Walker v. State

• Decision Date: 17 November 2014
• Docket Number: No. S14A0674.,S14A0674.
• Citation: 296 Ga. 161,766 S.E.2d 28
• Parties: WALKER v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

296 Ga. 161

766 S.E.2d 28

WALKER

v.The STATE.

No. S14A0674.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Nov. 17, 2014.

Tanya Danielle Jeffords, Augusta, for appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Dep. Atty. Gen., Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Asst. Atty. Gen., Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Andrew George Sims, Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, Rebecca Ashley Wright, Dist. Atty., Joshua Bradley Smith, Madonna Marie Little, Asst. Dist. Attys., Augusta, for appellee.

Opinion

BLACKWELL, Justice.

Cedrick Alexis Walker was tried by a Richmond County jury and convicted of the murder of Ramona Givens, the murder of Tyler Givens, and unlawfully concealing the death of Ramona. Walker appeals, contending that the evidence is insufficient to sustain his convictions, that the trial court erred when it excluded the testimony of a defense witness, and that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel. Upon our review of the record and briefs, we see no harmful error in the exclusion of the witness, and we conclude that Walker has failed to prove any denial of effective assistance. As to the sufficiency of the evidence, it is sufficient to sustain the conviction for the murder of Ramona, which we affirm. It is not, however, sufficient to sustain the conviction for concealing her death, which we reverse. The evidence also is not sufficient—because of the particular legal theory by which the State charged Walker—to sustain his conviction for the murder of Tyler, which we reverse as well. Accordingly, the judgment of the trial court is affirmed in part and reversed in part.¹

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence shows that Ramona and her infant son, Tyler,² shared an apartment in Augusta with Ramona's mother, Mona Lisa Givens. On the evening of Saturday, October 4, 2003, Mona Lisa said goodbye to Ramona and left the apartment for an overnight visit to Atlanta. The following evening, Mona Lisa returned to the apartment, where she found Tyler lying in his crib, dead. Next, Mona Lisa discovered Ramona on a sofa in the living room, also dead. Mona Lisa summoned police officers to the scene.

When the officers responded, one was approached by Walker, who was among several people gathered outside the apartment. Walker explained that he was Ramona's boyfriend, and he was “adamant about wanting to help and speak [with the officers].” Eventually, Walker was taken—along with Mona Lisa and her boyfriend—to a police station for interviews. In his interview, Walker claimed at first that he had not seen Ramona during the weekend, but they had spoken by telephone, he said, on Saturday night. In that telephone conversation, according to Walker, Ramona said that a man had been watching her through a window of the apartment.³ Soon, Walker admitted, however, that he actually had visited the apartment on Saturday night. Eventually, Walker said that he was present when Ramona died, claiming that she suffered a seizure as they were having sex, became paralyzed, stopped breathing, and died as he tried to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation

. Walker explained that he never before had seen someone die, that he panicked, and that he ran from the apartment without seeing Tyler.

But the physical evidence did not support the account given by Walker. In the first place, Ramona had been found fully clothed, and investigators found no sperm or seminal fluid on her body or clothing. An autopsy revealed no disease or trauma affecting her brain or spinal cord that might have been indicative of a seizure or paralysis. The medical examiner did find, however, a whitish foam in her nose and mouth, a finding consistent with the eventual determination that Ramona died as a result of asphyxiation

. Moreover, the account given by Walker failed to explain the death of Tyler. Tyler's autopsy revealed compression marks on his face, and “a very specific facial lividity pattern” from blood that pooled around his nose and mouth, a result, the medical examiner concluded, of “the central part of [his] face [having been] pressed into something.” The medical examiner determined that Tyler too had died as a result of asphyxiation. Equally significant, the medical examiner determined as well that Ramona and Tyler died around the same time.

At trial, the jury was presented with the statements that Walker had given to officers, as well as the testimony of the medical examiners and others about the physical evidence. In addition, a jailhouse informant testified that Walker had confessed to killing both Ramona and Tyler and had shared his motive, as well as the way in which he killed Ramona and her child.⁴ And the jury was shown a letter written by Walker—found among Ramona's things—in which he expressed concern about her well being, said that he did not want to hurt her, but added that he had no time for her “games” and was not interested in being only her “partner” or “friend.”

Walker contends that the evidence is insufficient to sustain each of his convictions, and below, we will consider each in turn. But before we begin, we address the standard of review. Walker asks that this Court “review the entire record and come to the conclusion that there was not overwhelming evidence [of his guilt].” That, however, is not the proper standard. Evidence may be less than overwhelming, but still sufficient to sustain a conviction. See Zamora v. State, 291 Ga. 512, 514(2), 731 S.E.2d 658 (2012). When we consider the legal sufficiency of the evidence, we must “put aside any questions about conflicting evidence, the credibility of witnesses, or the weight of the evidence, leaving the resolution of such things to the discretion of the trier of fact.” White v. State, 293 Ga. 523, 523(1), 753 S.E.2d 115 (2013) (citation omitted). Instead, we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, id., and we inquire only whether any rational trier of fact might find beyond a reasonable doubt from that evidence that the defendant is guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319(III)(B), 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). With this standard in mind, we now turn to the sufficiency of the evidence in this case.

(a) As to the killing of Ramona, Walker was convicted of malice murder. To prove malice murder, the State was required to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Walker “unlawfully and with malice aforethought, either express or implied, cause[d] the death of [Ramona].” OCGA § 16–5–1(a). The State carried that burden, we conclude. Although the medical examiner may have been unable to explain the precise mechanism by which Ramona was asphyxiated, the State nevertheless offered evidence sufficient to prove that Walker was the cause of her asphyxiation

and that he caused her death unlawfully and with malice. That is enough to sustain his conviction for the murder of Ramona.

(b) For reasons that will become apparent soon enough, we next consider whether the evidence was sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Walker unlawfully concealed the death of Ramona. To prove unlawful concealment, the State had to show that Walker, “by concealing the death of [Ramona], hinder[ed] a discovery of whether or not [she] was unlawfully killed.” OCGA § 16–10–31. That is, the State had to prove that Walker actually concealed the fact of her death, and it had to establish that his doing so delayed or otherwise hindered the discovery that her death was an unlawful one. See Nazario v. State, 293 Ga. 480, 491(3)(d), 746 S.E.2d 109 (2013) (“As the statutory text indicates, the gravamen of the offense is conduct that hinders ‘a discovery’ that a person has been unlawfully killed by concealing that death.”). As to concealing the fact of death, we have found sufficient proof of that element in previous cases in which the evidence showed, for instance, that the body of the deceased was removed from the scene of death to a remote location, ⁵ that the body was burned,⁶ that the body was dismembered,⁷ that persons with knowledge of the death were prevented from reporting it by threats or intimidation,⁸ and that persons in search of the deceased were misdirected intentionally.⁹

In this case, the State says that the element of concealment is satisfied by proof that Walker moved the body of Ramona from the floor to the sofa on which she was found and that he turned off a night light in the apartment before leaving. About the movement of the body to the sofa, we do not doubt that even moving a body a short distance might in some circumstances amount to concealment of the body. But here, there was no proof that the movement to the sofa made the body more difficult to see from any vantage point, nor that the positioning of the body on the sofa made it more difficult for anyone to discern that Ramona was, in fact, dead. About the turning off of the night light, we again do not dispute that the creation of conditions in which a body is more difficult to see could amount to concealment. But in this case, there is no evidence that turning off the night light made the body more difficult to see, especially since the light was located in the kitchen, not the living room in which Ramona was found, and there is no indication in the record that the kitchen light somehow would have illuminated the sofa on which her body lay. There simply is no proof at all that moving Ramona to the sofa or turning off a night light in another room in any way concealed the death of Ramona.

The State also notes some evidence that the back door of the apartment locked as Walker left it.¹⁰ To the extent that the evidence shows that he locked it intentionally,¹¹ that circumstance arguably could amount to concealment of the fact of death, insofar as it would make it more difficult to access the place in which the body could be found, at least through that particular door. But even assuming that the State proved that Walker intentionally locked the back door, and assuming that such conduct satisfies the...