Wells v. State
| Citation | 676 S.E.2d 821,297 Ga. App. 153 |
| Decision Date | 27 March 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. A08A2043.,A08A2043. |
| Parties | WELLS v. The STATE. |
| Court | United States Court of Appeals (Georgia) |
Herbert Adams, Jr., Forest Park, for appellant.
Jewel C. Scott, Dist. Atty., Dawn Belisle-Skinner, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.
In connection with a single-car crash that caused severe injury to the left eye of passenger William Dennis, Roosevelt Wells was charged with and found guilty of numerous offenses. After some of the counts were merged for sentencing purposes, Wells was convicted of improper lane change; serious injury by vehicle, while DUI per se; and misdemeanor obstruction of an officer. On appeal, Wells contests the sufficiency of the evidence, the admission of statements he made the day of the incident, the trial court's refusal to remove for cause a prospective juror, the trial court's ruling on an objection to the defense closing argument, and the trial court's communication with the jury outside his and his attorney's presence. Wells has demonstrated merit in his contention that the trial court impermissibly communicated with the jury. Accordingly, his convictions must be reversed. As the evidence was sufficient as to each charged offense,1 Wells may be retried.2
1. When an appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence, "the relevant question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt."3 "The appellant no longer enjoys the presumption of innocence."4 The jury, not this court, resolves conflicts in the testimony, weighs the evidence, and draws reasonable inferences from the evidence.5 "As long as there is some competent evidence, even though contradicted, to support each fact necessary to make out the State's case, the jury's verdict will be upheld."6
So viewed, the evidence showed that at about 3:00 p.m. on September 27, 2004, loud crashing sounds drew the attention of several individuals. They rushed toward the source of the noise to investigate and found an overturned car with two men trapped inside. At the time, it was raining heavily.
The man in the passenger side of the car was Dennis; his left eye had been forced out of its socket. There was a tremendous amount of blood in the passenger area around him. Onlookers noticed an odor of alcoholic beverage emanating from the vehicle. Wells, in the driver's side of the car, was squirming from behind the steering wheel and screaming with profanity for those outside the car to help him get out. Wells soon smashed the driver's side window, crawled out of the car, and asked several of the approximately eight to ten bystanders to take him away from the scene. They refused; emergency help had been summoned; and within five or ten minutes of the crash, a police officer arrived.
The two persons who had arrived first at the wrecked vehicle told the officer that Wells had been the driver. Wells was standing among the gathered individuals, and when the officer asked Wells what had happened, he denied any involvement with the collision. Wells told the officer that he had been walking down the street, and the car struck him before it flipped onto its top. Wells thereafter admitted that he had been in the car when it wrecked, but claimed he had been the passenger. Wells's account changed as the officer commented on conflicts between his versions and reports by other individuals standing in the area.
The officer, having come within three feet of Wells, had detected a strong odor of alcoholic beverage coming from him. The officer told Wells to remain at the scene during the ongoing investigation, but Wells attempted to walk away several times. To prevent Wells from doing so, the officer handcuffed Wells and forced him into the back of his patrol car. While placing Wells in the patrol car, the officer noted Wells's obvious limp.
A second police officer, a trained accident investigator, responded to the scene. By then, medical personnel were providing care to Dennis, who was still in the car. The investigator was briefed that the person in the back seat of the patrol car had been the driver of the upside-down car and had tried to leave. He leaned into the patrol car and asked Wells for his identification. When Wells responded, the investigator detected the odor of alcohol emanating from either Wells's breath or his person. After examining the scene, the investigator sat in the patrol car with Wells to get out of the rain to record his observations of the scene. In response to no questioning, Wells made numerous outbursts, including adamant claims that while he may have consumed alcohol, he had not been the driver of the damaged vehicle, and an assertion that he possessed a wheelchair in the car's truck, which would prove his denial of having been the driver. The officer described Wells as being very agitated.
Having heard Wells complain of an injured leg, the investigator administered no field sobriety tests. He did, however, seek Wells's consent for a chemical test of his breath. After being advised of his implied consent rights, Wells submitted to testing on an Intoxilyzer 5000 at 5:09 p.m. The testing yielded results of 0.096 and 0.098. The investigator opined at trial that, in light of the test results, together with his observations of Wells and of the scene, Wells had been DUI less safe.
The officer transported Wells to jail. After the two entered the building, an intake officer asked Wells why he was there. The officer who was escorting Wells at the time described at trial Wells's response: "He essentially stated something along the lines of I was trying to operate my vehicle with my bad leg after I'd been drinking and I had a wreck."7
The day after the incident underlying this case, when the rain stopped, the officer trained in accident investigation returned to the collision scene to resume his investigation. The officer examined and marked what he determined were skid marks and scrapes from the wreck the day before. He explained his findings at trial, including loosely defining skid marks as "where you lock a tire up and it leaves black marks." And photographs the investigator took at the scene were shown to the jury. The officer pointed out that the skid marks and scrapes ran from the road, across a curb, into grass, and ended near a tree, which was broken apparently where the car had struck it. Based upon his two-day investigation of the site, the officer concluded that Wells's car was traveling in its lane; the brakes were applied; the car began to skid; and it left the roadway, crossed an adjacent grassy area, struck a tree, overturned, and landed on its roof.
Wells, the sole defense witness, gave an account of the events that led to the collision that extremely rainy day. Initially, Dennis had been driving because Wells had an injured knee and had taken Vicodin medication earlier that day to relieve associated pain. He and Dennis stopped and purchased a pint of vodka, which they consumed together within about 30 minutes. It began to rain more heavily, and they switched seats because Dennis did not feel capable of driving in such conditions. Wells recalled that the dashboard brake light began flashing and eventually remained illuminated. Wells recounted that, within 20 minutes after he began driving, Wells recalled being awakened by onlookers banging on the car, warning him to hurry out of the car because it might explode. And in response, he screamed for them to help him out of the car.
Wells asserted at trial that his alcohol consumption had played no part in the wreck. He denied telling any officer that he had not been involved in the wreck. On cross-examination, Wells admitted that the brakes had caused no problem when he and Dennis stopped at the liquor store or when they stopped to switch seats. He recounted that when he pressed the brake pedal that final time, the pedal collapsed to the floor, and the wheels continued to rotate.
(a) Sufficient evidence authorized the jury's findings of guilty on all six counts of the indictment: improper lane change;8 DUI per se;9 serious injury by motor vehicle, having caused bodily harm to Dennis by rendering his left eye useless, by operating a motor vehicle while DUI per se;10 DUI less safe;11 serious injury by motor vehicle, committed by causing bodily harm to Dennis by rendering his left eye useless, while DUI less safe;12 and obstruction of a law enforcement officer, by misleading the first police officer to respond to the scene about who had been driving a vehicle involved in a collision.13
(b) We turn to Wells's specific challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence. First, Wells argues that the state failed to disprove his affirmative defense of accident as to the counts of improper lane change; DUI less safe; and serious injury by vehicle, while DUI less safe. He cites his testimony that the automobile left the road and crashed because of the bad weather and a brake malfunction, coupled with Dennis's action of grabbing the steering wheel. Wells claims that his account of how the car left its lane and wrecked was undisputed. He further asserts that the state's case was fraught with evidentiary weaknesses, pointing out that the state produced no eyewitness to the car crash itself; that neither police officer observed skid marks on the day of the incident (which the officers testified was due to the heavy rainfall and the amount of water covering the roadway); and that the investigator had the damaged vehicle towed that day, but admittedly conducted no investigation thereafter on the vehicle's brakes, tires, or dashboard functioning. Moreover, according to Wells, the state's case was circumstantial and...
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