Taylor v. State

Citation867 S.E.2d 88,313 Ga. 5
Decision Date14 December 2021
Docket NumberS21A1092
Parties TAYLOR v. The STATE.
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia

John R. Monroe, John Monroe Law, PC, 156 Robert Jones Road, Dawsonville, Georgia 30534, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Mark Samuel Lindemann, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, David K. Getachew-Smith, Sr., Chief A.D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, S.W., 3rd Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Boggs, Presiding Justice.

After an October 2012 jury trial, Daniel Taylor was convicted of malice murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony in connection with the shooting death of his father, Richard.1 The trial court denied Taylor's motion for new trial, and he appeals, contending only that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of statutory law because it was entirely circumstantial and the State failed to exclude every reasonable hypothesis other than his guilt. Because the evidence was sufficient as a matter of statutory law, we affirm.

Construed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, the evidence showed that, in the early morning hours of May 12, 2011, Taylor, his mother, Cherrie Ann Taylor, and his father, Richard, were sleeping in the living room of their home. Shortly before 2:00 a.m., Taylor's father was killed by a single 9mm bullet to the chest. Taylor's half-brother, Glen, and Glen's teenage daughter were also present in the home. At trial, Taylor's family members claimed that they could not recall most of the events surrounding the shooting or testified inconsistently with earlier statements to police officers or emergency personnel. The State then presented evidence of the family members’ earlier statements, some of which were recorded and some testified to by witnesses, as follows.

The first police officer on the scene testified that Cherrie Ann told him she saw Taylor standing over his father and then heard gunshots. She identified Taylor by name, and when the officer found Taylor in the back yard of the house and asked him his name, he gave the officer the same name. The officer then detained Taylor and placed him in the back of a patrol car. An EMT who responded to the scene testified that Cherrie Ann told him that she heard gunshots and "saw her son standing over her husband with a gun in his hand."

At the scene, Cherrie Ann also gave a recorded statement to the lead investigator. She said that she, Richard, and Taylor were asleep in the living room, with Taylor sleeping on the floor between her and Richard. The sound of a gunshot woke her up and she saw Taylor, with a green gun in his hand, held "down to his side," standing over Richard. She screamed for someone to call the police, and Taylor left the room.

Glen also gave a recorded statement to the lead investigator, in which he stated that he was asleep in the basement when he heard Cherrie Ann screaming. He ran upstairs and saw Taylor in the family room, "pacing" with his hands in his pockets. Glen ran to find Cherrie Ann, and she told him, "Daniel [Taylor] was standing up over him and he shot him." Glen also stated that when the police arrived, Taylor "took off."

Approximately two weeks later, Glen's daughter was asked to give a recorded statement at Atlanta Police headquarters; she was accompanied by Cherrie Ann and Glen, who stated that they had additional information to give the lead investigator. Cherrie Ann told the investigator that she "was not one hundred percent sure" that it was Taylor standing over Richard with a green gun in his hand. Glen gave a second recorded statement, saying that when he came upstairs, Taylor walked past him from the kitchen-living room area into the family room and started pacing back and forth with his hands in his pockets, and then stopped and sat down. Glen asked Taylor, "What's the matter? What's the matter?" but Taylor did not answer. Glen told the investigator that the house doors were locked at night and only Cherrie Ann had a key. He also stated that on the day before the shooting, Taylor and Richard talked for a long time upstairs behind locked doors, and the family was never able to find out what they were discussing. Glen agreed with the investigator that this was "weird" or "odd." The lead investigator testified that Cherrie Ann also had referred to this conversation, stating that "her husband had a weird look to him" and that she asked what he and Taylor were talking about, but he would not tell her.

Glen's daughter gave a recorded statement, stating that she was in her bedroom in the middle of the night when Taylor came in and asked her what time it was. She stated that this was unusual. She saw him walk downstairs and "a few minutes later" heard gunshots. She went downstairs and found her grandmother, Cherrie Ann, screaming, and Taylor was not there.

While Glen and his daughter testified at trial that they could not remember much of what they told the police, Cherrie Ann changed her account of the incident entirely. She testified that the person she saw standing over her husband was a tall, heavy stranger with a limp, dressed in bulky clothing so that she could not tell if the person was a man or a woman, but she was certain the person was not Taylor. She did confirm, however, that the gun the stranger was holding was green and that she thought it was Taylor's gun.

The lead investigator testified that, after he took initial statements from Cherrie Ann and Glen, he spoke to Taylor, who was in the back of a patrol car. After reading Taylor the Miranda warnings,2 the investigator asked if Taylor "would be willing to tell me where the firearm" was. Taylor responded that, if the investigator would go to his bedroom and bring him his keys and a cross from his bed, he would tell the investigator where the gun was. The investigator went and got the items, and Taylor then told him that if he went into the room to the right of the front door,3 the gun would be underneath the cushion of the couch immediately on the left. The investigator looked under the cushion, where Taylor said the gun would be, and found a loaded, green Glock 9mm handgun with one round missing and an additional full magazine, as well as a black holster sitting on top of the same cushion.4

Evidence was also presented that Taylor previously purchased and registered the handgun the investigator found under the sofa cushion after Taylor directed him there. A ballistics expert testified that this pistol fired the 9mm shell casing found near Richard's body, and that the spent bullet recovered from the body, which was "extensively" fragmented, was consistent with having been fired from a Glock pistol. Gunshot primer residue was found on Taylor's hands, indicating that he was "in the vicinity" of a weapon when it was fired.

After a jury instruction on similar transaction evidence,5 Taylor's uncle testified about an incident that occurred approximately four weeks before the shooting. While the uncle and Taylor were at the uncle's house, Taylor without any warning pulled out a pistol and pointed it at his uncle's head, and then held him at gunpoint for about an hour while asking apparently random questions.6

In his brief on appeal, Taylor argues only that the evidence was circumstantial and that the State failed to exclude every reasonable hypothesis save for his guilt, as required by former OCGA § 24-4-6.7 The State does not concede that all the evidence presented...

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