Palmer v. State

• Docket Number: S23A1091
• Decision Date: 05 March 2024
• Citation: 899 S.E.2d 192
• Parties: PALMER v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

899 S.E.2d 192

PALMER

v.The STATE.

S23A1091

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: March 5, 2024

Josh David Moore, Thea Adele Delage, Office of the Georgia Capital Defended, 104 Marietta St. NW, Suite 900, Atlanta Georgia 30303, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Stephany Julissa Luttrell, Assistant Attorney General, Clint Christopher Malcolm, Assistant Attorney General, Meghan Hobbs Hill, Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square,, S.W., Atlanta Georgia 30334-1300, Joshua Bradley Smith, A.D.A., John M. Kraft, A.D.A., Jared Tolton Williams, District Attorney, Augusta Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, 735 James Brown Boulevard, Suite 2400, Augusta Georgia 30901, for Appellee.

Boggs, Chief Justice.

AppellantWillie Williams Palmer challenges his 2023 convictions for malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting deaths of his estranged wife, Brenda Jenkins Palmer, and his 15-year-old stepdaughter, Christine Jenkins.He contends that his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial was violated; that the State’s loss or destruction of potential biological evidence from the crime scene required dismissal for prosecutorial misconduct or an instruction allowing the jury to draw an inference adverse to the State; that the trial court violated his constitutional right to, present a defense by excluding evidence of "historical bias against him on the part of local law enforcement and prosecutors"; that the court erred in prohibiting him from questioning the lead GBI investigator about a shooting two months after the murders to support his theory of an alternative suspect and his argument that the investigators unfairly focused on him as the shooter to the exclusion of other possible suspects; and that the cumulative effect of the court’s errors deprived him of a fundamentally fair trial.For the reasons that follow, we affirm.¹

1.The evidence at Appellant’s fourth trial showed as follows.Appellant married Brenda Jenkins Palmer in May 1993, and they had a daughter, Willshala, in 1994.In May 1995, Brenda Palmer separated from Appellant

and filed for divorce, and the following day, Appellant was served with a restraining order to stay away from her.Meanwhile, Brenda Palmer stayed with family" and at some point moved with her daughters, 15-year-old Christine and one-year-old Willshala, into a two-room house in Vidette.Appellant owned five acres of land and told numerous people that he would kill Brenda Palmer if she tried to take it from him.

On July 31, 1995, Appellant was arrested for violating the restraining order and put in jail.At the end of August 1995, Brenda Palmer met with the manager of a small loan company to catch up on her payments and update her address.She was very nervous and upset during the meeting, and the manager promised not to give out her address to anyone.

On September 1, 1995, Appellant was released from jail, and he immediately went to the same small loan company to borrow money to pay a lawyer.He asked the manager if she had seen Brenda Palmer, and the manager did not reply.He then asked the manager if she knew where Brenda Palmer was living, and again the manager did not reply.Appellant told the manager twice that she did not have to tell him where Brenda Palmer was, because "I will find her.And, when I do, I’ll kill that b**ch."Appellant’s demeanor was "cold" and "hard," and he looked different than the manager had ever seen him before.

Appellant also was angry with Brenda Smith.Appellant and Brenda Smith had been in a relationship for 12 to 14 years before Appellant married Brenda Palmer, and Appellant and Brenda Smith had three children together.When Brenda Palmer moved out and filed for divorce, Brenda Smith moved back in with Appellant.On September 7, 1995, Appellant told Emma Ruth Brown that he was going to "kill all the Brendas," that he was going to do it "execution style," and that she would "see it on TV."

On the afternoon of Sunday, September 10, 1995, Brenda Smith’s niece, Letrichia Smith, overheard Appellant ask his nephew, Frederico Palmer, and his son, Wilbur Palmer, where his gun was.Appellant said that he was "going to kill … the two Brendas."Appellant then went and spoke with Brenda Smith, who seemed airaid afterward.Not long after that, Appellant got into his car and chased Brenda Smith, who was a passenger in her sister’s car, and Appellant ran into the back of the car.Brenda Smith fled her sister’s car on foot, and Appellant angrily approached her sister and told her that she"didn’t know who the f**k [she] was messing with."

That night, Appellant met up with Frederico at a club in Gough called Soul City and asked Frederico to ride with him to Augusta.Frederico agreed and got into Appellant’s blue Chevy Caprice, but Appellant drove towards Vidette instead of Augusta.Appellant asked Frederico, "Do you think I should kill Brenda and Christine?"Frederico did not answer.

When they got to Vidette, Appellant parked his car on the side of the road near the Vidette Country Store, which was close to Brenda Palmer’s house.Appellant put on gloves, pulled out his 22-caliber rifle, and exited the car.At Appellant’s direction, Frederico parked the car near some dumpsters and caught up to Appellant on foot outside Brenda Palmer’s house.At Appellant’s request, Frederico disconnected the telephone line on the side of the house, making the telephone inside the house inoperable.

Appellant then went to the front door, knocked twice, and when there was no answer, he kicked in the door and turned on the light.Christine, whose nickname was "Bootie," was sleeping on a bed in the living room, and Appellant called out, "Bootie, I told y’all I was coming back,"Appellant shot Christine once in the face with the rifle, killing her.Appellant then went into the back room, where the telephone receiver was off the hook and Brenda Palmer was holding Willshala.Appellant directed Frederico to take the baby, and Frederico complied, knocking Brenda Palmer to the floor.Frederico took the baby outside, and Appellant shot Brenda Palmer twice in the head, killing her.Frederico came back inside and, at Appellant’s direction, put the baby down and checked to see if Brenda Palmer had a pulse; she did not.Appellant and Frederico turned out the light and left, leaving Willshala in the house.

Frederico went and got the car and picked up Appellant, Appellant concocted an alibi, telling Frederico to say that they had driven straight from Gough to Augusta, where they spent the evening visiting Belle Walker.Appellant and Frederico drove to Appellant’s house, where Appellant changed clothes, before driving on towards Augusta.Along the way, they stopped at Brushy Creek Bridge, where Appellant got out and threw his rifle and the gloves and shoes that he was wearing at the time of the murders over the side of the bridge.Later, they stopped at a gas station for cigarettes before going to Walker’s apartment, where they knocked on the door, but no one answered.Appellant and Frederico then drove back to Gough.That night, Frederico told Kelvin Jenkins what had happened and said that he was scared that Appellant was going to kill him.

At around 7:00 a.m. on Monday, September 11, 1995, Brenda Palmer’s sister, Jellen Jenkins, discovered the bodies of her sister and Christine and took Willshala out of the house.Within an hour or so, GBI Special Agent David Leonard began processing the crime scene.He noticed a small amount of a milky white liquid between Christine’s legs, but by the time he went to collect it, the substance had dissipated.Agent Leonard wiped the skin in the area with two sterile gauze pads, one dry and one moistened with a saline solution, in an attempt to collect any remnants of the liquid for testing for the presence of seminal fluid.The gauze pads later tested negative for seminal fluid.

At noon on the day the bodies were discovered, the lead GBI investigator, Special Agent Anthony Williamson, interviewed Appellant at the Burke County Sheriff’s Office.Appellant said that the night before, he met up with Frederico a little after 9:00 p.m.According to Appellant, Frederico then rode with him to Augusta in Appellant’s blue Chevy Caprice to see a woman, who was not home, so they drove back to Gough, arriving around 12:55 a.m.At 3:30 p.m. on September 11, 1995, Agent Williamson interviewed Frederico, who related essentially the same story as Appellant about riding to Augusta the prior evening.

On September 13, 1995, Agent Williamson interviewed Frederico again.Frederico confessed his involvement with Appellant in the murders and then led law enforcement officers to Brushy Creek Bridge, where they recovered a rifle from the creek below.Two days later, Frederico told Agent Williamson that Appellant threw the gloves and shoes that he was wearing at the time of the murders over the side of the bridge along with the rifle, and the gloves and shoes were then recovered.The shoes from the creek matched Appellant’s shoe size.

Ballistics testing showed that two shell casings found at the crime scene were fired from the rifle recovered from the creek and that the bullet removed from Christine’s skull during an autopsy, half of which was missing, "was probably fired from that gun."The same rifle had been temporarily confiscated from Appellant during a traffic stop in 1992.

Randy Waltower, a paid confidential informant for the GBI in drug operations, identified Appellant’s car as having been in the area near Brenda Palmer’s house on the night of the murders.Appellant’s car was easily recognizable, because it was missing part of its front grille.Thomas Parrish was with Waltower and also saw Appellant’s car.Pamela Parker, who worked at the Vidette Country Store, confirmed that Waltower and Parrish were in the area that night.Frederico saw Waltower as well.The GBI later paid...