Williams v. State
| Decision Date | 05 March 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. A98A2002.,A98A2002. |
| Citation | 236 Ga. App. 790,513 S.E.2d 757 |
| Parties | WILLIAMS v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Henderson & Lipscomb, Lyle K. Porter, Duluth, for appellant. Daniel J. Porter, District Attorney, Rodney K. Miles, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
A jury found Robert Earl Williams guilty of kidnapping and hijacking a motor vehicle. Williams appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence to support his convictions. Because there is sufficient evidence to support the convictions, we affirm.
(Punctuation omitted.) Shabazz v. State, 229 Ga.App. 465-466(1), 494 S.E.2d 257 (1997).
Viewed in this light, the evidence showed that on March 2, 1997, Williams, Chris Roof, and Rico Echols were dropped off at Atlanta Toyota to look at cars. They approached Jorge Naveda, a salesman and asked him about used Toyota 4-Runners. While in one of the 4-Runners for a test drive, Roof, who was sitting next to Williams in the back seat, pulled a gun on Naveda and told him "to just keep driving." Naveda left the dealership and drove until he was ordered to stop in a parking lot and to get out of the vehicle, and the three men drove away. Both at a pre-trial photographic lineup and at trial, Naveda identified Williams as one of the men in the 4-Runner during the hijacking. According to Naveda, Williams never asked to get out of the car as it was being hijacked from the dealership and never offered him any help.
Williams testified that he was unaware of any plan to hijack the 4-Runner until Roof pulled out a gun. Williams contradicted Naveda's testimony that Roof pulled out the gun at the dealership, claiming that Roof did not take it out until they got to the parking lot, and Roof ordered Naveda out of the car. According to Williams, he thought Naveda was pulling into the parking lot so that he could test drive the vehicle.
About a month after the hijacking, on April 2, 1997, Officer Gary Daniel responded to a call regarding a burglary in progress at an apartment complex. When Daniel arrived at the scene, he met Williams and Roof who told him that they were witnesses to this alleged burglary. When he asked Williams how he got to the apartment complex, Williams pointed to a vehicle which turned out to be the stolen Toyota 4-Runner. According to Daniel, Williams claimed that the vehicle belonged to his aunt, and he gave Daniel the key and allowed him to search it for weapons. An examination of the license tag revealed that it had been replaced by one which was not on file. After confirming the vehicle had been stolen and that it was in Williams' possession, Daniel placed Williams under arrest for theft by receiving a stolen vehicle. Thereafter, Williams showed Daniel two traffic citations which indicated that he had driven the vehicle on at least two occasions after it had been stolen. Williams testified at trial that both he and Roof drove the vehicle during the month following the hijacking, and that they kept the vehicle at Roof's house.
Williams asserts that there was insufficient evidence to establish that he was a party to the crimes of which he was convicted, and that he was merely present when Roof pulled a gun on Naveda and hijacked the vehicle. Williams claims that the...
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