Perkins v. State
| Decision Date | 17 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | S22A0158 |
| Citation | 313 Ga. 885,873 S.E.2d 185 |
| Parties | PERKINS v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Matthew Kyle Winchester, Law Offices of Matthew K. Winchester, 1800 Peachtree Street, NW, Suite 300, Atlanta, Georgia 30309, for Appellant.
Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Parisia Faith Sarfarazi, Assistant Attorney General Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Elizabeth Rosenwasser, A.D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Kevin Christopher Armstrong, Senior A.D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30306, for Appellee.
Andreas Perkins was tried and convicted by a Fulton County jury of malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of Randy Menefee.1 Perkins raises four claims of error on appeal: (1) the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support his convictions for burglary and two counts of aggravated assault; (2) the trial court erred by denying Perkins's motion for mistrial after a witness improperly made a reference to gangs; (3) the trial court abused its discretion when it admitted five photographs that allegedly implied that Perkins was involved in gang activity; and (4) Perkins's trial lawyer was constitutionally ineffective when he failed to request certain jury instructions. Seeing no reversible error, we affirm.
1. The evidence presented at trial showed the following. Menefee and Chekella Glover were dating. Menefee lived with Glover at her apartment in the Allen Temple Court apartment complex, but he only slept there overnight "sometimes."2 On the evening of January 26, 2014, Menefee was sleeping in Glover's apartment while Glover and J.R., Menefee's daughter, were sitting on the sofa watching television. Menefee's other daughter, A.R., was in an apartment below, having her hair braided. At one point, Glover said that she thought that A.R. was "coming up because her hair was almost ... finished," and J.R. heard "three light knocks" on the door. When Glover opened the door, however, four armed men wearing masks came in, with one of the men putting a gun in her face and backing her into the apartment as the group demanded money.
According to J.R., who was 11 years old at the time of the crimes and later testified at trial, the four men were wearing "all black," "had masks on," and carried guns, and one of the men had dreadlocks that stretched "[a]lmost down the back." One of the men pointed a gun in J.R.’s face and demanded to know "where the money at." As Menefee woke up, Glover called out to him and told him to "[j]ust give them the money." Menefee agreed, and Glover After the men "took the money, they shot [Menefee] in the chest and in the shoulder and while he fell, he grabbed a pillow ... and he got flipped over somehow." The men then left the apartment, and J.R. heard "a lot of gunshots as they were going out the door."
Glover's description of the crimes was similar to J.R.’s. She testified that she heard a knock at the door and thought it was A.R.—but when she opened the door, four armed men came in "demanding money." One of the men wore Timberland boots. Glover was afraid for her life because a gun was "in [her] face." At that point, Menefee woke up and told Glover to "give them the money out [of] the drawer," so Glover took cash from the drawer in the kitchen and gave it to the men. The men then started "going out the door and as they went out the door, they started shooting." And "[w]hen they went out the door, the last person turned around like slanted as he was going out the door and started shooting inside the apartment and that's when—when the door closed, they was still shooting in the hallway." Glover further testified that Menefee made money by selling drugs, that he sold the drugs from the apartment, and that he typically kept $3,000 to $4,000 on his person. In the kitchen was a "glass pot that [Menefee] used to cook [ ] cocaine."
After the men left, J.R. went downstairs to find her sister. When J.R. came back upstairs, she saw two unmasked men inside Glover's apartment who appeared to be the "guys [who] were in the [apartment] shooting" minutes earlier. J.R. said they "looked kind of familiar" because of "[t]he dreads, the hat that was in there, the skull hat that they came back with, the dark-skinned dude came back with, the black one, that looked familiar."3 Glover recognized the two men as Perkins and Jamal Chandler, with whom she was acquainted. In that regard, Glover testified that, several minutes after the masked men left her apartment, she opened the door "outside to get help" and saw Perkins and Chandler on her "porch" or "patio," with Perkins wearing Timberland boots. Glover thought it was "odd" for them to be there because there "was always shooting in the apartments so how they know that the shooting came from my apartment?" Perkins and Chandler came inside and told Glover to "get the kids out" and "[g]et the stuff out" and that they were "going to see about [Menefee]."
According to J.R., both men had guns and one of the men had an "AK" or a "big gun" with a "strap around the shoulder." The men were "just walking around trying to get stuff out the house," and they took Menefee's "[g]uns and money out of [a] drawer." The men also asked repeatedly, "What happened to [Menefee]," and they asked J.R. "where [Menefee's] personal stuff was, his gun and the weed and stuff." When J.R. responded that she did not know, the men told her to "go back downstairs," and she did. During that time, Menefee was lying on the floor, "coughing up blood" and "trying to say something."
A.R. testified that, when she came upstairs to Glover's apartment after the shooting, she saw Menefee "on the floor with a pillow over his chest," "trying to breathe." She also saw two men A.R. testified that the two men were not trying to help Menefee and that they told her and J.R. to leave the room. One of the men had "pretty long" dreadlocks, "like probably back like past his shoulders."
Menefee died by the time the police arrived on the scene. An autopsy revealed that he suffered a gunshot wound to his arm and a fatal gunshot wound to his chest. A bullet was recovered from Menefee's body that a firearms examiner with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation later testified was consistent with having been fired from a revolver. Police officers found numerous shell casings and bullets inside the apartment that had been fired from at least three different firearms. At trial, a firearm and ballistics expert testified that none of the shell casings were consistent "with an assault-style rifle such as an AK."
Menefee's sister, Twanesa Broughton, was alerted to the shooting shortly after it happened and drove to the scene. On arrival, she saw "a lot of people out, police, ambulance." Broughton testified that Chandler came up to her and "started telling [her] how he held [Menefee] and watched him take his last breath." Broughton did not observe any blood on Chandler, but noted that he "had on all black that night." Broughton saw Perkins, Demario Franklin, and another co-defendant at Menefee's funeral, which occurred a week after the shooting.
Taliah Knox, who was acquainted with Perkins and the other co-defendants, as well as with Menefee, testified that earlier on the day of the crimes, she overheard Perkins, Chandler, Franklin, and at least one other man talking "about a possible robbery that was supposed to go on." Knox testified: "I can't recall everything but it was like it needs to happen and then from there it was, like, how it was going to be planned out or whatever." Later that night, Knox was conducting a "marijuana transaction" near the side of the building where Glover lived when she "heard gunshots" and "noises and stuff and ... a conversation where it was, like, well, is he dead or you think he dead or whatever." She then saw Asked what the men were wearing, Knox testified that she saw "Timberland boots, a pair of Air Max [shoes], pants, dark colored pants." She also saw the men take off their "ski masks," revealing them to be "Franklin, Jamal [Chandler], Andreas [Perkins], and the other guy with the Air Max." She saw the men carrying "a 9-millimeter" and a "big gun," which she also described as an "assault rifle."
Knox heard Chandler "cussing" and saying, in reference to Menefee, "f**k that n***a." Knox also heard "all" of the men discussing that Later, during an interview with Detective Summer Benton, Knox identified Perkins and the other three co-defendants in a photographic lineup.4
At trial, Detective Benton testified about other evidence that implicated Perkins and his co-defendants in Menefee's death. Among other things, Detective Benton had interviewed Rayonda Wynn, who had dated Chandler.5 Wynn was with Chandler and Perkins when they found out that Franklin had been arrested for Menefee's murder. Wynn told Detective Benton that Perkins and Chandler "were extremely upset that Mr. Franklin was going to snitch on them and their involvement in this case." Wynn also told Detective Benton that Chandler...
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