the validity of “shaken baby syndrome.” It is, however, the role of the jury “to resolve conflicts in the evidence and to determine the credibility of the witnesses, and the resolution of such conflicts adversely to the defendant does not render the evidence insufficient.” Allen v. State, 288 Ga. 263, 264(1), 702 S.E.2d 869 (2010) (citation and punctuation omitted). Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, we find the evidence was sufficient to enable a rational jury to find appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of all the offenses for which he was convicted. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979) ; Walker v. State, 216 Ga. 474, 117 S.E.2d 156 (1960).

2. Although we conclude the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's verdicts, in reviewing the record we note an error in the trial court's sentence. The jury found appellant guilty of the three charges of felony murder as well as of the three underlying felonies of aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and cruelty to children. In imposing its sentence, the trial court merged the verdicts on the underlying offenses into their respective felony murder verdicts and sentenced appellant to a concurrent term of life in prison for each of the jury's felony murder verdicts. What the trial court and the parties failed to recognize, however, is that a defendant found guilty of the felony murder of the same victim through the commission of more than one felony may only be sentenced on one felony murder charge and the remaining felony murder charges stand vacated by operation of law. See Leeks v. State, 296 Ga. 515, 524(7), 769 S.E.2d 296 (2015) (second felony murder count vacated by operation of law because felony murder convictions involved the same victim); Malcolm v. State, 263 Ga. 369, 372(4), 434 S.E.2d 479 (1993). In addition, because in this case two of the jury's felony murder verdicts stood vacated by operation of law, there was nothing into which two of the separately charged non-murder counts could merge. See Hulett v. State, 296 Ga. 49, 53(2), 766 S.E.2d 1 (2014). See also Malcolm, supra, 263 Ga. at 373(5), 434 S.E.2d 479 (holding that once a felony murder count is vacated, underlying felony cannot merge into the felony murder count). These oversights resulted in appellant being sentenced improperly to three life terms in prison for the murder of one victim and...