Satterfield v. State

• Decision Date: 24 November 1981
• Docket Number: No. 38015,38015
• Citation: 248 Ga. 538,285 S.E.2d 3
• Parties: SATTERFIELD v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 3

285 S.E.2d 3

248 Ga. 538

SATTERFIELD v. The STATE.

No. 38015.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Nov. 24, 1981.

Stan Durden, Jefferson, for Troyce Satterfield.

Nat Hancock, Dist. Atty., Jefferson, Michael J. Bowers, Atty. Gen., for the State.

JORDAN, Chief Justice.

Troyce Satterfield was convicted for aggravated assault upon his former wife, Yvonne Satterfield, and for the felony murder of her mother, Dixie Skinner. He stabbed both women with a knife. He was sentenced to ten years for the aggravated assault consecutive to life imprisonment for the felony murder. We affirm.

1. Satterfield objected to questions by the state to the sheriff's investigator on direct examination regarding whether Satterfield's statement was freely and voluntarily made and whether it was made without the slightest hope of benefit or the remotest fear of injury. The objection in each instance was that the question called for a conclusion.

The investigator previously had testified about the contents of a card he had read to Satterfield before Satterfield gave his statement. The card contained a complete recital of the standard Miranda warnings and rights, and included, inter alia, the recital that "I understand and know what I am doing. No promises or threats have been made to me and no coercion, of any kind, has been used against me." The investigator had testified that Satterfield initialed the card, acknowledging its contents. "[W]here a witness testified to the circumstances surrounding the confession, showing clearly that it was voluntary, a question then posed to the witness regarding its voluntariness does not call for a conclusion." Woods v. State, 233 Ga. 495, 497, 212 S.E.2d 322 (1975). The first enumeration of error is without merit.

2. There is no evidence in the transcript of proceedings indicating that Satterfield ever was in the slightest danger from either of his victims. Accordingly, the trial court did not err by failing to charge on justification. Lanham v. State, 243 Ga. 576(2), 255 S.E.2d 52 (1979). The transcript does indicate that Yvonne's mother, Dixie, attempted to push or pull Satterfield away from Yvonne after Satterfield had stabbed Yvonne because Yvonne had refused to go out with him. Satterfield then stabbed Dixie. Satterfield's statement that he thought Dixie had a gun did not require a charge on justification or mitigation. Patterson v. State, 239 Ga. 409, 413(4), 238 S.E.2d 2 (1977).

3. Count one of the indictment charged Satterfield with the malice murder of Dixie. Count two charged him with aggravated assault upon Yvonne. The jury was instructed under count one both as to malice murder and felony murder, the aggravated assault upon Yvonne being the only underlying felony mentioned in the court's instructions.

Satterfield contends that his conviction and sentence for aggravated assault upon Yvonne must be set aside under authority of our decision in Stanley v. State, 240 Ga. 341, 343(1), 241 S.E.2d 173 (1977), wherein we held that "a person cannot legally be convicted and sentenced for both a felony murder and the lesser included felony on which that felony murder conviction is based."

The state concedes that Stanley is the law where the felony murder and the underlying felony are committed on a single person, but contends that Code Ann. §§ 26-505 and 26-506 do not require the conviction and sentence for the underlying felony to be set aside where, as in the present case, the underlying felony (aggravated assault) was committed on one person (Yvonne) and the felony murder was committed on another (Dixie).

The state's position is not without supporting authorities. In Crawford v. State, 236 Ga. 491, 494, 224 S.E.2d 365 (1976), the appellant was indicted for the malice murder of a Mr. Johnson and the armed robbery of a Mr. Sirmants. He was convicted for the felony murder of Mr. Johnson and the armed robbery of Mr. Sirmants. This court distinguished Crawford from Burke v. State, 234 Ga. 512, 514, 216 S.E.2d 812 (1975), as follows: "Unlike the appellant in Burke, the evidence shows without dispute that there was more than one victim in this case. The convictions for the murder of one victim and the armed robbery of a different victim were supported by both the indictments and the evidence in this case. See Kramer v. Hopper, 234 Ga. 395, 397, 216 S.E.2d 119 (1975)."

The Stanley case, upon which Satterfield relies, involved a single victim, as have several of our recent decisions applying the Stanley precept. Blankenship v. State, 247 Ga. 590, 591, 277 S.E.2d 505 (1981); Dampier v. State, 245 Ga. 427, 435(13), 265 S.E.2d 565 (1980); Hall v. State, 241 Ga. 252, 253, 244 S.E.2d 833 (1978); Thomas v. State, 240 Ga. 393, 404, 242 S.E.2d 1 (1977); Farley v. State, 238 Ga. 181(1), 231 S.E.2d 761 (1977). On the other hand Collier v. State, 244 Ga. 553, 563(6), 261 S.E.2d 364 (1979), involved multiple convictions and sentences for armed robbery, only one of which was necessary to support the conviction under the indictment for felony murder. The indictment in Collier did not specify which of the armed robberies was the underlying felony that formed the basis for the felony murder count of the indictment. In Collier, the conviction and sentence for the principal underlying felony were set aside but the remaining armed robbery convictions and sentences were allowed to stand. Both Stanley and Collier cited and relied upon Atkins v. Hopper, 234 Ga. 330(3), 216 S.E.2d 89 (1975), which held that Atkins' conviction for the armed robbery of two men must be set aside because his indictment for felony murder referred to the robbery of the two men as the underlying felony supporting the felony murder indictment.

The state insists that we should recur to fundamentals by analyzing the issue in terms of Code Ann. §§ 26-505 and 26-506. We agree with this suggestion.

Subsections (b) and (c) of Code Ann. § 26-506 are inapplicable in the present case because all offenses were prosecuted here in a single prosecution in a single court. Subsection (a) of Code Ann. § 26-506 states that when the same conduct of an accused may establish the commission of more than one crime, the accused may be prosecuted for each crime but that he may not, however, be convicted of more than one crime if (1) one crime is included in the other, or (2) the crimes differ only in that one is defined...