Terry v. State

• Decision Date: 05 August 2003
• Docket Number: No. A03A1474.,A03A1474.
• Citation: Terry v. State, 262 Ga.App. 654, 586 S.E.2d 357 (Ga. App. 2003)
• Parties: TERRY v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

586 S.E.2d 357

262 Ga. App. 654

TERRY v.The STATE.

No. A03A1474.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

August 5, 2003.

Timothy L. Lam, Monticello, for appellant.

Fredric D. Bright, Dist. Atty., Shelley S. Tice, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.

BARNES, Judge.

Joseph Terry was convicted of cruelty to children and sentenced to serve 20 years.¹He appeals, arguing that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of a similar transaction through the testimony of the investigating officer.Finding no error, we affirm.

We will reverse a trial court's decision to admit evidence of a similar transaction only if the court has abused its discretion.Mangham v. State,234 Ga.App. 567, 569(1), 507 S.E.2d 806(1998).After a hearing pursuant to Uniform Superior CourtRule 31.3(B), the trial court must determine whether the State has shown three things: (1) that it seeks to introduce evidence of the independent offense for an appropriate purpose and not to show the defendant's bad character; (2) that sufficient evidence establishes that the accused committed the independent offense; and (3) that a sufficient connection or similarity exists between the independent offense and the crime charged, so that proof of the former tends to prove the latter.Williams v. State,261 Ga. 640, 642(2)(b), 409 S.E.2d 649(1991).The independent offense admitted in this case involved Terry's physically abusive conduct toward family members within the family home.

The rule allowing the admission of similar transaction evidence is usually applied more liberally with evidence of prior attempts by the accused to commit the same crime upon the victim of the offense for which he stands charged.Certain otherwise inexplicable assaults, such as occur in a series of incidents of wife or child abuse, particularly lend themselves to this exception to the other offenses rule on questions of both identity and motive.

(Citation and punctuation omitted.)Sapeu v. State,222 Ga.App. 509, 510(4), 474 S.E.2d 703(1996).

In this case, Terry was accused of injuring his year-old son.He was alone with the child when he called the child's mother and told her the child had hit his head on the fireplace hearth and "was not acting right."The mother rushed home to find the child in his baby bed with a knot on his forehead, his eyes rolled back in his head, and breathing irregularly.She took the child to the doctor immediately, and from there the child was taken by helicopter to Egleston Hospital in Atlanta.The child was in a coma and on a breathing machine for some period of time and remained hospitalized for a month.

A physician expert in child abuse evaluation testified that the child had bruises over his forehead, his left temple, his back, and his thighs.A CT scan showed internal bleeding between the child's skull and brain, his eyes were dilated, and he had many retinal hemorrhages, all consistent with "shaken baby syndrome."She concluded that the injuries were not caused by a fall and that the child had been abused.The State's similar transaction evidence consisted of the testimony of a Gwinnett County Police Department detective who taught a drug abuse education class in 1994, which Terry's fifth-grade stepdaughter attended weekly.The detective testified that she noticed in November 1994 that the child had a bruised face and swollen eye, but when questioned said she had injured herself by falling.The next month, the detective noticed that both of the child's eyes were bruised.When questioned, the child burst into tears and ran out of the room, and the detective called...