Pyatt v. State

• Decision Date: 25 March 2016
• Docket Number: No. S15A1734.,S15A1734.
• Citation: 784 S.E.2d 759,298 Ga. 742
• Parties: PYATT v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

298 Ga. 742

784 S.E.2d 759

PYATT

v.The STATE.

No. S15A1734.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

March 25, 2016.

Bentley C. Adams III, Columbus, for appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Atty. Gen., Paula Khristian Smith, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Meghan Hobbs Hill, Asst. Atty. Gen., Robert Bradford Bickerstaff II, Asst. Dist. Atty., Julia Anne Fessenden Slater, Dist. Atty., for appellee.

BLACKWELL, Justice.

Tremaine Pyatt was tried by a Muscogee County jury and convicted of felony murder and two aggravated assaults, all in connection with a shooting in which Meredith "Tag" Rhodes was fatally wounded. Pyatt appeals, contending that the evidence is insufficient to sustain his convictions, that the trial court erred when it admitted certain evidence, that the trial judge made an improper comment in the presence of the jury, that the trial court erred when it charged the jury, that he was denied a trial before a fair and impartial judge, and that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel. We affirm.¹

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence shows that Rhodes and three friends—Marcus Jackson, Fitzgerald Nash, and Reginald Goodwin—decided on the evening of June 16, 2007 to visit some nightclubs in the Columbus area. At first, they drove to the VIP Lounge,² only to find that establishment already crowded. In the vicinity of the VIP Lounge, however, the men encountered Saletta Perry and Breana Broadnax, who asked for a ride. Rhodes agreed, and the two young women joined Rhodes in his car. Rhodes, his friends, and the two young women then proceeded to the Rogers Tap Room.

Rhodes parked his car in the front of the Rogers Tap Room. In the parking lot, Rhodes and his friends struck up a conversation with another group of women. Meanwhile, Perry and Broadnax waited near Rhodes's car. At some point, Pyatt and his friends emerged from the Rogers Tap Room. Pyatt and Perry previously had been in a romantic relationship, and when they came across one another in the parking lot, they began to argue. Rhodes got into his car to leave the Rogers Tap Room, and Perry and Broadnax joined him. As Rhodes drove out of the parking lot, Perry and Broadnax leaned out of the open windows of his car and continued the argument with Pyatt, shouting at him. Pyatt shouted back, and he fired a handgun in the direction of the car.³ One of Pyatt's friends recognized Rhodes and said that, if Rhodes returned, he would shoot Rhodes. In that case, Pyatt responded, "I'm shooting."

Rhodes, Perry, and Broadnax drove away, but Rhodes eventually turned his car around. Rhodes and the young women then returned to the Rogers Tap Room, and as they drove by the nightclub, several more gunshots were fired. These gunshots frightened Perry and Broadnax, and at that point, they exited the car. Now driving alone, Rhodes turned his car around again and drove past the nightclub once more. As he did, he spoke by phone with Jackson, who warned Rhodes that several people were "coming after [him]." Pyatt and several other men were standing along the street, and the group fired multiple shots at Rhodes as he passed by the nightclub for the last time. Rhodes was wounded, and he crashed his car into a parked vehicle. Jackson found Rhodes, pulled him from the car, and put him into Nash's vehicle. Nash, Jackson, and Goodwin then attempted to drive Rhodes to a hospital, but they wrecked along the way. Rhodes later died of a gunshot wound to his neck, which had left his spinal cord severed.

In the meantime, Pyatt and Joseph Taylor left the Rogers Tap Room for another nightclub. As they drove, Pyatt was speaking by phone with someone. In the course of his conversation, Pyatt asked: "[W]hy are you telling me? I wasn't the only one shooting."⁴ At the scene of the shooting, investigators later found cartridge casings ejected from at least three different handguns. One of those casings was consistent with the projectile that fatally wounded Rhodes.

Noting that no eyewitness could say who fired the shot that fatally wounded Rhodes, Pyatt claims that the evidence is insufficient to sustain his convictions. When we consider whether the evidence is legally sufficient, however, we must view it in the light most favorable to the verdict. See Bryant v. State, 296 Ga. 456, 457(1), 769 S.E.2d 57 (2015). So viewed, the evidence in this case shows that Pyatt was engaged in an angry dispute with Perry, who was accompanying Rhodes. As Rhodes, Perry, and Broadnax drove away from the Rogers Tap Room for the first time, Pyatt fired a shot in their direction. Pyatt then said that, if Rhodes returned, he would shoot again. When Rhodes and the two young women returned, several additional gunshots were fired. And when Rhodes drove past the nightclub for the last time, Pyatt was among a group that fired at least three handguns, one of which fatally wounded Rhodes. The State was not required to prove that Pyatt himself fired the fatal shot, so long as it proved that he was a party to the fatal shooting. See OCGA § 16–2–20.⁵ And the State properly could carry its burden of proof by circumstantial evidence, so long as the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to exclude every hypothesis other than his guilt. See former OCGA § 24–4–6.⁶ Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, we conclude that it was sufficient to permit a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Pyatt was guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted, whether as a principal or only an accomplice. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319(III)(B), 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).

2. Detective Robert Jackson investigated the shooting, and he testified as a witness for the State at trial. In the course of his testimony, Detective Jackson twice made comments that, according to Pyatt, amounted to improper opinions on ultimate issues in the case. Pyatt claims that the trial court erred when it allowed those comments. See Fordham v. State, 254 Ga. 59, 59–60(4), 325 S.E.2d 755 (1985). Pyatt, however, did not object to the testimony about which he now complains, and for that reason, this claim of error is not preserved for appellate review.⁷ See Colton v. State, 292 Ga. 509, 513(3), n. 2, 739 S.E.2d 380 (2013) ; Sanchez v. State, 285 Ga. 749, 751–752(3), 684 S.E.2d 251 (2009).

3. Pyatt also complains that the trial judge made an improper comment in the presence of the jury. As Detective Jackson was testifying, the prosecuting attorney asked him to read aloud a written statement that Joseph Taylor had given to investigators. Taylor had testified earlier, and Pyatt objected that the jury already had heard about his statement and that it was unnecessary for Detective Jackson to go through the statement again. The judge discussed the objection with the lawyers, and in the middle of their extended colloquy, the judge appears to have agreed with the prosecuting attorney that the statement was "critical evidence."⁸

It is that comment with which Pyatt now takes issue.

Pyatt relies on former OCGA § 17–8–57, which forbid a trial judge in the presence of the jury to "express or intimate his opinion as to what has or has not been proved or as to the guilt of the accused." Assuming that the comment in question even implicates former OCGA § 17–8–57,⁹ we conclude that it did not violate the statute. The judge made the comment in an extended colloquy with counsel, as the judge was explaining his thinking about Pyatt's objection to Detective Jackson reading the Taylor statement. As we have explained before, former OCGA § 17–8–57 "does not generally extend to colloquies between the judge and counsel regarding the admissibility of evidence. Furthermore, we have previously determined that remarks of a judge assigning a reason for his ruling are neither an expression of opinion nor a comment on the evidence." Ellis v. State, 292 Ga. 276, 282(3), 736 S.E.2d 412 (2013) (citations omitted). See also Ridley v. State, 290 Ga. 798, 800(2), 725 S.E.2d 223 (2012). Moreover, in discussing the admissibility question with counsel, the judge "never expressed any opinion about the veracity of the evidence itself. In any case, when the colloquy is considered as a whole, it is clear that the trial court was leaving it up to the jury to decide what the evidence did or did not show." Ford v. State, 298 Ga. 560, 565(5), 783 S.E.2d 906 (2016). Although it might have been better for the judge to have avoided any agreement with the notion that Taylor's statement was "critical evidence," "the judge's comment here in no way constituted the type of direct comment on the substance or weight of the evidence that we have held to violate [former] OCGA § 17–8–57." Dailey v. State, 297 Ga. 442, 443(2), 774 S.E.2d 672 (2015) (citation omitted). The comment did not violate former OCGA § 17–8–57. 4. Pyatt contends that the trial court erred when it charged the jury on the law concerning conspiracy and parties to a crime. According to Pyatt, these charges were not warranted because the indictment did not allege a conspiracy or that he was an accomplice, and there was no evidence to support the charges, he says, in any event. We disagree. It is not error "for the trial court to charge the jury on the law of conspiracy when the evidence introduced at trial supports the instruction, even when the defendant is not indicted for conspiracy." Hayes v. State, 298 Ga. 98, 100(2)(a), 779 S.E.2d 609 (2015). Likewise, a charge on parties to a crime may be permissible, notwithstanding that the defendant was not indicted as an accomplice. See Mann v. State, 297 Ga. 107, 108(2), 772 S.E.2d 665 (2015). And slight, circumstantial evidence can form a proper evidentiary foundation for both charges. See Bragg v. State, 295 Ga. 676, 678(3), 763 S.E.2d 476 (2014) ; Williams v. State, 267 Ga. 308, 309(2), 477 S.E.2d 570 (1996). In this case, both charges were authorized, inasmuch as the evidence showed that Pyatt was a part...