Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 05 June 2003
• Docket Number: No. A03A0621.,A03A0621.
• Citation: 261 Ga. App. 511,583 S.E.2d 172
• Parties: WILLIAMS v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

583 S.E.2d 172

261 Ga. App. 511

WILLIAMS v. The STATE.

No. A03A0621.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

June 5, 2003.

Jackson & Schiavone, Steven L. Sparger, Savannah, for appellant.

Spencer Lawton, Jr., Dist. Atty., Ann M. Elmore, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.

PHIPPS, Judge.

A jury found Larawl Ashley Williams guilty of criminal trespass, felony obstruction, and simple assault. He appeals, arguing that the evidence was not sufficient to support the criminal trespass and obstruction convictions, that the prosecutor made improper comments during closing argument, and that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. We find that the evidence was sufficient to support the criminal trespass conviction, but that there was insufficient evidence of obstruction and that Williams received ineffective assistance. We therefore reverse.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the guilty verdicts, the facts are as follows. Williams lived in a shed behind a house owned by his stepfather, William Smiley. Smiley testified that Williams was allowed to stay in the shed as long as he had a job. Williams kept most of his possessions in the shed, including a bed, television, VCR, and stereo system. Smiley, however, kept the key to the shed; Williams did not have one.

On July 20, 2000, Williams went to Smiley's house and asked for the key to the shed. Knowing that Williams no longer had a job, Smiley ordered him to leave the premises. Williams refused. He began cursing, kicking and throwing yard furniture, and attempting to pry open the lock on the shed door. Smiley got a gun and told Williams to stop or he would shoot him. Williams did stop, but then he threatened to "start tearing up" Smiley's car, motorcycle, and boat and to "fuck [him] up" on his way to work in the morning. Smiley's wife, Williams's mother, called the police.

When Corporal Gilbert Walker arrived minutes later, Smiley told him what had happened. Walker saw Williams sitting under a carport near the shed. He asked Williams what the problem was, and Williams replied that he "had no damn problem." Walker asked Williams to stand up, and he tried to handcuff him. Williams initially pulled his hands away, but he cooperated after Officer Tommy Steeley, who had arrived as backup, threatened to use pepper spray on him. Walker then placed handcuffs on Williams's wrists behind his back, took him to the patrol car, and returned to talk to Smiley and complete a police report.

While Walker was talking to Smiley, Steeley stood beside the patrol car. Through the partly opened window, Steeley overheard Williams say "that he was going to [G]lock Corporal Walker when he got ... back out on the street." Steeley explained at trial that, in street terms, this meant that Williams was going to shoot Walker.

While Williams was waiting in the patrol car, he managed to move his handcuffed wrists to the front of his body, which caused him pain. The officers took him out of the patrol car and removed the handcuffs. As they did so, Williams stared Walker in the eye and said that he "could take [him] one on one and that he would see [him] in the street and that a Glock doesn't miss." Williams also told Walker that "he'd fuck [him] up." Walker then put the handcuffs back on Williams, during which time Williams "did exactly what [Walker] told him to do."

Williams was charged with one count of criminal trespass for refusing to leave Smiley's property, a second count of criminal trespass for damaging the shed, simple assault for threatening Smiley, and felony obstruction for threatening Walker. The jury found him guilty of all counts except criminal trespass for damaging the shed.

1. Williams argues that there was insufficient evidence to support his criminal trespass conviction because the record shows that he was a tenant at will with a legal right to occupy Smiley's property. The State claims that Williams was a guest on Smiley's property, not a tenant.

A person commits criminal trespass if he enters or remains on the premises of another with knowledge that he has been given notice that his presence is forbidden.¹ "Both criminal intent and entry without legal right or privilege or without permission of a person legally entitled to withhold the right... are elements of the crime."²

A person who lawfully occupies property as a tenant cannot be ejected from the property through a prosecution for criminal trespass.³ A landlord-tenant relationship arises when the owner of property grants another person the right to possess and enjoy the use of the property and the other person accepts the grant.⁴ If the length of the tenant's occupancy is not specified, he is considered to be a tenant at will and is entitled to 60 days notice from the landlord before the tenancy may be terminated.⁵ The payment of rent is not essential to the creation of a tenancy at will.⁶ But "it could be argued that when rent is not paid, the relationship between the parties is more in the nature of that of a host and guest, and the owner of the property is not bound by the statutory duties of a landlord."⁷ Whether a landlord-tenant relationship exists is a question of fact.⁸

Williams's occupancy of the shed was conditioned on his having a job; he did not have a key to the shed; and there is no evidence that he paid rent. These facts are sufficient to support the conclusion that Williams was a guest, rather than a tenant, with no legal authority to remain on the property after Smiley told him to leave. The facts also might have supported the conclusion that Williams was a tenant at will. Our function, however, is not to weigh the evidence, but merely to determine whether it was sufficient, under Jackson v. Virginia,⁹ to support the conviction.¹⁰ We find that it was.

2. Next, Williams contends that there was insufficient evidence to sustain his felony obstruction conviction. We agree.

Felony obstruction occurs when a person "knowingly and willfully resists, obstructs, or opposes any law enforcement officer ... in the lawful discharge of his official duties by offering or doing violence to the person of such officer."¹¹ The indictment charged Williams with obstruction based solely on his statements to Walker that he would "fuck [him] up" on the street and that "a Glock doesn't miss." The indictment made no reference to Williams's initial resistance, which led to Steeley's threat to use pepper spray on him, or to Williams's relocation of his handcuffs from the back of his body to the front. In fact, Walker testified that the charges were not based on the relocation of the handcuffs and that, while he was removing Williams's handcuffs and replacing them in the back of his body, Williams "did exactly what I told him to do." Thus, it is clear from the indictment and the evidence presented at trial that the obstruction charge stemmed from Williams's verbal threats to Walker, not from any physical resistance.

Under the plain language of OCGA § 16-10-24(b), obstruction requires two distinct elements: (1) the defendant must offer violence or do violence to the person of a law enforcement officer; and (2) that offer or violence must resist, obstruct, or oppose the officer in the lawful discharge of his official duties.¹² We have recognized that words, alone, can rise to the level of obstruction if they "may reasonably be interpreted as a `threat of violence' and ... amount to an obstruction or hindrance."¹³

In this case, the first element of obstruction is clearly satisfied by the officers' testimony that Williams threatened to shoot Walker after he got back on the street. The State failed, however, to satisfy the second element. There is no evidence that the threats obstructed Walker from carrying out his official duties. The threats alleged in the indictment were made while Williams was already in custody and physically cooperating with the police.¹⁴ They concerned future acts of violence, not imminent acts that, if carried out, would have prevented Walker from completing Williams's arrest.¹⁵ Moreover, there is no evidence that Walker altered his behavior in any way because of the threats. He testified that "if you have the audacity to threaten me, I'm going to take it serious[ly]. I believe everything you tell me." But we cannot infer that Walker was obstructed simply from his testimony that he did not take the threats lightly.

A threat of future violence, by itself, could constitute felony obstruction under OCGA § 16-10-24(b). But the obstruction conviction in this case cannot stand because there is no evidence that Williams's verbal threats obstructed Walker's completion of his law enforcement duties. Accordingly, we reverse the obstruction conviction.

3. Williams argues that the prosecutor made improper comments during closing argument about his future dangerousness and that his attorney rendered ineffective assistance by not objecting to them.

The comments in question occurred throughout the prosecutor's closing argument. She began by stating:

Ladies and gentlemen, when something really bad happens, when there is a killing, when there is a bombing, a school bombing or a courthouse bombing, sometimes people say well, I never saw it coming. How did this happen? But if you look behind the really bad event, most times you'll see that there were a lot of things leading up to the event. This disaster just didn't happen one day. There were steps leading to the disaster. This defendant is a disaster waiting to happen.

Shortly thereafter, the prosecutor said that "bad things, terrible things, don't just happen. There are these intermediate steps, these intermediate opportunities to intervene, to stop, to get the attention of the offender." She then said that this case presented such an opportunity. Later, she warned that "if [Smiley getting his gun] is what it takes to get [Williams] to stop his bad conduct this is going to be a disaster."

Mid-argument, the prosecutor stated, "[O]...