Acosta v. State

311 Ga. 320

857 S.E.2d 701

ACOSTA

v.The STATE.

S21A0247

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: April 19, 2021

Stephen M. Reba ; Clark & Towne, Jessica R. Towne, for appellant.

Penny A. Penn, District Attorney, Sandra A. Partridge, Assistant District Attorney; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, William C. Enfinger, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

McMillian, Justice.

Eder Acosta appeals his convictions for malice murder and first-degree cruelty to children in connection with the death of Bryan Guzman.¹ Acosta asserts that the trial court erred in admitting the statements he made during his first interview with law enforcement investigators and denying his request to charge the jury on the lesser offense of misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter. Discerning no error, we affirm.

The evidence presented at trial showed that on the morning of July 16, 2009, Acosta carried six-year-old Bryan Guzman into a Forsyth County hospital emergency room. The child was not breathing and had no pulse. Bryan was intubated, and after approximately 40 minutes, the emergency room medical staff was able to restart his heart. Bryan was then airlifted to a children's hospital in Atlanta, where he died. An autopsy revealed that Bryan had suffered significant injuries to his head, scrotum, and abdomen from blunt force trauma. According to the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, Bryan's injuries and the bruising on his body were consistent with multiple, repetitive blows to his abdomen, a blow or a kick to his scrotum, and impact wounds to his head. The pathologist also testified that the abdominal injuries resulted in lacerations to Bryan's liver and two other organs, causing internal bleeding, and that although the injuries to any one of these organs could have proved fatal, the lacerations to the liver would have led to Bryan's death within minutes to hours of the injury.

Subsequent investigation by the Forsyth County Sheriff's Department revealed that after Acosta moved into the home where Bryan lived, Bryan exhibited a number of unexplained injuries, including bruises, lumps, and a petechial rash ;² that witnesses had seen Acosta hit Bryan; and that Bryan, who was nonverbal and autistic, appeared to be afraid of Acosta. In his first interview with investigators, Acosta said that he had seen one of Bryan's uncles hit him, but in his second interview, Acosta said that on the morning of Bryan's death, he had used his hands and fists in an effort to revive the child after he found that Bryan was not breathing. However, the forensic pathologist testified that the bruising on Bryan's abdomen was not in a location where cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is performed and that Bryan's injuries were not consistent with the performance of that procedure.³

1. Acosta asserts that the trial court erred in admitting statements he made in the first of two interviews with investigators because he was in custody and should have been informed of his rights under Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and that his statements were not voluntary because they were improperly induced in violation of former OCGA § 24-3-50⁴ by the hope that he would not be charged with driving without a license if he spoke with the investigators. We disagree.

In considering the admissibility of a defendant's statement to law enforcement officers, "the trial court must look to the totality of the circumstances to decide whether the statement was made freely and voluntarily." Cain v. State , 306 Ga. 434, 438 (2), 831 S.E.2d 788 (2019) (citation and punctuation omitted). On appeal, "[a]lthough we defer to the trial court's findings of disputed facts, we review de novo the trial court's application of the law to the facts. And following a Jackson-Denno^{[5 ]} hearing, this Court will not disturb the trial court's factual and credibility determinations unless they are clearly erroneous." Griffin v. State , 309 Ga. 860, 868 (4), 849 S.E.2d 191 (2020) (citations and punctuation omitted).

With regard to Acosta's first interview with investigators, the evidence presented at the pretrial Jackson-Denno hearing showed the following. On the morning after Bryan's death, three undercover officers were assigned to surveil the residence where Bryan had lived with his mother, Laura Moreno; two uncles; and Acosta.⁶ That morning, the officers observed Acosta, Moreno, and Bryan's 12-year-old brother leaving the residence in a Dodge Durango, with Acosta driving. The officers followed Acosta's vehicle to the parking lot of a nearby grocery store, where the three occupants of the vehicle went inside the store.

When Acosta and the others returned to the vehicle, the undercover officers approached them to ask if they would mind waiting to speak with an investigator who was looking into Bryan's death.⁷ Acosta and the others were told that they did not have to speak with the investigator, but they agreed to wait for him. A short time later, two investigators, Detective Joseph Whirlow and Sergeant Braulio Franco, arrived and asked whether Acosta and Moreno would mind going to the police station to talk. Acosta and Moreno agreed to this request, but when the officers suggested that the couple follow them to the station in their vehicle, Acosta said that he did not have a driver's license.⁸ With Acosta's consent, one of the undercover officers drove Acosta and the others to the police station in the Dodge Durango. The officer did not ask Acosta any questions, nor did he discuss the case on the four- to five-mile ride to the station.

The law enforcement officers who were in the parking lot with Acosta testified that Acosta was not under arrest when he was asked to go to the station. Moreover, each officer said that if Acosta had chosen not to accompany the investigators to the station, he was free to leave, and they would not have stopped him. In addition, Detective Whirlow testified that the investigators were not concerned with Acosta's lack of a driver's license because they were investigating a murder and, as they arrived after Acosta, they had not seen him driving. Another officer testified that Acosta was told that it was "okay" that he did not have a driver's license. Nevertheless, once Acosta said he had no license, the officers could not allow him to break the law by driving to the station without one.

At the station, the investigators followed their standard procedure of separating witnesses for their interviews⁹ by placing Acosta and Moreno in separate interview rooms.¹⁰ Sergeant Franco, who was fluent in Spanish, interviewed Moreno because she did not speak much English. Both Detective Whirlow and Sergeant Franco participated in the interviews of Acosta, and they stated that because Acosta was not a suspect and was not under arrest, they did not inform him of his rights under Miranda before the first interview.

The doors to the interview rooms did not have locks, and Acosta was free to, and did, leave the room during the first interview. Although Detective Whirlow accompanied Acosta from the interview room to the bathroom and waited outside until he finished, he did so because a key-coded door separated the interview area from the bathroom; therefore, any visitor using the bathroom required assistance to re-enter the interview area. There was no evidence that Acosta was ever threatened, handcuffed, or otherwise restrained before or during the first interview.

Although Acosta was not allowed to see Moreno while she was being interviewed, the investigators left Acosta alone in his interview room for a time while they were gathering paperwork and while Moreno was being interviewed. They also provided Acosta water and allowed him to keep his cell phone and answer calls during his interview. Acosta's side of the telephone calls was recorded, and at the Jackson-Denno hearing, with defense counsel's consent, Detective Whirlow read from a translation of the recorded phone conversations, during which Acosta spoke Spanish. According to that translation, Acosta explained to one caller that he was not at the police station because of his lack of a driver's license but was there to answer "normal questions, supposedly about Bryan," and told another caller that he was there because the investigators wanted to ask Moreno and him questions about Bryan's death.

During the interview, Acosta told investigators that he had seen one of Bryan's uncles strike the child, and after Detective Whirlow and Sergeant Franco completed the interviews with Acosta and Moreno, the investigators left to interview Bryan's uncles at another location. Before the investigators left, they asked Acosta and Moreno if the couple would mind waiting until the investigators returned, and Acosta and Moreno agreed. The investigators testified that neither Acosta nor Moreno was under arrest, and both were free to leave the police station. The couple were provided lunch during their wait and were allowed to be together and to keep their phones.

After the uncles provided alibis for each other and furnished information implicating Acosta in Bryan's death, the investigators returned to the police station. They then conducted a second interview with Acosta. Because Acosta was considered a suspect at that point, Sergeant Franco read Acosta his rights under Miranda , and, at Acosta's request, he read them in Spanish. Acosta signed a waiver-of-rights form, and both officers witnessed his signature. It was during the second interview that Acosta admitted using his hands and fists on Bryan, leaving bruises on the child's body.

The trial court concluded that under the totality of the circumstances, Acosta was not in custody at the time of the first interview and expressly found that the statements in that interview were not induced with the hope of benefit.¹¹ Therefore, the trial court ruled that the...