Wilson v. State
| Decision Date | 21 January 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. A05A0141.,A05A0141. |
| Parties | WILSON v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
James Millsaps, Covington, for Appellant.
Charles Wilson, S.E. Covington, pro se.
William Wynne, District Attorney, Robert Faircloth, Newton County Dist. Atty's Ofc., Covington, for Appellee.
Charles Wilson was convicted of possession of cocaine. With the assistance of his appointed trial lawyer, he moved for a new trial on the general grounds. After the trial court denied the motion, Wilson filed a notice of appeal pro se. With the assistance of a new attorney, he filed an appellate brief seeking to overturn his conviction based on claims that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict and that his trial attorney was ineffective in, among other things, failing to raise a chain of custody objection to admission of the cocaine he allegedly possessed.1 Although the evidence was sufficient, Wilson's conviction must be reversed due to the ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Remand for a hearing is unnecessary because the matter is determinable from the record.2
Wilson was Melody Thomason's boyfriend. Thomason was on probation for cocaine possession. On the night in question, Thomason's brother telephoned her probation officer to report his suspicion that Thomason and Wilson had gone to a motel to smoke crack cocaine. The probation officer and several City of Covington police officers investigated. After ascertaining that a room in the motel was registered to Thomason, the officers went to the room, identified themselves as police, and knocked loudly on the door. No one answered, so they obtained a key to the room. They attempted to enter but the door was latched. Thomason appeared at the door and unlatched it. Her hair was damp, and she told the officers that she had taken a shower. Wilson was lying on one of the beds in the room, pretending to be asleep.
Pursuant to Thomason's waiver of Fourth Amendment rights as a condition of probation, the officers searched the room. Officer George Cribbs searched the bathroom. He could tell the toilet had been flushed recently, because he could hear it running. On the shower floor, Cribbs found a wet white powdery substance that appeared to be cocaine. Cribbs retrieved the substance and put it on a piece of cardboard. On the bathtub counter near a coffee pot, Cribbs observed a small amount of powdery substance that also had the appearance of cocaine. He collected the substances found on the shower floor and bathroom counter, bagged them, and turned them over to Officer Donald Buckelew. Under the mattress of the bed on which Wilson was lying, officers found a crushed soft drink can. They suspected that the can had been used as a smoking device, because there were holes in the can; and on the can was a substance that had the appearance of cocaine residue. Thomason and Wilson were arrested and charged with possession of cocaine.
Buckelew put the substances from the shower floor and bathroom counter into two separate bags that were both placed in a larger plastic bag. The larger bag was admitted in evidence as state's Exhibit One. Buckelew testified that he had placed the two bags in a lock box at Covington police headquarters where they remained until they were taken to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab. Buckelew further testified that the city police department's evidence technician had access to the lock box.
GBI crime lab forensic chemist Lynn Black identified two sealed bags in state's Exhibit One as those turned over to her for analysis. She was able to identify the exhibit because it bore a unique crime lab case number, and her initials were on the seal. A property sheet was attached to the envelope in which the state's exhibit was delivered to the crime lab, but Black testified that she did not see the sheet because "the people in the front office take care of that." Because the substance amounts in the two bags were so small, Black analyzed only the substance taken from the bathroom counter. She described it as a solid material residue that tested positive for cocaine.
As a result of the cocaine possession charge, Thomason's probation was revoked and she served over a year in prison. At Wilson's trial, she testified that she and Wilson had been smoking crack cocaine on the night in question. According to Thomason, the cocaine was procured by Wilson and remained in his control. Thomason testified that when the police knocked on the motel room door, Wilson went into the bathroom and disposed of a glass pipe they were using to smoke the cocaine by flushing it down the toilet. Due to this incident, Thomason was barred from having any contact with Wilson. As a result, by the time of Wilson's trial, she had a new boyfriend; and Wilson had stopped supporting her and their children.
Wilson did not testify. In closing argument, his attorney pointed out that Thomason had rented the motel room, that she had appeared at the door with wet hair, that she was on probation for a drug offense, that on the scene she had denied there were any drugs in the room, and that at trial she was angry with Wilson because their relationship had ended and he had quit paying child support. Counsel thus argued that Thomason's testimony was not sufficiently reliable to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilson was in possession of the cocaine.
Wilson's attorney requested several jury instructions, including one that mere presence at the scene of a crime or in the vicinity of contraband is not sufficient to establish guilt.3 The trial court refused to give certain of the requested instructions, including the one on mere presence. The court found that the latter instruction duplicates the instruction that 4 By not objecting to the jury instruction or reserving his objections upon inquiry by the trial court, defense counsel waived Wilson's right to appellate review of jury instruction issues.5
1. There is no merit in Wilson's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence. An appellate court determines only the legal sufficiency of the evidence adduced below and does not weigh the evidence or assess the credibility of witnesses.6 Conflicts in the testimony of witnesses are matters of credibility for the jury to resolve.7 Viewed in a light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to find Wilson guilty of cocaine possession beyond a reasonable doubt.8
2. We find merit in Wilson's claim that trial counsel's performance was deficient, both in his failure to challenge admission of state's Exhibit One based on the state's failure to establish the required chain of custody and in his failure to preserve objections to the jury charge.
There is a strong presumption that trial counsel's performance falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance and that any challenged action was sound trial strategy.10 Although we generally presume that counsel's actions were strategic in the absence of testimony to the contrary,11 we can divine no strategic reasons to support the omissions chargeable to counsel here.
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