Carter v. State

314 Ga. 317

877 S.E.2d 170

CARTER

v.The STATE.

S22A0432

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: August 9, 2022

Charles Henry Frier, Attorney at Law, P.O. Box 8783, Atlanta, Georgia 31106-8783, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, William C. Enfinger, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Joshua Bradley Smith, A.D.A., Jared Tolton Williams, District Attorney, Augusta Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, 735 James Brown Boulevard, Suite 2400, Augusta, Georgia 30901, for Appellee.

Bethel, Justice.

After a jury trial in June 2016, Woodrow Carter was convicted of malice murder in connection with the death of James Mills. He appeals, contending that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction and that the jury should have had the option of convicting him of concealing the death of another.¹ We disagree and affirm.

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial showed the following. Carter, Marcus McCladdie, Derrick Robinson, and Marquise Redfield often spent time together dealing cocaine. On July 20, 2001, Carter, Robinson, and Redfield picked up McCladdie and drove to Robinson's cousin's apartment in Augusta where they regularly gathered to socialize, relax, and prepare drugs. Robinson gave James Mills directions to the apartment, and Mills arrived sometime later with approximately $50,000 to $75,000 worth of cocaine. Redfield testified that he and Robinson planned to murder Mills because they believed he was "coming short on the drugs" and "overtaxing."

McCladdie testified that when Mills knocked on the door to the apartment, Carter ran to the bathroom and Redfield ran upstairs while McCladdie stayed where he was. Robinson opened the door and greeted Mills, and then Carter and Redfield emerged from hiding. McCladdie testified that Carter and the others were acting "like they knew what to do." Redfield pointed his gun at Mills, and he, Robinson, and Carter then took Mills into the kitchen. Redfield testified that McCladdie bound Mills with duct tape, and that he and McCladdie strangled Mills to death with a cord from a clothes iron. McCladdie told the police that it was Redfield and Robinson who strangled Mills, though he testified at trial that Redfield was the one who strangled Mills.

Mills's body was rolled up inside a comforter, and Carter, McCladdie, Robinson, and Redfield then loaded Mills's body into Mills's vehicle. Redfield drove Mills's vehicle to Carter's mobile home in South Carolina, with Carter, Robinson, and McCladdie following in Robinson's car. In Carter's back yard, a large hole had been dug. It contained an empty refrigerator or freezer, and a backhoe sat nearby. Mills's body was placed into the appliance in the hole and buried there. The men divided the cocaine Mills had brought with him among themselves, with Carter receiving a couple of ounces.

In 2008, Mills's vehicle was discovered. Two years later, Redfield told law enforcement that he knew where Mills was buried. Police then recovered Mills's remains from Carter's back yard. Police interviewed Carter, who initially denied any knowledge of the murder before admitting he had been present for the murder and burial, though he claimed that Robinson, Redfield, and McCladdie had been the ones who committed the crimes. Carter admitted in the interview that he received a couple of ounces of Mills's cocaine in exchange for his silence.²

2. Carter argues that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient under Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U. S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), to support his conviction for malice murder because it did not show that he was a party to Mills's death by strangulation.³ He also argues that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of Georgia law because the testimony of one of the accomplices implicating him in the crime was not corroborated. We disagree with both contentions.

(a) Carter first argues that the evidence was insufficient because there was no evidence that he was a party to Mills's murder.

When evaluating a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence [as a matter of constitutional due process], we view all of the evidence presented at trial in the light most favorable to the verdict[s] and ask whether any rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted.

Jones v. State , 304 Ga. 594, 598 (2), 820 S.E.2d 696 (2018) (citing Jackson , 443 U. S. at 318–319, 99 S.Ct. 2781 (III) (B), 99 S.Ct. 2781 ). "We leave to the jury the resolution of conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence, credibility of witnesses, and reasonable inferences to be derived from the facts, and we do not reweigh the evidence." (Citations and punctuation omitted.) Harris v. State , 313 Ga. 225, 229 (2), 869 S.E.2d 461 (2022).

OCGA § 16-2-20 (b) provides that

[a] person is concerned in the commission of a crime only if he:

(1) [d]irectly commits the crime;

(2) [i]ntentionally causes some other person to commit the crime under such circumstances that the other person is not guilty of any crime either in fact or because of legal incapacity;

(3) [i]ntentionally aids or abets in the commission of the crime; or

(4) [i]ntentionally advises, encourages, hires, counsels, or procures another to commit the crime.

Moreover, "[w]hile proof of a shared criminal intent with the actual perpetrator is necessary to establish that one is a party to the crime, shared criminal intent may be inferred from the person's conduct before, during, and after the crime." (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Bowen v. State , 299 Ga. 875, 877 (1), 792 S.E.2d 691 (2016). See also Powell v. State , 307 Ga. 96, 99 (1), 834 S.E.2d 822 (2019).

Carter argues that the evidence here was insufficient because there was no testimony demonstrating that he knew about or participated in the agreement to kill Mills or that he was otherwise a party to the murder. Carter relies on Redfield's testimony that Carter did not participate in the murder and that Redfield threatened him into allowing Mills to be buried in his back yard, which he argues shows that he did not participate willingly. However, McCladdie testified extensively at trial about Carter's involvement immediately prior to, during, and after the murder, and further testified that the attack on Mills appeared to be pre-orchestrated. To the extent McCladdie's testimony conflicts with Redfield's, that inconsistency was for the jury to resolve, and the jury was entitled to disbelieve Redfield's version of events. See Graves v. State , 298 Ga. 551, 553 (1), 783 S.E.2d 891 (2016) ("[I]t is axiomatic that resolving evidentiary conflicts and assessing witness credibility are within the exclusive province of the jury." (citing Hampton v. State , 272 Ga. 284, 285 (1), 527 S.E.2d 872 (2000) )). Thus, despite conflicts in the evidence regarding Carter's role in the killing, when viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdicts, the evidence was sufficient for the jury to find Carter guilty beyond a reasonable doubt as a party to the crime of malice murder. See Jackson , 443 U. S. at 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781 (III) (B), 99 S.Ct. 2781 ; Eckman v. State , 274 Ga. 63, 65 (1), 548 S.E.2d 310 (2001) (concluding that the evidence was sufficient to find that defendant was a party to the crime where, inter alia, she was present when the crimes were committed, fled the crime scene with her companions, and "used the fruits" of the crimes).

(b) Carter also argues that McCladdie was an accomplice to the murder and that his testimony was not sufficiently corroborated. OCGA § 24-14-8 provides in pertinent part:

The testimony of a single witness is generally sufficient to establish a fact. However, in certain cases, including ... felony cases where the only witness is an accomplice, the testimony of a single witness shall not be sufficient. Nevertheless, corroborating circumstances may dispense with the necessity for the testimony of a second witness....

Thus, when the only witness to testify at trial is an accomplice, corroborating evidence is required to support a guilty verdict. See Edwards v. State , 299 Ga. 20, 22 (1), 785 S.E.2d 869 (2016). Whether accomplice testimony has been sufficiently corroborated is a question for the jury, and even slight corroborating evidence of a defendant's participation in a crime is sufficient. See Raines v. State , 304 Ga. 582, 588 (2) (a), 820 S.E.2d 679 (2018) (citing Parks v. State , 302 Ga. 345, 348, 806 S.E.2d 529 (2017) ).

Here, although Carter argues that McCladdie's testimony about Carter's involvement in the murder was not corroborated, this...