Snipes v. State

• Decision Date: 08 September 2020
• Docket Number: S20A0934
• Citation: 309 Ga. 785,848 S.E.2d 417
• Parties: SNIPES v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

309 Ga. 785

848 S.E.2d 417

SNIPES

v.The STATE.

S20A0934

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: September 8, 2020

William Allen Adams, Jr., Griffin Circuit Public Defender Office, P. O. Box 1145, Thomaston, Georgia 30286, Attorneys for the Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Matthew Blackwell Crowder, Assistant Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Benjamin David Coker, District Attorney, Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, P.O. Box 871, Thomaston, Georgia 30286, Elizabeth A. Baker, A.D.A., Fayette County District Attorney's Office, Griffin Judicial Circuit, One Center Drive, Fayetteville, Georgia 30214, Attorneys for the Appellee.

McMillian, Justice.

Chiquita Snipes was convicted of the malice murder of Ty'Qwan Edge, a two-year-old child in her care.¹ She appeals from the denial of her motion for new trial, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence, the trial court's jury charge, and trial counsel's performance on several grounds. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, the evidence presented at trial showed that in April 2010, Snipes was living with her co-defendant, Kenisha Neal, along with Neal's nine-year-old niece, T. W., and Neal's bedridden mother, when Ty'Qwan, Neal's two-year-old godson, came to stay with them. On May 22, an officer responded to a call for an unresponsive child and found Snipes performing CPR on Ty'Qwan, who was wearing nothing but a tee shirt. The officer observed several marks on the child, some that were in the process of healing and others that appeared to be fresh or "red meat" marks. He also saw what appeared to be a fairly large cut on the child's penis. Neal was standing nearby, watching; nobody appeared upset. Neal stated that the child, whom they were trying to potty train, had woken up around 5:00 a.m. After she took him to the bathroom, she brought him back to bed with her, and when she tried to wake him at 7:00 a.m., he was unresponsive. She first called the child's mother, and when the mother arrived and could not wake him, they called 911. Snipes had been sleeping in a separate bedroom further back in the house.

Snipes told officers that she, Neal, and Ty'Qwan had gone to bed around midnight. Around 4:00 a.m., she heard "a loud bump," and upon investigation, she saw Neal in the bathroom with the child. Neal told her that Ty'Qwan had fallen off the toilet and struck his head on the bathtub. Snipes applied ice to his head for ten to fifteen minutes. When they asked Ty'Qwan if he was okay, he nodded yes, and they all went to sleep in the back bedroom. Snipes woke again at 5:15 a.m. and saw that Ty'Qwan was breathing. When she woke at 7:00 a.m., she found Neal and Ty'Qwan in the living room, and Neal told her that she could not wake him. When Snipes tried to rouse him, his body was cold.

In searching the bathroom, officers found two spots that were later confirmed to be Ty'Qwan’s blood. The medical examiner testified that the victim, who was dehydrated and slightly undernourished, had numerous injuries in various states of healing all over his body and bruises over most of his face. The head injuries

appeared more recent, many within eight hours of his death, including a large area of extensive bruising on the left side of his face. She testified that the injury to his ear was very significant because it is difficult to accidentally injure the ear. She noted scratches and tearing to his lips and mouth area, a tongue contusion, and a bruise on his neck indicating pressure under the chin, along with fingernail-type scratches. A deeper abrasion on his right forearm was consistent with his either having been hit with a hot object or a very forceful impact with an object. His right arm and right leg had wounds consistent with bite marks. His buttocks showed injuries consistent with being spanked with an object hard enough to scrape the skin. There were two injuries to his penis; the more serious injury split the skin open and was consistent with a ligature-type injury. The internal examination revealed ten areas of hemorrhaging under the scalp, some older and some recent. His brain was significantly swollen with minor areas of bleeding on the surface and other denser areas of bleeding and blood clots. There was also hemorrhaging in and around the optic nerves of both eyes, indicating severe trauma to the head.

The medical examiner opined that the injuries were not consistent with a single fall in a bathroom and that there was no indication of natural disease. The medical examiner concluded that the victim's acute and chronic injuries, particularly the swelling, bleeding, and nerve damage in the brain, along with dehydration, combined to cause his death. A forensic odontologist testified that at least two of the three bite-like injuries were caused by a forceful human bite, resulting in a crushing type injury. She was unable to exclude either Neal or Snipes as having caused the bite injuries.

Neal testified that on the day before his death, Snipes was alone with Ty'Qwan most of the day. Because Neal was frequently out of the house, Snipes was the main disciplinarian. Neal claimed that she had only spanked Ty'Qwan once and that she preferred using time-outs. However, she had witnessed Snipes hold Ty'Qwan upside down by his ankle and hit him hard multiple times with a belt and a brush. Snipes once hit him with a brush so hard that it caused the brush to break. When Ty'Qwan had an accident while potty training, Snipes put hot water from a coffee pot on a rag and put it on his penis. Another time, Snipes forced Ty'Qwan to stand naked over a vent all night after he had an accident. Sometime after his death, Snipes told Neal for the first time that Ty'Qwan had accidentally fallen in the kitchen and hit his head on the refrigerator.

T. W., Neal's niece, testified that she saw Snipes spank Ty'Qwan daily and that Snipes would hold him upside down and use various objects as well as her hand to spank him. At least twice, Snipes caused Ty'Qwan’s head to hit the wall "hard" as she spanked him. T. W. also saw Snipes force Ty'Qwan to stand in one place for hours at a time. When she witnessed Snipes and Neal put a rag with hot water on Ty'Qwan’s penis, she felt sorry for Ty'Qwan because he screamed and cried for a long time.

At trial, the State also played a recording of Snipes's interview with law enforcement, in which Snipes admitted biting Ty'Qwan, pinching him, hitting him in the face, holding him upside down and accidentally causing his head to hit a doorknob, spanking him with a belt and brush, and putting water on his penis that may have caused an injury during the days leading up to his death.

1. Snipes asserts that this evidence was insufficient to support her convictions for malice murder and felony murder.² When evaluating the sufficiency of evidence under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, "the relevant question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307, 319 (III) (B), 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979) (citation and emphasis omitted). "Under this review, we must put aside any questions about conflicting evidence, the credibility of witnesses, or the weight of the evidence, leaving the resolution of such things to the discretion of the trier of fact." Mims v. State , 304 Ga. 851, 853 (1) (a), 823 S.E.2d 325 (2019) (citation and punctuation omitted).

Snipes argues that, whatever may have occurred on the night of May 22, 2010, the only person with Ty'Qwan at that time was Neal, whose statements against Snipes lack credibility. Thus, only Neal could be responsible for Ty'Qwan’s death. This argument, however, grossly mischaracterizes the evidence presented at trial. The State's medical examiner testified that Ty'Qwan’s death was caused by the cumulative effect of his injuries, both acute and chronic, and not by any single injury on the night of his death. In addition to the specific acts of abuse that Snipes admitted, both Neal and T. W. testified that they had witnessed Snipes's ongoing abuse of Ty'Qwan, which included causing his head to hit the wall "hard" on two occasions. "[I]t was for the jury to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence." Bamberg v. State , 308 Ga. 340, 343 (1) (a), 839 S.E.2d 640 (2020) (citation and punctuation omitted). Also, even if Neal caused the most immediate injuries to Ty'Qwan, the trial court instructed the jury that Snipes could be convicted as a party to the crime of malice murder, which the evidence supported. See OCGA § 16-2-20 (defining a party to a crime); Debelbot v. State , 305 Ga. 534, 538 (1), 826 S.E.2d 129 (2019) (although the evidence was entirely circumstantial as to who committed the crimes, it was legally sufficient to support both the mother and father's convictions for the malice murder of their infant). We thus conclude that the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find Snipes guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of malice murder. See Walker v. State , 308 Ga. 33, 35-36 (1), 838 S.E.2d 792 (2020) (evidence sufficient to sustain conviction for malice murder where the child sustained numerous injuries in days leading up to her death while living with defendant, the child's injuries were not consistent with the defendant's explanations, and the defendant made an incriminating statement).

2. Snipes asserts that the trial court erred by failing to charge the jury on felony involuntary manslaughter as a lesser-included offense of the murder counts. We disagree. Prior to trial, Snipes...