Epperson v. State

340 Ga.App. 25

796 S.E.2d 1

EPPERSON

v.The STATE.

A16A1849

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

December 28, 2016

Kevin Alan Anderson, for Appellant.

Robert D. James Jr., Dist. Atty., Atlanta, Lenny I. Krick, Allison Layton, Asst. Dist. Attys., for Appellee.

Barnes, Presiding Judge.

A jury found Rodney Rodriguez Epperson guilty of armed robbery, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and three counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. The trial court subsequently denied Epperson's motion for new trial. On appeal, Epperson contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the indictment based on the alleged violation of his constitutional right to a speedy trial, that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions, and that the trial court should have merged his aggravated battery conviction into his armed robbery and aggravated assault convictions for purposes of sentencing. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm.

"Following a criminal conviction, the defendant is no longer presumed innocent, and we view the evidence in the light most favorable to sustain the verdict." (Citation omitted.) Anthony v. State , 317 Ga.App. 807, 732 S.E.2d 845 (2012). So viewed, the evidence showed that on the evening of April 20, 2010, the victim and his girlfriend were at their friend's house smoking crack cocaine. Several times that night, when the group ran out of drugs, the victim would provide more money, and a member of the group would walk over to the neighboring apartments and buy more drugs from Epperson and one of his associates. When the victim ran out of money, he decided to return to his apartment to get more money for drugs. The victim did not have transportation, but Epperson came over to the friend's house where the victim and the others had been smoking crack cocaine and agreed to give the victim a ride so that he could get his money. The victim then got into a cream-colored car with Epperson and another individual, and they drove to the victim's apartment.

Upon arriving at his apartment, the victim woke up his brother, who lived with the victim and had previously agreed to safeguard the victim's money for him. After retrieving the victim's money, the brother noticed a man with dreadlocks standing at the doorway of the bedroom next to the victim. The victim's brother, however, did not get a good look at the man because he was sleepy from having just been awakened by the victim. While the victim and man were leaving the apartment, the brother overheard the man asking the victim for the money, but the victim told him he would have to wait until they got back to the car. The brother looked out the window, where he saw a cream-colored car drive up and the victim and the man get inside and leave together.

The victim then was driven in the cream-colored car to the apartment complex next to his friend's house where he had been smoking crack cocaine. The victim got out of the car and bought more drugs at one of the apartment units, but as he was returning to the car, he was robbed at gunpoint. The victim initially took his wallet and the drugs out of his pockets to hand over to the gunman, but the victim then attempted to disarm the gunman using a maneuver he had learned in the military. The victim's attempt was unsuccessful, and the gunman shot him several times.

The victim's friend had been standing on the porch of her house next to the apartment complex and had seen the cream-colored car travel over to the neighboring apartments a few minutes before the gunshots. When she heard the gunshots, the victim's friend ran from her house over to the apartment complex, where she saw Epperson running away from the victim's body with a gun in his hand. Epperson looked up and saw the victim's friend, jumped into the cream-colored car, and fled from the scene.

The friend ran back to her house and told the victim's girlfriend that the victim had been shot. The girlfriend ran over to the apartment complex, where she found the victim lying motionless in the street. The victim told his girlfriend that he had just been robbed. The victim later testified that he did not remember anything after the first shot was fired, and he did not identify the person who had robbed him at trial.

The police and an ambulance responded to the scene. The victim was transported to the hospital and treated for his gunshot wounds. One of the gunshots damaged his spinal cord, paralyzing the victim from the chest down.

Epperson was arrested in June 2010 for the armed robbery incident at issue in this case and for two other unrelated armed robberies, and he was not released on bond and remained in jail while awaiting trial. In December 2010, a grand jury indicted Epperson in the present case on charges of armed robbery, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and three counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.¹ The trial of the case thereafter was delayed several times because of, among other things, Epperson's consent to a continuance, an overcrowded docket, turnover in the district attorney's office, and the fact that the paralyzed victim was often medically unstable and unavailable for trial.

In July 2013, Epperson filed a motion to dismiss the indictment based on the alleged violation of his constitutional right to a speedy trial. After conducting a hearing, the trial court denied the motion, and the case proceeded to a jury trial in June 2014.

At trial, the State called several witnesses, including the victim, the victim's brother, the victim's girlfriend, and the victim's friend who lived at the house next to the apartments where the group had been smoking crack cocaine. Epperson elected not to testify and did not call any defense witnesses. After hearing all the evidence, the jury found Epperson guilty of the charged offenses.

For purposes of sentencing, the trial court merged Epperson's aggravated assault conviction into his armed robbery conviction and merged together his three firearm possession convictions. The trial court sentenced Epperson to life in prison for armed robbery, a consecutive sentence of 20 years in prison for aggravated battery, and a consecutive sentence of 5 years in prison for the firearm possession conviction.

Epperson filed a motion for new trial, challenging the trial court's failure to grant his motion to dismiss the indictment on constitutional speedy trial grounds, the sufficiency of the evidence to convict him of the charged offenses, and the trial court's failure to merge his aggravated battery conviction into his armed robbery and aggravated assault convictions. Because the original trial judge who had presided over the trial and sentencing of Epperson retired, a new trial judge was assigned to hear the motion for new trial. Following a hearing, the newly-assigned trial judge addressed Epperson's motion for new trial in a detailed order, which included specific findings related to Epperson's speedy trial claim. The trial judge noted that, "[i]n an abundance of caution," he had independently reevaluated Epperson's motion to dismiss the indictment on constitutional speedy trial grounds and had concluded that no constitutional violation had occurred. The trial court also concluded that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the verdict and that Epperson's aggravated battery conviction did not merge with his other convictions. In light of these conclusions, the trial court denied Epperson's motion for new trial, and this appeal followed.

1. Epperson first contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the indictment because his constitutional right to a speedy trial was violated as a result of the delay between his arrest and trial. We disagree.

A criminal defendant is guaranteed a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Georgia Constitution. See U. S. Const., Amend. VI ; Ga. Const., Art. I, Sec. I, Par. XI (a). "Speedy trial rights attach at the time of arrest or formal indictment, whichever is earlier." (Footnote omitted.) Salahuddin v. State , 277 Ga. 561, 562 (2), 592 S.E.2d 410 (2004).

When considering a motion to dismiss on speedy trial grounds, the trial court must conduct a two-part test as set forth in the United States Supreme Court decisions in Barker v. Wingo , 407 U.S. 514, 530, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972), and Doggett v. United States , 505 U.S. 647, 651–652, 112 S.Ct. 2686, 120 L.Ed.2d 520 (1992). First, the trial court must determine whether the interval from the defendant's arrest, indictment, or other formal accusation to trial is sufficiently long to be considered presumptively prejudicial. If the delay is presumptively prejudicial, the trial court must then determine whether the defendant has been deprived of his right to a speedy trial by analyzing a four-part balancing test that considers (1) the length of the delay, (2) the reason for the delay, (3) the defendant's assertion of the right to a speedy trial, and (4) prejudice to the defendant.

(Citation omitted.) Smith v. State , 336 Ga.App. 229, 230–231 (2), 784 S.E.2d 76 (2016).

Application of the Barker- Doggett test "to the circumstances of a particular case is a task committed principally to the discretion of the trial courts, and it is settled law that our role as a court of review is a limited one." (Citation and footnote omitted.) State v. Buckner , 292 Ga. 390, 391, 738 S.E.2d 65 (2013). "In reviewing the trial court's resolution of a speedy trial claim, we must accept the court's findings of fact if the record contains any evidence to support them, and we will defer to the trial court's ultimate conclusion unless it amounts to an abuse of discretion[.]" (Citation and punctuation omitted.) York v. State , 334 Ga.App. 581, 584 (2), 780 S.E.2d 352 (2015).

As previously noted, the newly-assigned trial judge who heard Epperson's motion for new trial conducted a hearing and independently reviewed and reevaluated all of...