Watts v. State
| Decision Date | 27 September 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 32414,32414 |
| Parties | William Maynard WATTS v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Brantley & Loggins, Samuel J. Brantley, Dalton, for appellant.
Larry Salmon, Dist. Atty., Rome, Arthur K. Bolton, Atty. Gen., John W. Dunsmore, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, for appellee.
This case is an appeal from the Floyd Superior Court following the appellant's conviction in that court of two counts of kidnapping and one count of murder. The appellant received a life sentence for the murder conviction and two concurrent ten-year sentences for the kidnapping convictions to run consecutively to the life sentence.
The evidence introduced at trial authorized the jury in finding that the appellant shot and killed Richard Garcia during an argument at the home of Inez Sutherland. The appellant argued at trial that he had shot the deceased in self-defense. He contended that, at the time he shot the deceased, the deceased was moving toward him making threatening motions with a knife. Miss Sutherland, the only witness to the shooting, testified otherwise.
However, it is undisputed that, sometime before the actual shooting occurred, the appellant had branished a gun and threatened to kill the deceased. The deceased then displayed a knife and threatened to cut the appellant's guts out in the event the appellant shot him. The witness Sutherland testified that the deceased had closed the knife and put it on a table adjacent to the sofa where he was seated. She testified that the knife was lying there closed when the deceased was shot.
Shortly after the shooting, a Mr. Graham appeared on the scene. The appellant, who was later joined by his wife, abducted Sutherland and Graham at gunpoint. They drove the two of them across the state line to Alabama. The appellant and his wife took the kidnap victims to a wooded area and tied them to a tree with black tape.
The kidnap victims freed themselves and notified the police. The appellant and his wife were later found at a motel in Birmingham, Alabama. The weapon with which the deceased was shot was found in their luggage. Black tape was found in the wooded area where Sutherland and Graham said they had been tied up. Held:
1. The trial court did not err in denying the appellant's motions for directed verdict of acquittal and for a new trial on the general grounds.
There are various conflicts in the evidence as asserted by the appellant. These conflicts concern primarily whether the victim was seated at the time he was shot, and whether the victim's knife was found in an open or closed position after the shooting occurred.
After the jury has returned a verdict of guilty, and the defendant seeks a reversal of his conviction on appeal by arguing either that the trial court erred in failing to direct a verdict of acquittal or denying a motion for new trial on the general grounds, the only question presenting itself to the appellate court is whether there is any evidence to support the verdict. See Bethay v. State, 235 Ga. 371, 219 S.E.2d 743 (1975). It is the function of the jury, not the appellate court, to determine the credibility of witnesses and weigh any conflicts in the evidence accordingly. The appellate court views the evidence in a light most favorable to the jury's verdict after it has been rendered. See Ridley v. State, 236 Ga. 147, 223 S.E.2d 131 (1976).
The evidence introduced at trial authorized the jury in finding the appellant guilty of the offenses charged. We cannot say that the trial court erred in overruling his motions on the general grounds.
2. The appellant alleges prejudicial error in the prosecution's failure to disclose, pursuant to the appellant's Brady motion: (1) prior statements of witnesses Sutherland and Graham, and (2) that the state's key witnesses, Inez Sutherland and Walter Graham, had been arrested, booked and detained in the Rome city jail as suspects in the investigation of the murder of the deceased.
The appellant filed a motion for discovery in the nature of a Brady motion, requesting certain specific items of tangible evidence and various statements of witnesses. The appellant alleged in his motion that this information would be exculpatory in that it would support his defense of self-defense. Among the information requested was a pre-trial statement of Inez Sutherland, which the appellant alleged was inconsistent with her testimony at a preliminary hearing. The appellant also requested the disclosure of any and all other information which might tend to exculpate him either through the indication of his innocence or through the potential impeachment of any state's witness.
The trial court agreed to conduct an in-camera inspection of the prosecutor's files. Afterward, an order was entered, stating that nothing of an exculpatory nature or helpful to the defense appeared therein. The appellant's motion was accordingly denied.
As to the pre-trial statements of witnesses Graham and Sutherland, the trial court found that nothing contained in those statements would tend to exculpate the appellant. On appeal, the appellant does not show or intimate how this finding of the trial court is erroneous. Therefore, we find the first asserted ground in this enumeration of error to be without merit.
As to the prosecution's failure to disclose that the state's two key witnesses had previously been arrested as suspects in this murder, we find that under the circumstances present here any error resulting from the nondisclosure of this evidence is harmless. The fact that witnesses Sutherland and Graham were previously arrested as suspects in this murder case was ultimately revealed to the jury during the defense's cross examination of a member of the Rome police force. Therefore, the prosecution's failure to divulge this information, even if in violation of its duty of candor toward the defendant, was not prejudicial. See Hicks v. State, 232 Ga. 393, 207 S.E.2d 30 (1974).
3. The appellant complains of the trial court's failure to grant his motion for a mistrial, or in the alternative to give the jury cautionary instructions to disregard the following testimony of witness Sutherland concerning the events leading up to the shooting:
The preceding testimony was elicited from the witness during cross examination by the defense counsel. The defense counsel moved for a mistrial, arguing that the witness' later statement was not responsive to his question and impermissibly placed the defendant's character in issue. The district attorney argued that the testimony of the witness was responsive to the defense counsel's interrogation of her, but the district attorney did submit that the court should promptly instruct the jury to disregard any statements by the witness concerning past activity of the defendant. To this the defense counsel responded, in effect, that he did not want a cautionary instruction...
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