State v. Thomas
| Decision Date | 03 May 2021 |
| Docket Number | S21A0324, S21X0325 |
| Citation | 311 Ga. 407,858 S.E.2d 52 |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
| Parties | The STATE v. THOMAS; and vice versa. |
Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Lyndsey H. Rudder, Mathew E. Plott, Assistant District Attorneys; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, for the State.
Law Firm of Shein & Brandenburg, Marcia G. Shein, Elizabeth A. Brandenburg ; The Law Offices of Howard J. Weintraub, Howard J. Weintraub, Benjamin B. Alper, for Thomas.
Tyler Thomas was convicted of malice murder and a firearm crime in connection with the fatal shooting of Ashley Brown during a planned drug deal. The trial court granted Thomas's motion for new trial, however, ruling that the State violated Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), by failing to disclose a deal between the State and its witness Jaleesa Glenn. On appeal, the State argues that the order granting a new trial should be reversed, while Thomas argues in his cross-appeal that the evidence presented at his trial was legally insufficient to support the jury's guilty verdicts, so a re-trial should be barred by double jeopardy. We reject the arguments in both cases and affirm the trial court's grant of a new trial.1
1. The evidence presented at Thomas's trial showed the following. Ricardo Thomas, Thomas's co-indictee and cousin, provided much of the evidence about the events surrounding the shooting, testifying as follows. On June 22, 2013, Ricardo, who was a drug dealer, arranged for his friend Brown to buy more than nine ounces of cocaine from Thomas for more than $10,000. Ricardo communicated with Thomas and Brown by cell phone throughout the day to arrange the drug deal as he traveled from Carrollton, where he and Thomas lived, to Atlanta, where Brown was staying. Between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m., Melvin Thomas, Jr., another cousin who also lived in Carrollton, picked up Ricardo to drive to see a car show at the World Congress Center in Atlanta. After first stopping at the house of Melvin's mother in Riverdale, Ricardo and Melvin got to downtown Atlanta around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m., but they missed their exit several times and were not able to make it to the show. Instead, they went to an Applebee's restaurant in Atlanta, arriving there around 7:00 p.m.
After dinner, Ricardo and Melvin went to some apartments close by, where they stayed for 30 to 45 minutes and met and talked to Thomas. Then Thomas left to get cocaine for the deal, and Ricardo and Melvin went to a nearby McDonald's restaurant, where Ricardo met Brown, who was driving a burgundy Cadillac Escalade. After about ten minutes at McDonald's, Melvin left. Brown then drove Ricardo to a gas station about 15 minutes away. While there, Ricardo talked on the phone with Thomas, who told them to meet him at the Dogwood Apartments, which were about ten minutes away.
As Ricardo and Brown were nearing the apartment complex, Thomas called Ricardo and gave him further instructions, including telling him to back into a certain parking spot near the back of the complex. Thomas was already there, in the driver's seat of a maroon Nissan Altima that belonged to his girlfriend Jaleesa Glenn; a man Ricardo had heard people call "Turtle" was in the car too. Thomas got out of the Altima and into the back passenger's side of the Escalade, sliding toward the middle; ‘‘Turtle’’ stayed in the Altima. In the Escalade, Ricardo asked Thomas if the cocaine was "clean"; Thomas said that it was. Brown and Thomas exchanged brief greetings. Then Thomas suddenly pulled out a gun, pointed it at Brown, and told Brown to "[g]ive it up." Brown moved toward the driver's door as Ricardo jumped out of the car and ran away. As he ran, he heard two or three gunshots come from inside the Escalade. He looked back and saw ‘‘Turtle’’ get out of the Altima. Ricardo heard more gunshots, which sounded like they were coming from outside the Escalade.
Ricardo then saw the Altima pull out of the apartment complex with the Escalade following it.
Ricardo walked away from the apartment complex and called Thomas and Brown, but neither man answered. Then Thomas called Ricardo, asked if he was all right, and told him not to say anything. Ricardo called yet another cousin to get a ride back to Carrollton. Ricardo next saw Thomas about two weeks after the shooting. Thomas again told Ricardo not to say anything about what happened, threatening to put out an order for Ricardo to be shot if he said anything. Thomas also told Ricardo that Brown's Escalade had hit and damaged the Altima on the back right side.2
Other evidence presented at trial provided additional details about Brown's murder and some corroboration of Ricardo's testimony. A witness testified that "towards 11 o'clock" on the night of the murder, Brown's Escalade crashed into a house a few miles away from the Dogwood Apartments. When the police arrived there, the car's engine was still running, and Brown was dead in the driver's seat. The back driver-side window was broken; the lack of glass near the window indicated that it had been broken at a different location. The medical examiner who conducted Brown's autopsy testified that Brown had been shot five times, causing his death, and the trajectory of all of those shots was consistent with the shots coming from the back seat area of the car while Brown was in the front seat. Bullets and cartridge cases found in Brown's body, in his Escalade, and in the Dogwood Apartments parking lot indicated that at least two guns were used in the shooting.3 The police also found broken tinted window glass in the parking lot in a location that, if the Escalade were backed into the parking spot, was consistent with the broken back window on the Escalade.4
Melvin testified that between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m. on the day of the car show, he called Ricardo and then picked him up to drive to Atlanta to go to the show.5 They first went to Melvin's mother's house in Riverdale, and then, after they missed the exit for the car show several times, they went to Applebee's for dinner. They then met with Thomas briefly at some apartments,6 before Ricardo and Melvin went to McDonald's, where Ricardo met with a man in a maroon Escalade and Melvin left. Melvin did not see Ricardo or Thomas again that evening.
Glenn testified that she and Thomas were "old friends" and that she let Thomas borrow her Altima on the day of the murder. He took the car late in the evening and returned it the next morning. When he returned it, the car had been damaged on the back right side. Thomas told her that a motorcycle had hit him and that she should file a report falsely telling the police and her insurance company that she had been involved in a hit and run. She did that, and her insurance company paid for the car repair.
The first 911 call related to the murder was received at 11:25 p.m. on June 22, 2013.7 Ricardo's cell phone records showed that at 11:27 and 11:34 that night, his phone was near the Dogwood Apartments. The records also showed that between noon and 9:00 p.m. on June 22, Ricardo's phone made or received 82 calls, including 13 with Thomas's phone and ten with Brown's phone. In the hours leading up to the murder – between 9:00 p.m. and 11:23 p.m. – Ricardo's phone made or received 53 more calls, including 18 with Thomas's phone and five with Brown's phone. The call at 11:23 p.m. was made by Ricardo's phone to Thomas's phone but lasted zero seconds. The next and final call between their phones that night was a call Thomas's phone made to Ricardo's phone at 11:34 p.m.; it lasted one minute and five seconds.8 No evidence was presented about the location of Thomas's cell phone or of any calls between Thomas's and Brown's phones.9
On November 18, 2013, about five months after the murder, Thomas was arrested at a gas station in Carrollton. Numerous vehicles driven by law enforcement officers from the Carrollton Police Department, Carroll County Sheriff's Office, and the United States Marshals Service followed Thomas into the gas station and tried to box in his car. Thomas began to drive away, hitting a pedestrian in the process. Officers then rammed Thomas's car and arrested him.10
Thomas did not testify at his trial. His defense was that the State's case rested on Ricardo's accomplice testimony, which had not been sufficiently corroborated.11 Thomas was ultimately convicted of malice murder and a firearm charge.
2. In his motion for new trial as amended, Thomas alleged that the State violated his right to due process under Brady by not disclosing a deal between the State and Glenn. He also argued that the evidence presented at his trial was insufficient to support his conviction because Ricardo's testimony was not sufficiently corroborated as required by OCGA § 24-14-8, which says: 12
At the hearing on the motion, Glenn testified as follows. At the time of Thomas's trial, she had a pending shoplifting charge from Carroll County, which would be a felony because of her prior shoplifting convictions.13 The prosecutor who tried Thomas's case, Fulton County Assistant District Attorney Adam Abbate, came to her house with an investigator about two weeks before the trial to ask about her Altima.14 Glenn told Abbate that she did not remember if Thomas had the Altima on the night of the murder. Abbate told her that if she did not cooperate, she and her mother would be subpoenaed. After that interview, Glenn talked to the attorney representing her on the shoplifting charge and decided to meet with the prosecutor again. She talked to Abbate at the courthouse during Thomas's trial.15...
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