Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 16 February 1983
• Docket Number: No. 38922,38922
• Citation: 250 Ga. 553,300 S.E.2d 301
• Parties: Harold Glenn WILLIAMS v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 301

300 S.E.2d 301

250 Ga. 553

Harold Glenn WILLIAMS v. STATE.

No. 38922.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Feb. 16, 1983.

[250 Ga. 565] Robert B. Smith, Gibbs, Leaphart & Smith, P.C., Jesup, for Harold Glenn Williams.

W. Glenn Thomas, Jr., Dist. Atty., Jerry W. Caldwell, Asst. Dist. Atty., Michael J. Bowers, Atty. Gen., Janice G. Hildenbrand, Staff Asst. Atty. Gen., Jesup, for the State.

HILL, Chief Justice.

Harold Glenn Williams was convicted of burglary and murder and received twenty years for the burglary and the death penalty for the murder. His trial was conducted under the Unified Appeal procedures set out at 246 Ga. A-1 (1980), as amended, 248 Ga. 906 (1982).

The defendant is the grandson of Archie Lane, the 72 year old victim in this case. The elderly victim did odd jobs to supplement his social security income. The evidence showed that, up to about nine months before the murder, the defendant and his grandfather had shared a father-son relationship and that the defendant had often lived for extended periods with his grandparents. The defendant's grandmother died about 18 months before his grandfather was killed. The state's theory of the case was that the disagreement that led to the victim's death stemmed from the $3000 insurance proceeds of a policy the victim had on his wife's life. By the defendant's own statement to an uncle, the defendant had demanded that the victim pay the money over to a Mrs. Rinehart, and the victim had refused.

In October, 1979, the defendant approached the victim while he was lying in bed to try to force him to pay over the money. Q.Z. Lane testified that the defendant told him that when he tried to force the victim into paying the money to Mrs. Rinehart, he was confronted by the victim with a shotgun. He pushed the gun up and it went off into the ceiling of the house. The next day the victim, accompanied by his daughter, the defendant's mother, went to a justice of the peace for a peace warrant against the defendant. The defendant and the victim never spoke to each other again according to the witnesses' testimony.

Evidence was introduced, however, that the defendant asked his uncle, Charlie Glenn Williams, to deliver a note to the victim and that Charlie Williams in turn gave the note to the victim's brother, Arvell Lane. Arvell gave the note to the victim and saw the note and heard it read aloud twice. It stated: "Hi, old man. We know how much mamma's life was worth. But how much is your life to you. Its not worth anything. But if you want to keep it! tell Charles yes or no. If yes 3000.00 and I'll tell you where to send it. If no kiss your ass good-by!" This note was found by the victim's family in the victim's car the day after his death. ¹

Adell Bishop testified that about a month or two before the victim's death, he was at Q.Z. Lane's store in Sterling at the same time as the victim when they saw the defendant drive by. The victim left. About 45 minutes later, the defendant came into the store and asked Adell if the victim had left. Adell responded affirmatively; then a few minutes later, the defendant muttered, seemingly to himself: "You reckon grand-daddy's life was worth $3000?"

Q.Z. Lane testified that he saw the victim and the defendant at his store three or four times after the "squabble" and that neither one spoke to the other. Before that they had gotten along as father and son.

On June 22, 1980, at 10:35 p.m., the Gardi volunteer fire department was called to the victim's house to put out a fire. Upon entering the house thereafter, the body of the 110 pound, 5'5"'' victim was discovered lying in the doorway from the kitchen to the living room. The medical examiner testified that the victim had been beaten over the head at least 10 times with a blunt instrument. Though his arm and face were blackened with soot, his body had not burned, but his blood was over 50% saturated with carbon monoxide. This led the medical examiner to conclude that the victim had been alive after the beating and had died from a combination of the skull injuries and smoke inhalation.

An investigation of the scene of the crime revealed that the house had been entered by breaking in through the screen porch and then by prying open the back kitchen door with a screwdriver. The detective also found a note in a box by the front door saying: "Two weeks, Love, Glenn." The detective testified that he had been at the victim's house about 2 weeks earlier in answer to a call by the victim that his home had been burglarized. At that time, the intruder had also entered the victim's porch by splitting the screen and opening the screen porch door, but had entered the house by breaking a window on the porch. Nothing was missing from the defendant's home.

The victim's girl friend, Gladys Beasley, testified that she and the victim had spent the day of June 22 together going to church and visiting her family, and that the victim had left her home at about 9:30 p.m. to return home and had with him a box of leftover chicken. A box and chicken bones were found scattered around the victim where he lay on the floor. The walls around him were splattered with blood. The state thus theorized that the defendant, and possibly another man, had entered the victim's home and had lain in wait for the victim to return; that when the victim entered the house he was beaten; the curtains were set on fire, and the two men left as they had come, by motorcycle.

Motorcycle tracks were found behind the house leading through a firebreak to the yard of a church located behind the victim's home in Gardi. A witness, looking out when she heard the fire alarm, saw two men go through a stop sign on a motorcycle headed for Jesup. Deanna Glass Williams, the then wife of Dennis Williams, testified that her husband owned two motorcycles and that on the evening of the murder, the defendant and her husband had come to their trailer in Jesup. She said that the defendant was covered with blood while her husband was not. Her husband told her they had been at a party where there had been a fight over drugs, and that someone had been shot, covering the defendant with blood. They put his clothes in the washing machine. She also said that the defendant told Dennis that if Dennis had not pulled the victim off the defendant, the victim would have killed the defendant: "... him and his grandfather were fighting and the way I understood it, his grandfather started getting the best of him, and Dennis intervened. And they had a time killing him." After Dennis left, the witness testified that the defendant went berserk and kept talking about killing his grandfather and how hard it was to kill him.

She also said that her husband's family then flocked in to get rid of the evidence and had thrown his boots, filled with rocks, and a gun into the river, that she was afraid of her husband and his family, and that he wanted to go to Texas to hide but could not get the money. (Dennis Williams was later arrested in Florida and pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, for which he received a 10 year sentence. He did not testify at the defendant's trial.)

Two statements made by the defendant were also admitted into evidence at the trial. In the first, made the day after the murder, the defendant admitted going to the victim's house and breaking in. He said he received the three scratches on his arm when he reached through the screen door to unlatch the porch door. ² He said, however, that he then left the house without seeing the victim. At this point, the detective looked down at the defendant's boots, and asked the defendant about the stains he noted there. The defendant then requested to see his lawyer. ³

The boots were removed from the defendant and the stains were tested and found to be human type A blood with an enzyme PGM factor type 1. The victim's blood was also tested and was type A, PGM-1, a combination shared by 24% of the population.

On November 12, 1980, Detective Shuman again had the opportunity to interview the defendant when he and the retained attorney who then represented the defendant arranged a meeting in the polygraph room at the GBI office in Savannah. ⁴ The defendant not only was given the Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966) warnings, but also was clearly told by his own attorney that no promises had been made for his statement and that he was free not to say anything. The attorney did advise him to make the statement as part of a well-calculated risk that Detective Shuman might then enter into a plea agreement. (The defendant later withdrew his plea of guilty and an attorney was appointed to represent him at his trial.)

In his statement, the defendant said that he and another man had gone to Gardi on a red motorcycle a man had offered to him at a greatly reduced price. They had stopped at the store next to the victim's house; then, because he and the victim had an ongoing drug deal whereby the defendant picked up money and drugs at the victim's home, they broke into the porch when they found it locked, and into the house, to see if drugs or money had been left out for a pickup. He further stated that while the other man was plundering around the house, they heard someone come in and the defendant hid in the bathroom. When it turned out to be only the victim with a chicken box in his hand, the defendant spoke up, but the victim went for his pistol. They started to fight, and the defendant knocked the victim down, but never hit, beat or kicked him anymore after that. According to the defendant, the other man, Dennis Williams, then came running in from the other room and beat the victim in the head with a tire tool. After the defendant stopped Dennis from beating the victim, they wrapped the tire tool and the pistol in a fuzzy blue commode cover. According to the defendant's statement, Dennis Williams set the house on fire, and after the defendant tried to help his...