State v. Worsley

• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: BLACKWELL
• Citation: State v. Worsley, 293 Ga. 315, 745 S.E.2d 617 (Ga. 2013)
• Decision Date: 01 July 2013
• Docket Number: No. S13A0132.,S13A0132.
• Parties: The STATE v. WORSLEY.

293 Ga. 315

745 S.E.2d 617

The STATE

v.WORSLEY.

No. S13A0132.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

July 1, 2013.

Julia Anne Fessenden Slater, Dist. Atty., William Donald Kelly Jr., Asst. Dist. Atty., Office of the District Attorney, Columbus, Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Sabrina Dawn Graham, Asst. Atty. Gen., Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Senior Asst. Atty. Gen., Dana Elizabeth Weinberger, Asst. Atty. Gen., Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Asst. Atty. Gen., Department of Law, Atlanta, for appellants

William J. Mason, Columbus, Georgia, for appellee.

BLACKWELL, Justice.

Appellee Johnnie Worsley was tried by a Muscogee County jury and convicted of the rape and murder of his seventeen-year-old stepdaughter, Yameika Bell, and the murder of his wife, Flora Worsley. For each murder, Appellee was sentenced to death. Nearly fourteen years later, the trial court granted a new trial to Appellee with respect to his death sentences, finding that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel in the sentencing phase of his 1998 trial. The State appeals, and we reverse and reinstate the sentences of death.¹

1. Our analysis begins with a summary of the evidence of the crimes of which Appellee was convicted.² Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence shows that Appellee and Ms. Worsley were married in 1984, but they separated only four years later, apparently because Appellee was addicted to cocaine. They began to speak again in 1993, although they continued to live apart. Then, in January 1995, Appellee moved into a house in Columbus with Ms. Worsley and Ms. Bell, having assured Ms. Worsley that he no longer was using drugs. Within weeks, however, Ms. Worsley began to have problems with Appellee. She noticed that he was increasingly hostile, and she began to worry that he might be using drugs again. In late February, Ms. Worsley and Appellee argued about his drug use, and when she said that she would leave him if he used drugs again, he responded that he would kill her if she left him.³ Ms. Bell also had problems with Appellee. In particular, on the morning of March 6, Ms. Bell discovered that money was missing from her wallet. That evening, Ms. Bell confronted Appellee about the missing money, and although he denied that he had taken it, he gave her some money.

On March 7, family members began to worry about Ms. Worsley and Ms. Bell. Each morning, Ms. Worsley usually called her mother, but that day, her mother did not hear from her. Her mother did hear from Appellee, however, who called and asked for forgiveness “for what I have done.” When asked exactly what he had done, Appellee did not respond and instead disconnected the call. The family also learned that Ms. Bell did not report for school on March 7, and she did not pick up her sister after school, as she was expected to do. That evening, the family contacted law enforcement, but responding officers found no signs of foul play around the exterior of the home that Appellee shared with Ms. Worsley and Ms. Bell, and they did not, therefore, enter the home. The officers instead advised the family to make a missing persons report the next day.

On the morning of March 8, a friend of the family entered the home, where he saw a body on the floor of a bedroom. He immediately exited the home, and the family contacted law enforcement again. This time, when officers responded, they entered the home, and they discovered the bodies of Ms. Worsley and Ms. Bell in a bedroom. The officers noticed blood throughout the home—in another bedroom, a hallway, a bathroom, the kitchen, and a porch—and they observed that the bedroom in which the bodies were found was in “extreme disarray” and appeared to have been ransacked. In that bedroom, the officers saw “numerous blood patterns and [spatters] against the walls, by the bed, on the wall, on the floor, next to the bed, on a locker.” The body of Ms. Worsley was on the floor of the bedroom, lying in a pool of blood, and partially covered with a quilt or comforter. The body of Ms. Bell was on the bed, underneath a “huge mass of comforters and bedding.” Ms. Bell was naked, lying across the bed, with her feet on the floor and her legs spread apart. Her torn panties were found at her feet, and officers observed a white vaginal discharge. Also in the bedroom, officers discovered a butcher knife lying next to Ms. Worsley's body, a baseball bat against the wall, and an emptied purse.

According to the medical examiner, Ms. Bell died as a result of multiple stab and slash wounds. In all, she sustained nine stab woundsto her neck, eleven slash wounds to her neck, and nine stab wounds to her chest and upper abdomen. The wounds to her neck severed her trachea, carotid artery, and jugular veins, and based on foam around her neck, the medical examiner opined that Ms. Bell was “clearly alive and breathing” when her neck was stabbed and slashed repeatedly.The wounds to her chest involved injuries to her lungs, diaphragm, and left kidney. Ms. Bell also had defensive wounds on her arms and hands. In addition, the medical examiner found evidence that Ms. Bell had been penetrated vaginally and that her legs had been forced apart.

Ms. Worsley, the medical examiner found, died as a result of a stab wound to her neck and two blunt force impacts to her head. The stab wound was a deep one, and it alone would have caused her death, the medical examiner explained. The blunt force impacts fractured her skull, which was “crushed inward,” and injured her brain, and these impacts also would have caused her death, even without the stab wound. The medical examiner opined that the impacts to her head were consistent with “a full force swing with a [baseball bat].” Ms. Worsley also had a scrape on her chin, which indicated that she was struck and fell face-first onto the floor, after which she was moved onto her back.

On the afternoon of March 8, Appellee drove his white Oldsmobile Cutlass to a car dealership in Phenix City, Alabama. At the dealership, he told a salesperson that he was interested in buying a car, and he took a blue Geo Metro for a test drive, having assured the salesperson that he “just wanted to go right down the street” and “would only be gone about five minutes at the most.” Appellee, however, never returned the Metro. In the Cutlass that he left behind at the dealership, officers later found a note in his handwriting. The note said:

May you all forget for what I done. I now must go to hell and pay for what I am, but still love you. Ashley Lashonya, [ ⁴] please know you are hurt, love, Don.[ ⁵]

Officers lifted eight latent fingerprints from the note, six of which matched the prints of Appellee. Also in the Cutlass, officers found two ATM receipts, both dated in the early morning hours of March 8.

That evening, Appellee arrived at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Twiggs County, where he met with a deacon and asked to speak with the pastor. Appellee told the deacon that he was planning to kill himself and that he needed “forgiveness of my sins and for the crime that I have just committed.” When asked about the crime, Appellee explained, “I've just killed my wife and daughter.” Eventually, Appellee spoke with the pastor and repeated his plea for forgiveness. Appellee then left the church, and a churchgoer called the Twiggs County Sheriff's Office.⁶

A little while later, the Sheriff of Twiggs County saw Appellee driving a small, blue car on Interstate 16. The Sheriff signaled for Appellee to stop, but Appellee instead attempted to flee, driving away as fast as 95 miles per hour. The Sheriff gave chase, and about four miles down the road, Appellee stopped. When Appellee exited his car, he admitted to the Sheriff that he had killed his wife. The Sheriff held Appellee until Columbus investigators arrived, and after they took custody of Appellee, they noted that he had scrapes on the right side of his face, a cut on his right hand, and what appeared to be blood on his shirt.

Appellee subsequently gave a statement to the Columbus investigators. Among other things, Appellee said that, on the evening of March 6, Ms. Worsley went to work a late shift at her place of employment, and he went to bed. Early on the morning of March 7—around 2:00 a.m., Appellee said—he awoke, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, and went to the bedroom where Ms. Bell was sleeping. He admitted that he then stabbed Ms. Bell, left the house, purchased crack cocaine, and eventually returned to the house to smoke the crack. Around 8:00 a.m., he said, Ms. Worsley returned home from work, and he hit her in the head with a baseball bat and then stabbed her in the neck. Appellee admitted that he covered both bodies with bedding. He also admitted that he subsequently took a car from a dealership because he knew that law enforcement would be looking for his car. About the fact that Ms. Bell had been found naked, Appellee said that he must have ripped her clothes off, and he confessed that “[m]aybe I did go intend to rape her that night. So, maybe I did.” He also admitted that Ms. Bell probably tried to fight him off as he attacked her. A video recording of this statement was admitted at trial and played for the jury.

2. Our analysis continues with a summary of the case presented by the defense at trial. Appellee was represented by two lawyers, one of whom had been practicing as a trial lawyer for 15 years, had extensive experience in criminal defense, and had previously represented defendants in two other death penalty cases.⁷ Because Appellee had admitted before trial—on several occasions, and to several persons—that he killed Ms. Worsley and Ms. Bell, he was not well positioned at trial to dispute the evidence that he killed both women, and he did not. Instead, Appellee pled guilty but mentally ill to the murders, and at trial, his lawyers freely admitted that he killed both women. Appellee did, however, dispute the rape charge, and more important for the purposes of our...