Price v. State
| Decision Date | 08 March 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. S98A1535.,S98A1535. |
| Parties | PRICE v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Patricia Fontaine Angeli, Jonesboro, for Linda Joyce Price.
Robert E. Keller, Dist. Atty., Erman J. Tanjuatco, Asst. Dist. Atty., Jonesboro Thurbert E. Baker, Atty. Gen., Frank Anthony Ilardi, Asst. Atty. Gen., Department of Law, Atlanta, for the State.
The appellant, Linda Joyce Price, was convicted of malice murder stemming from the stabbing of her seventeen-year-old nephew, Antowon Jackson, and of possession of a knife during the commission of a felony.1 On appeal, Price contends that the trial court erred in denying a motion to suppress evidence that police obtained as a result of her arrest and their entry into her apartment, and that the trial court erred in refusing to give her requested charge on voluntary manslaughter. We conclude, however, that these contentions are without merit, and we therefore affirm.
Price and Jackson came to Atlanta in the summer of 1996 to find work associated with the Olympics, and they both found work at the International Horse Park in Conyers. They resided with Ms. Price's son in an apartment complex in College Park, Georgia. On the morning of July 22, 1996, while driving himself and Price to work in Price's car, Jackson took the wrong highway exit, causing them to be late for work. Price became very angry, and witnesses for the State testified that they saw Price yelling and cursing at Jackson when they arrived at the venue. One worker testified that Price was complaining to her about Jackson causing her to be late when Jackson asked her not to talk about it at work. According to the witness, Price told Jackson to "shut [his] ass up," and Jackson walked away. This same witness testified that Price was extremely mad, and stated that The witness added that Price stated that According to the witness, Price added that she was not going to take Jackson home from work that day.
After leaving work without Jackson, Price went to the home of her sister, Edna Armour. From there, she called another sister, Mildred Buford, to tell her she was angry at Jackson and to expect Jackson to call her for a ride because Price had left him at work. There was also evidence that Price arrived home about 8:00 p.m., and that at approximately 8:10 p.m., Jackson attempted to call his mother in Birmingham, Alabama. When she did not answer, Jackson called his aunt, Veronica Parker, and told her, in an excited or scared tone of voice, to "find [his] mama." Parker stated that she could hear Price in the background and that her voice was loud. Parker added that the last thing Jackson said before the phone went dead was, "Auntie Linda get your hands out of my face." During this time, Price again called Buford, and told her to "come get [Jackson]" because "he has a knife at me." Buford then left her home to drive to Price's and Jackson's apartment.
Shortly after these calls, police and paramedics responded to a "person-shot" call at the apartment complex where Price and Jackson were living. They found Jackson lying on the ground near the doorway to a ground floor apartment. Medical personnel determined that Jackson was dead, but, because they feared for their safety, they did not determine the cause of death. It was later determined that Jackson died of a stab wound to his chest, and abrasions were found on the backs of his hands. Shortly after police had secured the crime scene around Jackson's body, Buford arrived at the apartment complex. She saw a covered body on the ground but could not get close to it because of the police barricade. Buford told Clayton County Police Lt. Larry Gibson that her sister and nephew lived in Apartment 1334, a third floor apartment, and that her was sister was then in the apartment. Buford informed Lt. Gibson that she had spoken with her sister before coming to the apartment, that her sister and Jackson had had some type of disagreement, and that she thought there was a good possibility that the victim was Jackson. The police, however, would not allow Buford to positively identify the body because of safety concerns. Buford gave Lt. Gibson the phone number to the apartment. Several police officers approached Price's apartment, and saw a knife lying on the walkway outside the third floor apartment. Lt. Gibson called Price, and told her that he needed to talk to her about an incident. At that point, she made a reference to her nephew, and Lt. Gibson asked her to come outside with her hands over her head. Several officers testified that Price then stepped onto the front walkway from her apartment, and that an officer handcuffed her. Officer Stephen Maddox immediately entered the apartment and conducted a sweep to determine, according to his testimony, if there was any other victim or suspect inside. He found no one and went back out on the front walkway of the apartment. During the sweep, Maddox saw a knife on the kitchen floor, but did not seize it. After Maddox exited the apartment, one of the officers read Price her Miranda rights. Price then requested that she be questioned inside the apartment because she was embarrassed standing outside. While being questioned inside the apartment, Price informed Lt. Gibson that she had been cut, and an officer seized the knife on the kitchen floor.
The knife, as well as the counter and floor of the kitchen, had blood stains on it. The shirt Price was wearing also had blood on it, and Price had a small superficial cut on one of her fingers. A serologist testified that the blood found on Price's shirt and on the knife found on the kitchen floor was consistent with that of Jackson.
1. Having reviewed the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, we conclude that a rational trier of fact could have found Price guilty of malice murder and of possession of a knife during the commission of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.2
2. In her first enumeration of error, Price contends that the trial court erred in denying her motion to suppress evidence of the knife found on the kitchen floor and of the blood found on her shirt. For the reasons that follow, we disagree.
Moreover, ` 4 And, in reviewing a trial judge's probable cause decision, an appellate court will "construe the evidence most favorably to uphold the ruling of the trial court and in the absence of evidence demanding a finding contrary to the judge's determination, we will not disturb the ruling."5
In the present case, when the officers arrested Price, they knew that Price and her nephew had just been together; that Price was angry at her nephew; that Price's telephone call to her sister had alarmed her sister enough that she immediately drove to the apartment; that the body they had discovered was located close to Price's apartment and was probably her nephew; that there was a knife located just outside her apartment door; and that when Lt. Gibson called her and told her that he needed to speak with her about an incident, she made a reference to her nephew. We conclude that this information provided probable cause to take Price into custody.6 Because Price's shirt was subsequently seized from her at the jail as a result of her arrest, and because we have concluded that the arrest was lawful, the trial court did not err in denying Price's motion to suppress evidence of the blood found on her shirt.
The question of the propriety of the seizure of the knife found on the kitchen floor remains. We conclude, however, that because the police knew that a third person, Price's brother, lived at the apartment, and because the police did not know whether he was in the apartment, whether he was involved in the murder, and whether the murder weapon was a knife or a gun, the protective sweep of the apartment conducted by Officer Maddox was constitutional.7 Furthermore, as the evidence authorized the trial court to find that Price invited the officers into her apartment once she was handcuffed and that the officers then saw the knife in plain view, the seizure of the knife was permissible.8
Finally, even if we assume that the protective sweep conducted by Officer Maddox was unreasonable, we would nevertheless conclude that the officers' entry into the apartment with Price's consent constituted an independent source for discovering the evidence. In Murray v. United States,9 several law enforcement agents conducted an illegal search and observed but did not seize evidence that was in plain view. About eight hours after the initial illegal entry, the agents obtained a warrant to search the warehouse where the evidence was located, and in obtaining the warrant, the agents "did not mention the prior entry and did not rely on any observations made during that prior entry."10 Pursuant to the warrant, the agents seized the evidence they had observed earlier. The Supreme Court ruled that the evidence discovered pursuant to the search warrant would not have to be suppressed if the government...
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