Robertson v. State

• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: Dillard, Presiding Judge.
• Citation: Robertson v. State, 857 S.E.2d 485, 359 Ga.App. 326 (Ga. App. 2021)
• Decision Date: 08 April 2021
• Docket Number: A21A0334
• Parties: ROBERTSON v. The STATE.

359 Ga.App. 326

857 S.E.2d 485

ROBERTSON

v.The STATE.

A21A0334

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

April 8, 2021

Brouse Law, Karen H. Brouse, for Appellant.

Lee Darragh, District Attorney, Wanda Lynn Vance, Assistant District Attorney, for Appellee.

Dillard, Presiding Judge.

Following trial, a jury convicted Eric Robertson and Laronda Moore¹ on charges of trafficking of persons for sexual servitude and cruelty to children in the second degree. On appeal, Robertson challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions and further contends that the trial court erred in denying (1) his right to be present at critical stages of his trial by excluding him from several bench conferences, and (2) his motion for a mistrial when a witness for the State allegedly improperly bolstered the victim's credibility. For the reasons noted infra , we affirm.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict,² the record shows that in the late summer of 2017, seventeen-year-old B. E. ran away from the home and ended up living on the streets of Gainesville, Georgia. At some point that autumn, B. E. met Robertson and Moore through Moore's teenage son. And in late October, Robertson and Moore took B. E. to the home they shared with Moore's son and her teenage daughter. But once there, Robertson and Moore immediately explained to B. E. that to live with them, she needed to earn money and that she would do so by engaging in sexual acts with men whom Robertson and Moore would solicit. When B. E. objected, Moore told her she could get a job when she was 18 years old.

Initially, Moore and Robertson took B. E. to different locations to perform sex acts for money, including a local tire shop where she had sex with several of the employees. A few weeks later, Moore began using a dating application on a mobile phone to solicit men to come to her and Robertson's house to engage in sexual acts with B. E. Specifically, Moore contacted men via the app and set prices for various acts. Men—or "plays" (as Moore called them)—would come to the house, pay B. E. to have sex, and B. E. would place the money under Moore's bedroom door or in the bathroom, as Moore instructed. Moore also told B. E. how to act and what to say to the men to entice them. Further, both Moore and Robertson instructed B. E. how to perform with the men, with Robertson explicitly telling her that she had to "make them want it."

Over the course of the next three months, B. E. engaged in sexual acts with anywhere from two to eight men each day. And as a means of control, Moore and Robertson plied B. E. with synthetic marijuana almost daily and repeatedly told her that she would have to leave their home if she refused to do as they instructed. Moore and Robertson also violently berated B. E. and beat her if she failed to get money from the men who came to the house. In fact, on one occasion, Robertson struck B. E. hard enough that her eye became swollen and her nose bled, and in another incident, he pushed her into a wall. Robertson also forced B. E. to perform oral sex upon him on several occasions, explaining that she "needed to respect him more."

On January 6, 2018, after again being subjected to threats of violence and verbal abuse from Moore and Robertson, B. E. told them that she was going out to the back yard to clean up some trash. But once outside, she decided to run, escaping through the woods and eventually ending up at a nearby shopping center. Once there, she asked someone at a fast-food restaurant to borrow a phone so that she could call her mother. And shortly thereafter, B. E.’s mother came to pick her up, at which point B. E. informed her what Moore and Robertson had been forcing her to do for the last several months. B. E.’s mother immediately contacted the Hall County Sheriff's Office and an investigation ensued. During that investigation, deputies executed a search warrant on Moore and Robertson's home and recovered synthetic marijuana and a mobile phone with the previously mentioned dating application.

The State charged Moore and Robertson, via the same indictment, with one count each of trafficking of persons for sexual servitude, cruelty to children in the second degree, and family violence battery. Subsequently, they were jointly tried, during which the State presented the foregoing evidence. The State also presented the testimony of a licensed social worker with a non-profit agency, specializing in counseling victims of commercial sexual exploitation, who discussed her counseling of B. E. Additionally, the State introduced numerous messages between Moore and various men that were recovered from the mobile phone dating application, in which Moore explicitly offered B. E.’s sexual services for money. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury found Moore and Robertson guilty on the charges of trafficking of persons for sexual servitude and second degree cruelty to children and not guilty on the charge of family violence battery.

After his convictions, Robertson obtained new counsel and filed a motion for new trial. The trial court held a hearing on his motion, during which Robertson's trial counsel testified regarding his representation. The trial court took the matter under advisement, but ultimately denied Robertson's motion for new trial. This appeal follows.

1. Robertson contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions. We disagree.

When a criminal conviction is appealed, the evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, and the appellant no longer enjoys a presumption of innocence.³ And in evaluating the sufficiency of the evidence, we "do not weigh the evidence or determine witness credibility, but only determine whether a rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty of the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt."⁴ The jury's verdict will be upheld, then, so long as there is "some competent evidence, even though contradicted, to support each fact necessary to make out the State's case."⁵ Bearing these guiding principles in mind, we turn to Robertson's specific challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions.

OCGA § 16-5-46 (c) (1) (2017) provides: "A person commits the offense of trafficking an individual for sexual servitude when that person knowingly ... [s]ubjects an individual to or maintains an individual in sexual servitude[.]" OCGA § 16-5-46 (a) (8) (2017), in relevant part, provides:

"Sexual servitude" means any sexually explicit conduct or performance involving sexually explicit conduct for which anything of value is directly or indirectly given, promised to, or received by any individual, which conduct is induced or obtained: (A) [b]y coercion or deception; [or] (B) [f]rom an individual who is under the age of 18 years[.]

And under OCGA § 16-5-70 (c), "[a]ny person commits the offense of cruelty to children in the second degree when such person with criminal negligence causes a child under the age of 18 cruel or excessive physical or mental pain." Furthermore, "[e]very person concerned in the commission of a crime is a party thereto and may be charged with and convicted of commission of the crime."⁶

In this matter, Count 1 of the indictment charged Robertson with violating OCGA § 16-5-46 (c), alleging that on January 1, 2018, and no later than January 9, 2018, he "did knowingly subject and maintain [B. E.], an individual under 18 years of age during all of the events alleged, in sexual servitude by coercion and deception." Count 2 charged him with violating OCGA § 16-5-70 (c), alleging that on January 1, 2018, and no later than January 9, 2018, he "did, with criminal negligence, cause [B. E.], a child under the age of eighteen years during all of the events alleged, cruel and excessive physical and mental pain by requiring her to have sex for money, threatening to batter her, and battering her ...." And here, the evidence shows that Robertson assisted Moore in forcing B. E. to perform sexual acts for money, telling her that she had to make the men they solicited "want it," and taking her to places—such as the tire shop—so she could engage in sexual acts with its employees. Additionally, Robertson threatened B. E. with violence if she did not comply, told her he had "saved her," and actually beat her on several occasions, including striking her in the face hard enough that her nose bled and her eye became swollen. Given these circumstances, the evidence sufficiently supported Robertson's convictions on the charges of trafficking of persons for sexual servitude⁷ and cruelty to children in the second degree.⁸

2. Robertson also contends that the trial court erred in denying his right to be present at critical stages of his trial by excluding him from several bench conferences. Again, we disagree.

It is well settled that "[e]mbodied within the constitutional right to the courts is a criminal defendant's right to be present and see and hear all the proceedings which are had against him on the trial before the Court."⁹ Indeed, the right to be present is "a fundamental right and a foundational aspect of due process of law."¹⁰ And this right "attaches at any stage of a criminal proceeding that is critical to its outcome if the defendant's presence would contribute to the fairness of the procedure."¹¹ Specifically, our appellate courts have "determined that a critical stage in a criminal prosecution is one in which a defendant's rights may be lost, defenses waived, privileges claimed or waived, or one in which the outcome of the case is substantially affected in some other way."¹² But when counsel participates in a bench conference involving purely legal issues, the right to be present is "not implicated."¹³

On appeal, Robertson argues that he was impermissibly excluded from three separate bench conferences during his trial. But a review of the details of these conferences belies this contention. The first instance occurred just after defense counsel...