Rivers v. State
| Citation | 298 S.E.2d 10,250 Ga. 288 |
| Decision Date | 10 November 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 38593,38593 |
| Parties | Hill RIVERS v. STATE. |
| Court | Supreme Court of Georgia |
Sam B. Sibley, Jr., Dist. Atty., Charles R. Sheppard, Asst. Dist. Atty., Augusta, Michael J. Bowers, Atty. Gen., Virginia H. Jefferies, Staff Atty. Gen., for the State.
Hill Rivers was indicted by the Grand Jury of Burke County, Georgia, on one count of burglary, two counts of murder, two counts of armed robbery, and two counts of kidnapping with bodily injury. Since the state sought the death penalty on the two counts of murder, the trial was conducted pursuant to the Unified Appeal Procedure, 246 Ga. at A-5 (1980), and this appeal is reviewed pursuant to that procedure. The jury returned guilty verdicts on all seven counts and sentences of death on each of the two murder counts. The judge sentenced the defendant to 20 years for the burglary and to life terms for each of the remaining four counts, with all five sentences to be served consecutively. The defendant appeals.
The state's theory of the case was that Alan Reeves and his friend Alan Shirley drove up to Reeves' home in the early evening of July 3, 1981, while the defendant was burglarizing it. The defendant gained possession of Reeves' .357 magnum which was in the truck he was driving and used it to march Reeves and Shirley into a nearby cornfield where he shot each of them in the head, causing their deaths. The state presented the following evidence.
The victims spent July 3, 1981, barbecuing a hog at Alan Reeves' parents' home. At approximately 7:00 p.m., they drove to the home of Reeves' sister and her husband, Deborah and Doug Ide, to invite them to dinner. While the victims were at the Ides, Doug Ide noticed Alan Reeves' .357 magnum pistol, holster, and a box of cartridges on the front seat of Alan Reeves' truck. The Ides' home is approximately 1/4 mile down Highway 56 from the elder Reeves' home; Alan Reeves' home was approximately 1/4 mile in the opposite direction on Highway 56 from his parents' home. Alan Reeves was in the process of moving out of Doug Ide arrived at Alan Reeves' home at 7:35 or 7:40 p.m. Reeves' truck was parked in the backyard. Ide had been outside the back of Reeves' home at about 6 p.m., at which time the house had been undisturbed. When he arrived after 7:30, he observed that the glass in the back door had been broken and articles that appeared to be frozen food were strewn around the back yard. Ide went to the house and called Reeves. Upon getting no response, he entered the house through the back door. The house had been ransacked. A good many of the kitchen cupboards where Alan Reeves had kept dishes were bare. Upon reaching Reeves' bedroom, he saw Reeves' shotgun (which Reeves kept in a corner of his bedroom) lying on the bed. He called his mother-in-law to see if Alan Shirley's car was still at her home because he thought that the victims might be off in the other car and unaware of the situation at the house. When he learned that the car was still at the elder Reeves' home, he called the police. Members of the Burke County Sheriff's Department, GBI agents, and several members of the Reeves family arrived and stayed most of the night. Ide himself left briefly about 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., then returned, parked across the road and watched the house.
his parents' home as he was engaged to be married. When the victims left the Ides between 7:20 and 7:30, Doug Ide agreed to meet them at Alan Reeves' home in about 15 minutes.
About daylight the next morning, Ide, along with Alan Reeves' father and his fiancee's father and brother searched the area behind the house, including a cornfield into which discernible footprints led. They found the victims' bodies in the cornfield about 150 to 200 yards from the house. The holster for Reeves' gun was found near the bodies. Shirley's wallet was lying by his body; some of its contents were strewn around on the ground but there was no cash in or near it. Shirley's mother testified that she customarily did her son's banking because he worked some 30 miles from home and that on July 2 she took her son's check to the bank and brought home $100 in cash for him to take on his trip to spend the 4th of July with Alan Reeves. She placed the cash in a place known only to her and her son, where she regularly left his money so that he did not have to ask her for it. There was already $60 there when she added the $100 to it. When she was called on the evening of July 3 and told her son was missing, she checked and the $100 was gone but $60 was still there.
David McFeeley, Jr., an investigator for the Burke County Sheriff's Department, arrived at Alan Reeves' home later in the evening of July 3rd. He called in Special Agent Preston Purvis of the GBI to aid in the investigation. Upon his arrival, McFeeley prepared a list of missing items with the aid of Alan Reeves' family and fiancee. He left at about 3 a.m.; when he returned the next morning he was told that the bodies had been discovered in the cornfield. He established a perimeter line "a considerable distance back from the actual crime scene" and secured the area. He testified that he observed three sets of footprints leading into the cornfield, past the holster, to the bodies. Only one set came back out. The two that went in but did not come back out matched the victims' shoes. He also testified that the unidentified prints were unusual in that the left footprint went off at an angle as if whoever made it bent to the left as he walked. Both Agent Purvis and Gary Thiesen, a microanalyst at the Augusta Branch of the State Crime Lab, corroborated this testimony.
At the time of the defendant's arrest on July 10, 1981, he had in his front pocket a claim check to Southside Stores in Augusta and $120 in cash. Tracing the claim check, officers recovered a Pioneer Centrex stereo set. Alan Reeves' fiancee, Janice Mead, identified it as having been at the house prior to the murders. The Southside Stereo tag showed that it was brought in by Hill Rivers.
Officers searched the defendant's trailer and found numerous items that were identified by Janice Mead as having been at Reeves' home prior to July 3, among them Warren Tillman, a pathologist with the State Crime Laboratory, testified that both victims died as a result of gunshot wounds to the head. Both were shot in the head above the right ear with bullets that exited through the victims' foreheads. Both victims were also shot above the buttocks, and Reeves was additionally shot in the upper left arm. The bullet that struck Reeves in the buttocks exited from his thigh.
two University of Georgia Coke bottles, certain cartoon glasses, plates with a chicken (rooster) design, a fan, frozen deer meat and record albums. A Christopher Cross album with a gift card attached to it which read "Janice MaMa and PaPa Bailey" was among these records. She also identified Alan Reeves' class ring which was found in Rivers' car. An acquaintance of the defendant, Eddie Reed, testified that the defendant brought Alan Reeves' black and white television to him on July 10, hoping he could sell it for him. This set was missing a channel knob. Janice Mead, Alan Reeves' fiancee, found the knob on the bedroom floor later in July and identified the television. Silas Evans, a service station operator who knew the defendant as a customer, testified that the defendant left a Delco radio tape cassette player with him hoping he could sell it. Janice Mead identified it as having been at Reeves' home prior to July 3. Numerous other items which were missing from Reeves' home were found in the defendant's possession.
A bullet was recovered from the ground under each of the victim's heads. In addition to these two bullets, a bullet was recovered during Reeves' autopsy when it fell out of his pants as they were removed.
Because Janice Mead informed the investigating officers that Alan Reeves had used a chinaberry tree in the back yard for target practice, agent Purvis sawed off a limb of the tree and transported it to Gary Thiesen, a microanalyst at the Augusta branch of the State Crime Lab. Thiesen removed two bullets from the limb. Thiesen testified that all five of these bullets (one from under Alan Reeves' head, one from under Alan Shirley's head, one from Alan Reeves' clothing and two from the chinaberry tree) were fired by the same weapon.
The state contended at this trial that the events of July 3 in Burke County were the first crimes in a spree. In support of this contention and in order to prove that the defendant committed the crimes at issue here, the state produced evidence that linked the defendant to crimes that occurred in McDuffie and Columbia Counties on July 4. In McDuffie County, Hattie Watts, her son Ricky Watts and her granddaughter Alicia Watts were murdered and Hattie Watts' home was burglarized. 1 Three eyewitnesses identified the defendant as having been in the vicinity of Hattie Watts' home at about 7 p.m. on July 4, immediately before these crimes occurred. One of these witnesses testified that the defendant was driving a white Ford with a white grille, another testified that he was driving a white car with a white grille, and the third testified that he was driving a white car but he did not notice the grille. Gary Thiesen identified footprints found at the scene of the crime in McDuffie County as matching those found leading into and out of the cornfield behind Alan Reeves' home. Thiesen also identified four bullets that were recovered in connection with the murders of the Watts'. One was recovered from the floor of Hattie Watts' home, another was recovered during the autopsy on Hattie Watts, one was recovered from the wall behind the sofa where Ricky Watts' body was found, and one was recovered from the sofa cushion under Ricky Watts' head. Thiesen testified that all four of...
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