Roberts v. State

• Decision Date: 16 March 2015
• Docket Number: No. S14A1497.,S14A1497.
• Citation: 770 S.E.2d 589,296 Ga. 719
• Parties: ROBERTS v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

296 Ga. 719

770 S.E.2d 589

ROBERTS

v.The STATE.

No. S14A1497.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

March 16, 2015.

Amanda Rourk Clark Palmer, Edward T.M. Garland, Garland, Samuel & Loeb P.C., Atlanta, for appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Dep. Atty. Gen., Matthew Blackwell Crowder, Asst. Atty. Gen., Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Asst. Atty. Gen., Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Atlanta, Tracy Graham–Lawson, Dist. Atty., Elizabeth A. Baker, Frances C. Kuo, Kathryn L. Powers, Asst. Dist. Attys., Jonesboro, for appellee.

Opinion

HINES, Presiding Justice.

Keith Jerome Roberts appeals the denial of his motion for new trial, as amended, and his convictions for malice murder, kidnaping, and false imprisonment in connection with the death of Carlnell Walker caused by hyperthermia

from entrapment inside the trunk of an automobile. Roberts challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support his convictions and the effectiveness of his trial counsel. Finding the challenges to be without merit, we affirm.¹

The evidence construed in favor of the verdicts showed the following. On July 8, 2006, Clayton County police discovered Carlnell Walker's body while performing a “welfare check” at the residence Walker was renting in Clayton County. The police found Walker's decomposing body tied up in the trunk of his car in the closed garage. Walker had been beaten and stabbed with a sharp object, his front tooth was knocked out, and his mouth had sustained blunt force trauma. His mouth was “gagged” with electrical tape, and his hands were tied behind his back with a coaxial cable, a USB cable, and electrical tape. He was barefoot. Walker had been dead for several days. His position when discovered indicated that he was alive when he was placed in the trunk, and it was determined that despite his injuries, had he been able to free himself he could have avoided death by entrapment in the hot car trunk.

Walker, Roberts, and Allen had attended the same college, and Roberts and Allen had been roommates in college. The three men knew each other and socialized together. Walker was involved in a car wreck in 2006, and shortly before his murder, he was advised that he might recover $50,000 in damagesas a result of the wreck. He told his landlord, who also had ties to the same college, that he was expecting a settlement check. Walker was viewed as an “entrepreneur,” and was seen on his created website holding up “a wad of money.” Roberts, Allen, and others referred to Walker by the nickname “C–Money.”

When the police arrived at Walker's residence, they found the back door open, and no signs of forced entry. However, the house showed signs of a struggle with debris on the floor and blood throughout. Items, including a pair of scissors and remnants of Walker's hair, were on the living room floor, and they were placed in a pile in a manner indicating that someone intended to burn them. The globe from a hurricane oil lamp was on the floor near the debris and close to dried smeared blood, which blood was determined to be Walker's and part of a pattern of someone actively bleeding. An empty bottle which had contained lamp oil was found near the debris. Roberts's fingerprints were recovered from the lamp globe; no other fingerprints, including Walker's, were on it. The base of the lamp was found undisturbed on top of a television approximately eight feet away from the globe, and there were no usable fingerprints found on the base.

Roberts's fingerprints on the lamp globe were consistent with someone reaching and taking the globe off of the lamp base. Palm prints of Walker's blood were found on the walls and these prints were determined to have been made by Allen. There were patterns of blood in the bathtub consistent with someone with shoes standing behind someone without shoes who was actively moving. A substance that felt like the lamp oil found in the living room was around the edge of the bathtub. Jeans found in the laundry room contained DNA matching the profiles of Walker and Allen. A claw hammer which appeared to have blood on the metal part was also found in the laundry room. Drawers were pulled out, and the attic access panel was out of place. The blood pattern and locks of Walker's hair on the floor were consistent with one person restraining a body while another was cutting the hair. The blood patterns in the halls suggested two people dragging Walker through the house. The small amount of physical evidence on the bumper of the vehicle in which Walker's body was found was consistent with more than one person lifting Walker's body into the trunk.

When Allen was taken for palm and fingerprinting on July 20, 2006, police observed that he had a healing three-inch-long cut on his right hand which appeared to have been made by a knife. During the warranted search of Roberts's apartment, police found a sock stained with Allen's blood on the master bedroom floor.

1. Roberts contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction on any count because the State did not meet its burden to prove that his fingerprints were impressed on the lamp globe at the time the crimes were committed, and that such fingerprints were the sole evidence that he participated in the crimes. He further urges insufficiency because of what he offers as a reasonable explanation of why his fingerprints were on the globe, that is, that he was frequently in Walker's home and that power to the home was often off necessitating use of the oil lamp.

As Roberts maintains, when fingerprint evidence is the only evidence linking a defendant to the crimes on trial, the State must prove to the exclusion of other reasonable hypotheses that the fingerprints could have been impressed only at the time of the commission of the crimes. Rivers v. State, 271 Ga. 115, 116(1), 516 S.E.2d 525 (1999) ; Leonard v. State, 269 Ga. 867, 868(1), 506 S.E.2d 853 (1998). It is equally true that under former OCGA § 24–4–6, and present OCGA § 24–14–6, in order to warrant a conviction based solely upon circumstantial evidence, the proven facts must be consistent with the hypothesis of guilt and must exclude every reasonable theory other than the guilt of the accused. Clark v. State, 296 Ga. 543, 769 S.E.2d 376 (2015.) And, when the circumstantial evidence supports both a theory consistent with guilt and one consistent with innocence, the evidence does not exclude every other reasonable hypothesis except guilt, and therefore, is insufficient to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

O'Neill v. State, 285 Ga. 125, 674 S.E.2d 302 (2009).

First, Roberts's fingerprints were not the only evidence linking Roberts to the crimes. The evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom showed that Roberts and Allen were close friends and were part of Walker's social inner circle; that Walker was perceived by some to have money, and indeed, cash on hand, and that Walker had not kept silent about the fact that he was to receive a substantial money settlement; the crime scene evidence suggested Walker knew his attackers, and that they were searching for something of value, tortured Walker to find out where it was, and when they were unsuccessful in doing so placed Walker in the hot car trunk; that the physical evidence of Allen's hand injury was consistent with having been sustained in the attack upon Walker; and that Allen's blood-stained item from an obvious injury was found in Roberts's bedroom.

Moreover, the circumstances surrounding the fingerprints lead to the only reasonable explanation that they were impressed during commission of the crimes. See Crawford v. State, 292 Ga.App. 463(1), 664 S.E.2d 820 (2008). Although Roberts cites testimony from his younger brother to the alleged effect that Roberts visited Walker's home on multiple occasions, and that Walker possessed the hurricane lamp because his power frequently went out; and therefore, that Roberts had an innocent reason to touch the hurricane lamp, such evidence does not aid Roberts's hypothesis of innocence. Indeed, it belies it. Roberts's brother's exact testimony was that Walker had resided not only in the ransacked home in Clayton County where the crimes occurred but in a different home as well, and that Roberts had been inside one of these unspecified homes only on “several different occasions.” There was no testimony from the brother that Roberts was ever at Walker's residence when the power was out. In fact, the testimony was that when Roberts and his brother visited Walker, they would, inter alia, watch television, an activity which plainly required electric power. Further, the lack of Walker's or another's discernible fingerprints on the lamp or its base belie his or other's frequent recent use of the lamp, or indeed its use for the intended purpose at all. The empty bottle of lamp oil found near the globe and the pile of debris support the inference that the globe was removed from the lamp base in order to obtain the oil to incinerate evidence of the crimes and/or to torture Walker. Moreover, there was no testimony from the...