Toomer v. State
| Decision Date | 19 November 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. S12A0976.,S12A0976. |
| Citation | 292 Ga. 49,734 S.E.2d 333 |
| Parties | TOOMER v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Kevin Christopher Armstrong, Office of the Public Defender, for appellant.
Katherine Lee Iannuzzi, Asst. Atty. Gen., Paula Khristian Smith, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Department of Law, Nicholas Elias Deeb, Asst. Dist. Atty., Gregory W. Edwards, Dist. Atty., Office of the District Attorney, for appellee.
Appellant Kasaem Toomer challenges his 2009 convictions for malice murder and other crimes in connection with the death of Justin Cox. We affirm.1
[292 Ga. 50]1. The evidence at trial, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, showed the following. Shortly after 10:00 p.m. on October 3, 2007, 19–year–old Justin Cox left his home in Albany, Georgia, where he lived with his parents, in his car. His parents became alarmed the next day when they realized that he had not come home the night before and discovered that he had failed to show up for work that morning. They contacted the police, who had already been alerted to a dead body found floating in the Flint River; it was the victim. The police found the victim's car in the Civic Center parking lot. The medical examiner testified that a quarter-sized, oval-shaped skull fracture with jagged edges on the left side of the victim's head was consistent with a forceful punch by someone wearing a ring like the one the police seized from Appellant. The large, heavy ring was described as similar to a brass knuckle. The cause of death was reported as blunt force trauma to the head and drowning.
The victim's phone records showed 33 calls between the victim and Appellant's cell phone in the two days before his death, leading the police to interview Appellant. The police spoke with him on October 11, 12, 15, and 17, 2007; he waived his Miranda rights in writing on each occasion. Video recordings of the first three interviews were admitted into evidence, along with statements Appellant handwrote on October 11 and 17.
In the October 11 interview and written statement, Appellant, after being shown a picture of the victim, denied ever having seen or heard of him until he saw a story about the victim's death on the news. When confronted with the cell phone records, Appellant tried to cast suspicion on a man named “Kentrell,” whose last name he said he did not know. Appellant claimed that he let Kentrell borrow his cell phone for several hours on the night the victim was killed.
In the October 12 interview, Appellant claimed that he lent his cell phone to a different person that night—Kentea Jones, who had long been wanted for questioning by the Albany Police Department in connection with other crimes and was believed to be living somewhere in Florida. Appellant claimed that Jones said that he and an accomplice had attempted to rob a white man and beat him to death because he did not have any money. Appellant again denied knowing the victim, but then he said that he was with Jones when Jones got into the victim's car on the night he was killed and that the victim had given him a ride a week earlier during which the victim propositioned Appellant for sex. Appellant insisted that he had told the police everything he knew about the incident and denied that he lied on October 11.
At that point, the officer questioning Appellant told him that she knew he was lying, said that he was under arrest for murder and making false statements, and left Appellant alone in the interview room. Appellant took a small bottle of cologne from his jacket pocket and drank it, lit his jacket on fire, and blocked the door. The police were able to enter the room a few minutes later and extinguished the small fire, which had damaged the floor. Appellant was placed in restraints, read his Miranda rights again, checked by medical personnel, and then transferred to jail. Before being transferred, Appellant admitted that he originally said something that was not true because he was shaken up but maintained that everything else he had told the police was the truth. Within days, the police confirmed with people who knew Jones that he had not been back to the Albany area for several months.
In the October 15 interview, Appellant continued for the first two hours to deny any involvement in the victim's death, but then he changed his story. Appellant said that he had known the victim for two months before he died and that he was riding around with the victim and Robert Lee Williams in the victim's car on the night he was killed. Appellant said that the men drove to the boat dock, where Appellant got into an argument with the victim and punched him in the head, knocking him out. Appellant claimed that he checked to see if the victim was breathing, decided that he was not, and then threw the victim's body in the river with Williams's assistance. Appellant said that he and Williams then fled the scene in the victim's car and that Williams told him the next day that he left the car at the Civic Center.
On October 17, Appellant was brought from the jail to the police station at his family's request. Appellant signed a waiver of his Miranda rights but declined to answer any questions. Instead, he wrote out a four-page statement claiming that the last time he saw the victim was when he accompanied Jones to a church parking lot to meet the victim on the night the victim was killed, and that Jones was the last person with the victim.
Appellant did not testify at trial. The defense conceded that Appellant argued with the victim, that Appellant punched the victim, and that the victim died as a result. The defense argued that Appellant was overwhelmed by emotion when he struck the victim, that he did not intend to kill the victim, and that he confirmed that the victim was not breathing before he and Williams threw the victim's body into the river. The defense asked the jury to find Appellant guilty of voluntary manslaughter and to acquit him of malice murder and felony murder. The State argued that the victim was still alive when Appellant and Williams threw him into the water, but even if he was not, Appellant was guilty of malice murder and felony murder based on the aggravated assault for striking the victim in the head with his heavy ring and inflicting a fatal injury.
When 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 find Appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for 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 Vega v. State, 285 Ga. 32, 33, 673 S.E.2d 223 (2009) .
2. Appellant contends that the trial court erred in rejecting his Batson claim that the prosecutor used three peremptory strikes to exclude prospective jurors solely because of their race, thereby violating his right to equal protection of the law. See generally Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). We disagree.
(a) The analysis of a Batson challenge involves a three-step process:
(1) the opponent of a peremptory challenge must make a prima facie showing of racial discrimination; (2) the proponent of the strike must then provide a race-neutral explanation for the strike; and (3) the court must decide whether the opponent of the strike has proven [the proponent's] discriminatory intent.
Thomas v. State, 274 Ga. 156, 161, 549 S.E.2d 359 (2001). Appellant's Batson claim focuses on step two.2 According to Appellant, the State failed to offer permissible race-neutral justifications for striking Jurors 12, 20, and 28, and the trial court therefore erred in proceeding to step three of the Batson analysis, where the court ultimately found that Appellant had failed to prove the prosecutor's discriminatory intent.
The prosecutor told the court that he struck Juror 12 because “while he was in the courtroom at all times pretty much [he] kept his hand—his head in his hand and was not giving his full attention, either he was tired or disinterested.” The prosecutor said that he struck Juror 20 because of The prosecutor said that he struck Juror 28 because, “[I]f I recall correctly ... I felt some pattern of sympathy ... in responding to [defense counsel's] questions and just to my question I felt that it's hard to articulate it was just a feeling that this particular juror ... was perhaps more sympathetic to the defense.” The court then asked, The prosecutor replied, “[b]ody language.” The court said, “body language, facial expressions,” and the prosecutor said, “Yes, sir.” The court said, “Got to tell me what you're basing it on,” and the prosecutor responded,
(b) Appellant does not dispute that these explanations are facially race-neutral. See Rakestrau v. State, 278 Ga. 872, 875, 608 S.E.2d 216 (2005) (); Arrington v. State, 286 Ga. 335, 340, 687 S.E.2d 438 (2009) (). Instead, Appellant claims that these race-neutral explanations were inadequate at Batson step two because they were “ ‘based almost entirely on ... demeanor,’ ” and demeanor is not the “ ‘kind of concrete, tangible, race-neutral, case-related and neutrally applied reason[ ] [that is] sufficient to...
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