Sims v. State

Citation862 S.E.2d 534
Decision Date24 August 2021
Docket NumberS21A0874
Parties SIMS v. The STATE.
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia

Charles Henry Frier, P.O. Box 8783, Atlanta, Georgia 31106-8783, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Ashleigh Dene Headrick, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Ruth M. Pawlak, A.D.A., Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, for Appellee.

Warren, Justice.

Dion Sims appeals his convictions for malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of Alan Watson.1 On appeal, Sims contends that the evidence presented at his trial was legally insufficient to support his conviction; that the State failed to prove venue; and that his trial counsel provided constitutionally ineffective assistance by failing to file a plea in bar with respect to two counts of the indictment. Because we conclude that these contentions lack merit, we affirm.

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial showed that a land surveyor found a skull while at work on July 1, 2009, in a heavily wooded area behind a house on Abner Place in Atlanta. Through clothing remnants, dental records, and DNA testing, the skull was identified as that of Alan Watson. The skull had a hole above the left eye and another hole in the rear of the skull that were consistent with Watson having died of a gunshot to the head. According to Watson's grandmother, Watson lived with her in DeKalb County in 2001. He left home on Friday night, August 2, to go to a movie and never returned home. Watson's sister testified that Sims lived very near her grandmother's home and that, during the summer of 2001, Sims and Watson began "hanging out." She added that Sims told her that he and his girlfriend, Tameka Wright, had gotten an apartment at the Flipper Temple Apartments and that Watson began "catching the bus with [Sims], going over there, hanging out with him."

Wright testified as follows. In August 2001, she lived in Apartment Number 18 at the Flipper Temple Apartments at 2479 Abner Terrace. Her apartment was on the back side of the building on the ground floor, and her door opened up to "a lot of fence and woods." At that time, she was dating Sims and had met Watson twice. On the day that Watson was shot, she had told Sims to come to her apartment and get a gun that belonged to him. When she arrived home that day, Sims and Watson were playing cards in her apartment. Wright then went to the apartment of her sister, Lakeisha Wright, who lived in the same complex. Wright came back home "in the middle of the night." Sims and Watson were in Wright's bedroom sitting on her bed; they were not doing anything and were not arguing. Wright sat in the middle of the bed, Sims was sitting "at the top of [Wright's] bed," and Watson was sitting on the other side of Wright by the wall. Sims—without saying anything—shot Watson, who slid to the floor. Sims then left the apartment. In "his last breath," Watson told Wright that her "boyfriend killed [him]."

Wright was "hysterical" and "in shock" and went back to her sister's apartment. She told Lakeisha what had happened, and they returned to Wright's apartment. Sims had also returned to the apartment, and Lakeisha asked Sims how the shooting happened. According to Wright, Sims "tried to say that the gun went off by mistake." Shortly thereafter, a man named Larry came to her apartment and helped Sims wrap up Watson's body and throw it in the woods outside Wright's apartment. There was not much blood on the carpet after the shooting but Larry cut out the part of the carpet that had blood on it with a box cutter. Wright also testified that there was no blood on the wall of the bedroom, that she continued living in the apartment where the shooting occurred until 2006, and that her carpet was replaced with tile at some point after the shooting. She did not report the shooting because she "feared for [her] life," and said that Sims told her that he shot Watson because Watson "took something from him." However, at another point in her testimony, Wright testified that Sims told her that the "bullet was meant for [her]."

According to Lakeisha, Wright came to Lakeisha's apartment late on the night Watson was shot and kept saying that someone was dead. Wright was a "nervous wreck" and "was crying." Lakeisha then went to Wright's apartment and saw Watson, who "wasn't moving" and had a "hole in his head." Sims "tried to explain" that it "was an accident," but Wright "told [Lakeisha] that's not what happened." According to Lakeisha, Sims then "went to get Larry." Lakeisha saw Sims and Larry "wrap[ ] the guy up." When Lakeisha asked Wright if Wright wanted to call the police, Sims told Lakeisha that if she or her sister called the police, he would kill both of them. Lakeisha then went back to her apartment.

Larry Baisden lived about "two minutes away" from the Flipper Temple Apartments, "spent a lot of time over there" doing work for residents, and knew Sims and Wright. According to Baisden, on the night Watson was shot, Baisden was helping someone move out of an apartment that was right above Wright's apartment. Sims came up to the apartment where Baisden was working and told him that Sims would like help with "something" "later on" and would come "get [him]." About two hours later, Sims came back and got him, but did not tell him exactly what Sims wanted help with. Baisden agreed to help, and when he went to Wright's apartment, he saw Watson slumped against a wall in the bedroom and a gun on the bed. Sims told Baisden that Watson had committed suicide. Baisden told Sims to call 911, but Sims refused, contending that Wright would lose her apartment. Sims told Baisden that if Baisden did not help, Baisden would "be beside [Watson]," which Baisden understood as a threat. Baisden then helped Sims wrap Watson's body in a comforter and carry it out of Wright's apartment and across about 15 to 20 yards of open ground to a fence. There, they lifted Watson's body over the fence and threw it into a wooded area. Sims wanted Baisden to help move Watson further into the wooded area, but Baisden declined and left.

David Quinn, a detective with the Atlanta Police Department, was dispatched to investigate the discovery of the human remains that were later identified as Watson's. At trial, Detective Quinn testified as follows: the skull was located in "northwest Atlanta, 2471 Abner Place, which is off Hollywood Road in the northwest sector of the city." When asked "[w]hat county is that," he testified that it was Fulton County. The detective added that Abner Place intersected Abner Terrace at 2479 Abner Terrace. He described the skull as being located "in a wooded area in close proximity to the[ ] Flipper Temple Apartments at 2479 Abner Terrace" and "just opposite this particular apartment complex." From the backyard of the house at 2471 Abner Place, Detective Quinn walked about 100 yards into the woods to reach the remains. He collected the skull for examination, and later returned to the woods with cadaver dogs that located more remains. Erroll Curling, a maintenance worker at the apartment complex, said that Wright told Curling about Watson's murder, but that Curling did not believe Wright because "he at that time conducted a review of the apartment and found no evidence of a murder." Curling did not testify at trial.

In June 2010, a GBI crime scene specialist processed the area of Wright's former bedroom where Wright testified Watson allegedly was shot, looking for evidence of blood and bullets. The specialist testified that, before he performed his work, he was told that the apartment complex had completed "some type of work" in that bedroom. He used luminol to test for the presence of blood; a swab of certain areas "fluoresced" for the presence of blood, but later testing showed "nothing significant" "in reference to suspected blood." The specialist found no evidence of a bullet having been fired in the bedroom. Detective Quinn testified that the apartment had been rented six or seven times since Wright had moved out in 2006.

Sims contends that the evidence was legally insufficient to support his convictions. His primary argument in this regard is that Wright's testimony was not credible. In particular, he argues that the lack of blood or other forensic evidence at the crime scene did not support Wright's testimony that Watson was shot while sitting on Wright's bed; that Curling's statement that he did not see evidence of the murder in Wright's apartment when he examined it in 2001 contradicted Wright's story; and that Wright's testimony that Sims told her that the bullet was meant for her was not believable because Wright was sitting on the bed right next to Sims and Sims would have had to have missed shooting her at point-blank range. Sims contends that these are all reasons not to credit Wright's testimony that the murder took place in her bedroom, as she testified, and that all of her testimony should be discounted as a result.

When evaluating challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, we view the evidence presented at trial in the light most favorable to the jury's verdicts and ask whether any rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979) ; Jones v. State , 304 Ga. 594, 598, 820 S.E.2d 696 (2018). "We leave to the jury the resolution of conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence, credibility of witnesses, and reasonable inferences to be derived from the facts," Smith v. State , 308 Ga. 81, 84,...

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