Teasley v. State

• Decision Date: 07 October 2013
• Docket Number: No. S13A1231.,S13A1231.
• Parties: TEASLEY v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

293 Ga. 758

749 S.E.2d 710

TEASLEY

v.The STATE.

No. S13A1231.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Oct. 7, 2013.

Charles E.W. Barrow, Athens, for appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Samuel S. Olens, Attorney General, Rochelle Warren Gordon, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, Atlanta, James Bradley Smith, District Attorney, Samuel Elias Skelton, Assistant District Attorney, Piedmont Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, Homer, for appellee.

NAHMIAS, Justice.

Appellant Emory Teasley and his brothers Christopher (“Chris”) and Tyrone Teasley were indicted and tried together and found guilty of all charges: the malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault of James Riden; the aggravated assault of Markez Jones; possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime; and tampering with evidence.¹ We previously affirmed Chris's convictions, see Teasley v. State, 288 Ga. 468, 704 S.E.2d 800 (2011) (raising only a sufficiency of the evidence argument), and we now affirm Appellant's convictions as well.

[293 Ga. 759]1. In Chris's appeal, we summarized the evidence presented at trial as follows:

Construed most strongly in support of the verdicts, the evidence shows that Jones received a call informing him that his 15–year–old cousin Jarvis Evans had been beaten by [Chris] and his two brothers and that [Chris] and Tyrone held Evans while [Appellant] hit him. Later on the same day, [Appellant] called Jones, who said “it's on,” and [Appellant] responded, “One of y'all going to die.” [Chris] drove his brothers through Evans' neighborhood where they saw Jones and his uncle James Riden in the latter's vehicle, slowing down and staring the Teasley brothers down. Tyrone retrieved his gun from his mother's apartment where [Chris] and [Appellant] lived. [Chris] then drove his brothers to a local convenience store and pool hall [the Big H].

After arriving at the pool hall, Tyrone stated that, if Jones and Riden came there with their complaint, he would kill somebody. [Appellant] said for somebody to call them and send them up there. Jones received a phone call during which he could hear [Appellant] saying to tell them to come on up there. The caller informed Jones that the Teasley brothers were at the pool hall. Riden drove Jones to the pool hall where Jones asked [Appellant] why he jumped on Evans. [Appellant] cursed at Jones, who hit [Appellant] in the jaw. Although Tyrone testified that his brothers did not know that he had a gun, [Appellant] told Tyrone to shoot Jones. As Tyrone was firing his gun and Jones was running away, [Appellant] said to shoot Riden, and Jones then saw his uncle drop to the ground, fatally wounded. [Chris], who had been near [Appellant] just before the shooting, ran to his car and drove his brothers away from the scene of the crimes. Tyrone told [Chris] where to drive and threw the gun out the car window into a wooded area.

Id. at 468–469, 704 S.E.2d 800. Although the Teasleys claimed that Tyrone shot at Riden and Jones in self-defense, several eyewitnesses said that they did not see either victim with a gun, and no gun was found on Riden or Jones or at the crime scene.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence presented at trial and summarized above was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to reject Appellant's justification defense and find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). See also OCGA § 16–2–20 (parties to a crime); Vega v. State, 285 Ga. 32, 33, 673 S.E.2d 223 (2009) (“ ‘It was for the jury to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence.’ ” (citation omitted)).

2. During the trial, at which Chris did not testify, the court admitted into evidence statements that Chris and Appellant had made to the police shortly after the shootings. Each statement was redacted to eliminate any mention of co-defendants.² Appellant contends that because Chris's statement was inconsistent with his own statement, the jury could not possibly follow the court's limiting instruction to consider Chris's statement only against Chris, resulting in a violation of Appellant's Sixth Amendment right of confrontation under Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968). We disagree.

“A defendant's Sixth Amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against him is violated when co-defendants are tried jointly and the testimonial statement of a co-defendant who does not testify at trial is used to implicate the other co-defendant in the crime.” Herbert v. State, 288 Ga. 843, 848, 708 S.E.2d 260 (2011) (citing Bruton ). However, it is well-settled that if a co-defendant's statement does not refer to the existence of the defendant and is accompanied by jury instructions limiting its use to the case against the co-defendant giving the statement, the defendant's confrontation right is not violated even though, in light of the other evidence at trial, the jury might infer from the contents of the co-defendant's statement that the defendant was involved in the crimes. See Colton v. State, 292 Ga. 509, 511, 739 S.E.2d 380 (2013). See also Gray v. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185, 191, 118 S.Ct. 1151, 140 L.Ed.2d 294 (1998) (holding that “ ‘the Confrontation Clause is not violated by the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's confession with a proper limiting instruction when, as here, the confession is redacted to eliminate not only the defendant's name, but any reference to his or her existence’ ” (citation omitted)).

Chris's statement does not mention Appellant or implicate him by itself, and the trial court gave a proper limiting instruction. Thus, even though Chris's statement was inconsistent to some extent with Appellant's statement and the jury might have been able to infer from other evidence that Appellant was involved in the crimes, the admission of Chris's statement did not violate Appellant's right of confrontation.

Appellant also complains that the prosecutor's comment during his opening statement that Chris and Appellant gave separate statements that did not match improperly asked the jury to consider Chris's statement directly against Appellant, undoing the effect of the trial court's later limiting instruction. However, Appellant did not make a contemporaneous objection on the ground that the prosecutor was improperly linking the brothers' statements, and he is therefore procedurally barred from raising this complainton appeal. See Johnson v. State, 292 Ga. 785, 787, 741 S.E.2d 627 (2013).

In any event, any error in the prosecutor's opening statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See Ardis v. State, 290 Ga. 58, 62, 718 S.E.2d 526 (2011) (explaining that the test for determining whether a Bruton violation is harmless is whether the constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt). In his opening remarks, the prosecutor did not specify any inconsistencies between the two brothers' statements; the trial court later ruled that the prosecutor could not do so during the trial or in closing argument; and the prosecutor complied with that ruling. In addition, Appellant's statement was much more inconsistent with the other evidence in the case, including Tyrone's testimony that only Riden had a gun, and overall the State presented a strong case against Appellant. For these reasons, any error in the prosecutor's passing comment during opening statements was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

3. Appellant also contends that the trial court erred in admitting his statement into evidence, asserting that he was in police custody at the time he made it but was not advised of his constitutional rights as required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). We again disagree.

A person is considered to be in custody and Miranda warnings are required when a person is (1) formally arrested or (2) restrained to the degree associated with a formal arrest. Unless a reasonable person in the suspect's situation would perceive that he was in custody, Miranda warnings are not necessary. In reviewing a ruling on the admissibility of a defendant's statements where the facts are disputed, we accept the trial court's factual findings and credibility determinations unless they are clearly erroneous, but we independently apply the law to the facts.

Durden v. State, 293 Ga. 89, 95, 744 S.E.2d 9 (2013) (citations and punctuation omitted). Because it is undisputed that Appellant was not formally arrested at the time he spoke to the police, the question is whether a reasonable person in his situation would have perceived that he was in police custody. See Schutt v. State, 292 Ga. 625, 629, 740 S.E.2d 163 (2013).

(a) Pursuant to Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964), the trial court conducted a hearing on the third day of trial to determine whether Appellant's statement (and Chris's statement) would be admissible. The day before, Lieutenant Curott had testified that he received word on the night of the shootings that Appellant and Chris were on their way to the Winder police station of their own accord, and he instructed two officers to meet them there and take them into custody. He also said that he told Riden's family that the “two of them were in custody,” but he did not specify when he spoke to the family.

At the Jackson–Denno hearing, Detective Willoughby testified that he also learned that the two brothers were on the way to the police station and drove there to meet with them. When he arrived, the brothers were sitting in the lobby, with no officers standing around them. After introducing himself, the detective interviewed Chris for five to ten minutes, then Appellant for the same amount of time. He...