Peacock v. State
| Decision Date | 07 September 2022 |
| Docket Number | S22A0578 |
| Parties | PEACOCK v. THE STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Jeffrey Peacock was convicted of five counts of malice murder and other crimes related to the shooting deaths of Jonathan Edwards, Jr., Alecia Norman, Reid Williams, Jones Pidcock and Jordan Croft; the burning of their home; and the killing of three dogs. On appeal, he contends that (1) the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to sustain his convictions for malice murder and the associated possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony; (2) the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence found during the search of his truck; (3) his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to seek to suppress his statements to a GBI agent who allegedly provided him a hope of benefit in violation of OCGA § 24-8-824; and (4) his cruelty-to-animals convictions and sentences should have been for misdemeanors rather than felonies based on the rule of lenity.[1]
We affirm. First, the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to support Peacock's convictions under OCGA § 24-14-6 and as a matter of constitutional due process. Second, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying Peacock's motion to suppress evidence obtained from his truck under a search warrant for the home because the truck was parked in the home's curtilage. Third Peacock's trial counsel did not provide ineffective assistance by choosing not to raise a meritless hope-of-benefit argument. And finally, the rule of lenity does not apply in this case because aggravated cruelty to animals and cruelty to animals do not address the same criminal conduct.
1. (a) Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial showed the following. At 8:33 a.m. on May 15, 2016, Peacock called 911 and reported that his friends' house was "fully engulfed" in flames and his friends were inside.[2]Peacock explained that he had left the house about 30 minutes earlier to get breakfast for everyone, and when he returned, the house was on fire.
After firefighters extinguished the fire, which had destroyed most of the house, they found the burned bodies of all five victims inside. Each of them had been killed by a gunshot to the head: Norman was shot twice, Croft was shot at least once (his head was too damaged by the fire to determine if he had been shot again), and the other three victims were shot once. The medical examiner testified that each victim would have died within minutes of being shot, and they were all dead before the fire began. Bullets found in the bodies of Edwards, Norman, and Pidcock were fired from Edwards's gun, which was found in his bedroom after the fire. The bodies of two dogs, which had died from smoke inhalation and severe burns, were also found in the house. These dogs belonged to Edwards and Norman and usually stayed inside. Edwards and Norman also had a skittish dog that tended to stay outside. The body of that dog was found under Edwards's truck behind the house. The dog had some burns around its mouth and soot in its airway, but the dog had been killed by its skull being crushed, not by the fire.
(b) After calling 911, Peacock stayed near the house, and Colquitt County Sheriff's Office Investigator Mike Murfin questioned him about his connection to the victims. Peacock told the investigator that he used to live at the house; that he was often at the house, including the night before, when he and the five victims had been drinking and smoking marijuana together; that he went to sleep around midnight and woke up around 7:30 a.m.; that everyone was gathered in Edwards's room watching a show on Netflix when he left to get everyone breakfast at a Hardee's restaurant and to pick up cigarettes at a convenience store; and that the house was on fire when he returned.
Peacock consented to an officer searching his pickup truck, which he had driven to the house, for the purpose of looking for the Hardee's bag and cigarettes. Investigator Murfin's brief search corroborated that Peacock had Hardee's biscuits and a new pack of cigarettes. A surveillance video recording showed that Peacock had ordered the biscuits at the Hardee's around 8:15 a.m. Surveillance video recordings from the convenience store, however, showed that Peacock did not visit the store that morning, and Netflix records showed no activity that morning on the account that Edwards used. The Hardee's surveillance video also showed that Peacock was wearing a green shirt with white writing when he stopped at the restaurant; he was wearing a blue-gray sleeveless shirt when he spoke to Investigator Murfin. When officers conducted a second, more thorough search of Peacock's truck under a search warrant, they found a green shirt with white writing and khaki shorts stuffed behind a speaker at the back of the truck. The shirt and shorts were blood-stained, and DNA analysis revealed that blood on the shirt belonged to Croft and blood on the shorts belonged to Norman, Pidcock, and a non-human source. Another blood stain on the shirt had DNA from at least three people, but the profile was too complex to identify them.
(c) Three days after the fire, Peacock was interviewed for about seven hours by GBI Special Agent Jason Seacrist. Peacock initially told the agent that he, the five victims, and Mika Snipes spent time together at the house on the night before the fire, drinking and talking; Peacock took Snipes home around 12:00 a.m.; and shortly after he returned, everyone went to sleep.[3] Peacock then repeated the story he had told Investigator Murfin about everyone watching Netflix while he drove to get breakfast and cigarettes. After almost four hours, during which Peacock stuck to this story, he was arrested for the murders.
Shortly after his arrest, Peacock changed his story and gave the following account. When he returned from dropping off Snipes, the front door of the house was locked, and when he went around to the back of the house, he found Croft in the kitchen. He assumed everyone else was asleep. He and Croft stayed in the kitchen, drinking and then doing some cocaine that Croft had.[4] Peacock began to feel strange from the cocaine and went into the hallway, where he found Pidcock's body. He then found the bodies of Williams, Edwards, and Norman lying face down in their bedrooms.[5]Peacock confronted Croft, who offered no explanation for the shootings, and they began to fight.[6] When Croft pulled a gun from his pants, Peacock grabbed it and shot Croft twice in the head. After drinking and smoking marijuana for a couple hours, Peacock decided to set the house on fire "to cover it up." He knew that Edwards and Norman had three dogs, and he had seen the two dogs that usually stayed inside on the porch before he took Snipes home. He did not see any of the dogs when he set the fire, but he left the home's front door open.
(d) Peacock also told Agent Seacrist that he used to live in the house, but after his girlfriend died, he began to use a drug called spice, which was against the house rules. Edwards spoke to Peacock's father and they agreed that Peacock should move in with his father. Snipes corroborated Peacock's story that he had been kicked out of the house because of drug use; she also acknowledged that other people in the group would still use drugs sometimes, including smoking marijuana and using cocaine on the night of May 13, two days before the fire. She further testified that when Peacock was kicked out of the house, she, Pidcock, and Croft were also told they could not come to the house, but everyone had eventually been allowed back. Peacock started coming around the house again a few weeks before the fire. Everyone appeared friendly, but shortly after Peacock rejoined the group, Norman told Snipes and Edwards that she did not feel "safe" with Peacock at the house.
Another person who spent time with the group, Ben Littleton, testified that Peacock had been kicked out of the house because of "issues with drugs or drinking," but he acknowledged that Peacock was not the only one using drugs. Littleton also testified that when he and the five victims were together on May 13, Edwards said that he wanted to vote about whether to "kick [Peacock] out and not hang out with him anymore," and everyone voted to "kick [Peacock] out" of the group because of "the things" he was doing, including "some other types of drugs." Littleton did not know if anyone had told Peacock about the vote.
2. Peacock contends that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support his convictions for murder and the associated firearm possession count under OCGA § 24-14-6 and as a matter of constitutional due process, see Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560) (1979).[7]
(a) The evidence presented to show that Peacock committed some of the charged crimes, including four of the murders, was circumstantial. Under OCGA § 24-14-6, "[t]o 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." Whether a hypothesis raised by the defendant is reasonable is a question committed principally to the factfinder. See Smith v. State, 307 Ga. 680, 684 (838 S.E.2d 321) (2020). Having "heard the witnesses and observed them testify," the factfinder is in a better position than a reviewing court to determine the reasonableness of the hypothesis produced by the evidence or lack thereof. Porter v. State, 358 Ga.App. 442, 443 (...
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