State v. Wyatt

• Decision Date: 02 June 2014
• Docket Number: No. S14A0317.,S14A0317.
• Citation: State v. Wyatt, 295 Ga. 257, 759 S.E.2d 500 (Ga. 2014)
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: The STATE v. WYATT.

295 Ga. 257

759 S.E.2d 500

The STATE

v.WYATT.

No. S14A0317.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

June 2, 2014.

Daniel J. Porter, District Attorney, Lindsay Beth Gardner, Asst. Dist. Atty., Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office, Lawrenceville, for appellant.

David Leroy Whitman, Lawrenceville, for appellee.

NAHMIAS, Justice.

AppelleeJohn Randall Wyatt was indicted in Gwinnett County on seven charges related to the death of two-year-old Andrea Marginean.After the trial court granted his special demurrers on four of the counts, the State filed this interlocutory appeal.We reverse.

1.(a) Although not offered in relation to the special demurrers, the following evidence presented during a hearing on the admissibility of Wyatt's statements to the police provides some background information about the circumstances of this case.On the morning of April 11, 2009, Wyatt, who was then 29 years old, was babysitting Andrea and her two brothers, aged four and six.He had been babysitting the three children regularly for the past several months.When their mother, Nicole Marginean, got home around 1 p.m. that day, Andrea was essentially unresponsive, and Ms. Marginean took her to a local hospital.Andrea died three days later.

After taking Andrea to the hospital, Ms. Marginean called Wyatt and told him the police were looking for him.Wyatt voluntarily went to the police station, where he was questioned for an hour and a half before being advised of his rights pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona,384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694(1966).At first Wyatt told the officers the following: When he awoke around 9 a.m. that morning, he checked on Andrea, discovered that her diaper was overflowing with feces, and took her to the bathroom to clean her off and change her diaper.She did not like taking baths and began screaming on the way to the bathroom.In the bathroom, Wyatt laid Andrea down on the tile floor, reasoning that the tile would be easier to clean, but she would not remain still and began banging her head on the underside of the toilet.He grabbed her to hold her down but then had difficulty reaching the water.This continued for some time, with Wyatt trying to clean and calm Andrea and her banging her head on the floor, the toilet, and the tub.Once she was clean, Andrea stood up on her own, Wyatt helped her put on her pants, and he then carried her back to her bedroom where she fell asleep.Later, he checked on her and discovered that her breathing was labored.He began CPR in an attempt to remove the phlegm he believed was obstructing her breathing.Ms. Marginean returned home at that point and took Andrea to the hospital.

After the officers told Wyatt that his story was inconsistent with the injuries the doctors had found on Andrea, Wyatt changed his account, saying that before the diaper incident Andrea had been disobeying him and sliding down the stairs on her back.After she slid down the stairs twice, he grabbed her and took her to the bathroom, and it was then that she defecated on herself and him.He first maintained that everything else he had said was true, but he then admitted that while he was trying to calm Andrea down in the bathroom, he hit her on the head once or twice with an open hand.

After Wyatt said that he had hit Andrea, the officers took a short break.When they returned, they explained to Wyatt that they wanted to keep talking to him, but that he had said something that could result in his being indicted for battery and so they needed to read him his rights.The officers read him his Miranda rights; they then resumed questioning him for another half hour, and Wyatt confirmed that he had struck Andrea and demonstrated how he struck her.Wyatt was then arrested.¹

(b) About three months later, on July 8, 2009, a grand jury indicted Wyatt for felony murder (Count 1), two counts of aggravated battery (Counts 2 and 3), and cruelty to children in the first degree (Count 4).Counts 1 and 2 alleged that Wyatt committed aggravated battery by depriving Andrea “of a member of her body, to wit: her brain, by striking her head against a hard object.”Count 3 alleged that Wyatt “seriously disfigur[ed] a member of [Andrea's] body, to wit: her back and thighs with bruises, by striking her against a hard object.”Count 4 alleged that Wyatt did “willfully deprive [Andrea] of necessary sustenance, to wit: did fail to seek medical attention in a timely manner, to the extent that the child's health was jeopardized.”

Shortly after his indictment, Wyatt filed a motion to suppress the statements he made to the police.The case then languished for almost four years, until a Jackson–Denno hearing on that motion was held on July 19, 2013.The following week, on July 25, 2013, a grand jury re-indicted Wyatt, now charging him with three counts of felony murder (Counts 1–3), aggravated battery (Count 4), aggravated assault (Count 5), and cruelty to children (Count 6).²In the new indictment, the State removed the language alleging that Wyatt struck the victim against a hard object.Count 1, felony murder based on aggravated battery, and Count 4, aggravated battery, allege that Wyatt rendered useless the brain of Andrea, a child, “by causing bleeding to and damage to her brain.”Count 2, felony murder based on aggravated assault, alleges the Wyatt caused the death of Andrea “by causing bleeding to and damage to the brain,” and Count 5, aggravated assault, alleges that Wyatt assaulted Andrea, a child, “with an object the exact nature of which is unknown to the members of the Grand Jury, which, when used offensively against another person is likely to result in serious bodily injury.”Count 3 charges felony murder based on cruelty to children in the first degree by failing to seek medical attention for Andrea, which is the offense charged in Count 6.

Wyatt filed special demurrers to Counts 1, 2, 4, and 5, the charges related to aggravated battery and aggravated assault.On August 19, 2013, the trial court held a hearing, at which the State introduced, without objection, reports from the hospitals where the victim was treated and from the medical examiner.The hospital reports showed that the doctor at the local hospital to which Andrea was first taken noticed extensive bruising on several parts of her body and ordered a head CT scan, which showed a large subdural hematoma.Andrea was then flown to a hospital in Atlanta, where doctors performed emergency surgery, which proved to be unsuccessful; Andrea was pronounced dead three days later.The medical examiner's report concluded that the cause of death was “closed head trauma with subdural hematoma, delayed effects” and that the manner of death was homicide.The report also said that “surgical intervention, producing associated hemorrhage within the scalp, confounds the assessment of the presence or absence of an impact site.”

At the demurrer hearing, the State argued that the indictment was sufficiently specific and that it was permitted to allege in Count 5 that the object with which Wyatt assaulted Andrea was unknown because her head could have been hit by “the toilet or the tub or by the defendant's own hand.”On August 23, 2013, the trial court summarily granted Wyatt's special demurrers to Counts 1, 2, 4, and 5.The State requested a certificate of immediate review, which the trial court granted, and then filed an application for interlocutory appeal, which this Court granted to consider whether those four counts as indicted were sufficient to put Wyatt on notice as to what he must defend against at trial.³

2.“Every indictment of the grand jury which states the offense in the terms and language of this Code or so plainly that the nature of the offense charged may easily be understood by the jury shall be deemed sufficiently technical and correct.”OCGA § 17–7–54.Thus, an indictment “couched in the language of the statute alleged to have been violated” is not subject to a general demurrer.Carter v. State,252 Ga. 502, 504, 315 S.E.2d 646(1984).Counts 1, 2, 4, and 5 track the statutory language for the crimes they allege, so they are not subject to a general demurrer, as Wyatt acknowledges.

An indictment that is not subject to a general demurrer may, however, be subject to a special demurrer, which challenges the specificity of the indictment.SeeLowe v. State,276 Ga. 538, 539, 579 S.E.2d 728(2003).

“The true test of the sufficiency of an indictment to withstand a special demurrer‘is not whether it could have been made more definite and certain, but whether it contains the elements of the offense intended to be charged, and sufficiently apprises the defendant of what he must be prepared to meet, and, in case any other proceedings are taken against him for a similar offense, whether the record shows with accuracy to what extent he may plead a former acquittal or conviction.’ ”

State v. English,276 Ga. 343, 346, 578 S.E.2d 413(2003)(citations omitted).See alsoGreen v. State,292 Ga. 451, 452, 738 S.E.2d 582(2013)(“The purpose of an indictment is to inform the accused of the charges against him and to protect the accused against another prosecution for the same offense.”).

Wyatt's special demurrers are based on his contention that the aggravated assault accusation, which states that the object used to assault the victim is unknown and is silent at to how the object was used, and the aggravated battery accusation, which is silent as to the way in which the battery was committed, do not allow him to prepare for trial on those charges and their corresponding felony murder charges.We will consider each felony murder count and its underlying felony count together, and examine whether the entirety of the indictment provides sufficient detail about the crimes Wyatt is accused of committing.SeeHester v. State,283 Ga. 367, 368, 659 S.E.2d 600(2008)( “[The rule that] each count must be wholly complete within itself applies only to the...