State v. Moorer
| Docket Number | 5987,Appellate Case 2018-001938 |
| Decision Date | 07 June 2023 |
| Parties | The State, Respondent, v. Tammy Caison Moorer, Appellant. |
| Court | South Carolina Court of Appeals |
Heard December 9, 2021
Withdrawn, Substituted and Refiled July 5, 2023
Appeal From Horry County Benjamin H. Culbertson, Circuit Court Judge
Chief Appellate Defender Robert Michael Dudek and Appellate Defender Lara Mary Caudy, both of Columbia, for Appellant.
Attorney General Alan McCrory Wilson and Senior Assistant Attorney General David A. Spencer, both of Columbia; and Solicitor Jimmy A. Richardson, II, of Conway, all for Respondent.
HILL A.J.
Tammy C. Moorer (Tammy) appeals her convictions for kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap. She argues the trial court erred in (1) failing to grant her motion for a directed verdict; (2) admitting text messages that were sexually explicit and referenced drug use; (3) allowing an expert in forensic video analysis to testify the Moorers' truck was the vehicle videotaped going to and from the area where Victim was last known to be; (4) excluding her alibi witnesses because she failed to comply with Rule 5(e)(1) SCRCrimP; and (5) excluding several defense witnesses because they violated the sequestration order. We affirm.
I. FACTS
Heather Elvis (Victim), a twenty-year-old woman from Myrtle Beach, disappeared on December 18, 2013. The last known phone call Victim made was to Tammy's husband, Sidney Moorer, a thirty-eight-year-old man with whom she had a months' long affair that had ended on November 2, 2013. The phone call was made at 3:41 a.m. from the area of the Peachtree Boat Landing on the Waccamaw River. Victim's unoccupied car was discovered at the Landing at 4:00 a.m. by an officer on routine patrol. The next day, when her car remained abandoned at the Landing, the police contacted Victim's father, and a search for Victim began. Victim has never been found.
Based on Victim's phone records, a search of her apartment, and statements from her coworkers and roommate, it became apparent Victim may have been pregnant with Sidney's child, and Sidney became the prime suspect in Victim's disappearance. On December 20, 2013, the police visited Sidney's home, roughly a five-minute drive from the Landing. Sidney lived there with Tammy and their three children. Tammy's mother, father, and sister lived next door. The police discovered the Moorers had a home surveillance system that Tammy advised did not work and a black Ford F-150 truck that Tammy told police could not be unlocked at the time. Police observed a bag of cement, a spent shotgun shell, and a bottle of cleaning fluid piled by the Moorers' parked camper. The day after this police visit, Sidney purchased a new home surveillance system.
Investigators began to believe Tammy was also involved in Victim's disappearance. Phone records and location data from the Moorers' two iPhones revealed a grim picture of a wife irate with her husband for having an affair with a much younger woman; who threatened Victim upon discovery of the affair; who desired to punish Sidney; who took control of Sidney's iPhone on November 2, 2013, when she discovered the affair; who sexted other men from Sidney's iPhone; who began accompanying Sidney on his shifts to complete maintenance work at restaurants around Myrtle Beach; and who began stalking Victim.
Cell phone data showed Tammy sent the following text message to Victim shortly after Tammy discovered the affair: The State also presented several messages reflecting Tammy's anger at both Sidney and Victim for the affair, including a message to the Moorers' daughter that "[y]our dad is an evil, twisted freak and I am being punished for it" and a message from Tammy to her sister stating "that bitch is in hiding" in response to Tammy's sister's message that Victim was not at her place of work. Tammy's texts also stated that after the affair was uncovered, Sidney "had to stay chained to the bed until further notice while I live my life as a single woman." Another witness testified she saw Sidney restrained at home.
On the evening of December 17, 2013, six weeks after her affair with Sidney ended, Victim went on a date with a man her own age. During the date, Victim was happy and laughing. Her date dropped Victim off at her apartment after 1:00 a.m. on December 18, 2013. Meanwhile, Sidney and Tammy were, by their own admission, together. Location data from their iPhones indicated they were at Longbeard's Bar until 12:30 a.m. At around 1:15 a.m., Sidney purchased a pregnancy-test kit from Walmart. Sidney and Tammy then went to an area near a Kangaroo Express Gas Station. At 1:33 a.m., video from the Kangaroo Express showed Sidney leaving his truck and calling Victim for the first time since their affair ended-from a payphone at the Kangaroo Express. The call lasted four minutes and fifty seconds.
After receiving the payphone call, Victim called her roommate Brianna Warrelmann, who was out of town. Victim was upset and scared. Warrelmann calmed Victim down and told her not to call Sidney back or do anything rash. However, it appears Victim changed into her favorite outfit and-according to the location data from her cell phone-left her apartment at 2:31 a.m., arriving near Longbeard's Bar at 2:42 a.m. While in the vicinity of Longbeard's Bar, Victim called the Kangaroo Express payphone nine times. None of the calls were answered. Meanwhile, the cell phone evidence indicates Sidney and Tammy returned to their home.
After waiting at Longbeard's Bar for a while, Victim also returned home, where, at 3:16 and again at 3:17 a.m., she called Sidney's iPhone. The first call to Sidney's iPhone went to voicemail, but the second call lasted a little over four minutes. Location data from Victim's phone showed that after this call, Victim left her apartment and traveled to the Landing, a place where-according to an analysis of her cellphone location data-she was not in the habit of going. While at the Landing, Victim called Sidney's iPhone four more times: at 3:38 a.m., 3:39 a.m., 3:40 a.m., and 3:41 a.m. All four calls went to voicemail. The 3:41 a.m. phone call was the last one made from Victim's phone, and to this date, there has been no further activity on Victim's phone. There was no activity on the Moorers' iPhones between 3:30 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. However, at 4:37 a.m., Tammy texted Sidney for the first time since November 2, 2013, and Sidney texted back.
Police officers discovered that two surveillance systems located along a road that goes to the Landing had captured images of a pickup truck driving between the Moorers' home and the Landing in the early morning hours of December 18, 2013. One was a home surveillance system located five minutes from the Landing, which showed a dark pickup truck heading towards the Landing at approximately 3:45 a.m. and then returning nine minutes later. The second was from a business' surveillance system located two or three minutes from the Landing, which showed a dark pickup truck going towards the Landing at 3:39 a.m. and returning from the Landing at 3:46 a.m. (The time stamps of the videos are not synchronized to each other, so there was a few minutes' variation between them). The State asked a forensic video analyst, Grant Fredericks, to assist them in identifying the truck from the videos. After conducting many tests, including a "headlight spread pattern analysis," Fredericks formed the opinion the truck in the video footage was the Moorers' Ford F-150.
A Horry County Grand Jury indicted Sidney and Tammy for kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap Victim on or about December 18, 2013. They were tried separately.
Before his trial began, Sidney moved to exclude Fredericks' expert testimony, and Tammy joined in the motion. Tammy and Sidney presented their own expert, Bruce Koenig, to dispute the reliability of Fredericks' opinion that the truck in the footage belonged to the Moorers. The circuit court qualified Fredericks as an expert but stated that any objections to the scope of his opinion could be raised at trial.
At Tammy's trial, the State moved to exclude any alibi evidence from Tammy's children, sister, and mother because Tammy did not comply with the alibi defense notice procedures outlined in Rule 5(e)(1), SCRCrimP. The trial court granted the motion. The trial court also granted Tammy's motion to sequester the witnesses.
During the trial, the State presented evidence from police investigators; a cellphone location data analyst; Victim's coworkers; Victim's roommate; the man with whom Victim went on her December 17, 2013 date; testimony indicating the Moorers' surveillance system was likely functional on the night of December 18, 2013; and over Tammy's objection, Fredericks' expert forensic video testimony. Also over Tammy's objection, the State presented the content of Tammy's sexually explicit text messages to a younger man, as well as messages mentioning her use of marijuana.
The State sought to paint the picture that, in the weeks before Victim's disappearance, Tammy was infuriated with Sidney for having an affair with Victim; did not respect Victim; was obsessed with Victim and the affair; sought revenge on Sidney; and, upon hearing the rumors that Victim was pregnant with Sidney's child, sought to dispose of Victim and her unborn child. The State's theory of the case was on the night of Victim's disappearance, Tammy had control over Sidney's iPhone and actions, and she and Sidney lured Victim to the Landing by asking Victim to take the...
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