Hill v. State

903 S.E.2d 101

HILL

v.STATE.

S24A0156

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: June 11, 2024

Superior Court, Newton County, Cheveda McCamy, Judge

Tyler Aaron Pope Carey, Frost & Carey, LLC, 2115 Usher Street, N.W., Covington, Georgia 30014, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Clint Christopher Malcolm, Assistant Attorney General, Meghan Hobbs Hill, Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Mary Catherine Norman, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334-1300, Amber Rae Bennett, Alcovy Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, 1132 Usher Street, N.W., Suite 313, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Warren, Justice.

In July 2019, James Hill, III, was convicted of malice murder in connection with the strangling death of Kelly Marshall. He appeals this conviction, arguing that the evidence was not sufficient to support the conviction as a matter of constitutional due process or Georgia statutory law, that the trial court abused its discretion by denying his motions for mistrial after allegedly improper evidence was introduced and by failing to remove for cause eight potential jurors during voir dire; and that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to move to strike for cause five of those potential jurors.¹ For the reasons explained below, we affirm.

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial showed the following. At about 10:00 a.m. on August 12, 2017, Marshall’s body was discovered on the side of a river in Newton County by some people who had come to the river to kayak, She had been asphyxiated in a manner consistent with strangulation, and she was naked from the waist down.

At the time of her death, Marshall and Hill had been dating for about six months—although Marshall was married to a man, with whom she had two children, who was in prison. Marshall lived with her grandmother and father, and about a month before Marshall’s death, Marshall’s grandmother told Hill that he was not allowed in their home "because he hit" Marshall. At trial, family members and friends of Marshall and Hill testified about witnessing incidents of physical violence between Marshall and Hill.

During one incident, Hill’s aunt saw Marshall "trying to claw [Hill’s] eyes out"; Hill then picked Marshall up "from her waist," holding her in a way "so she couldn’t keep clawing his face," and carried her around the house. Marshall’s daughter testified that during this incident, she saw Hill holding Marshall "against a wall with his hands around her neck." During another incident less than a month before Marshall’s death, Marshall and Hill were arguing and Marshall’s friend saw Marshall "with a bloody nose, freaking out, saying, ‘he hit me, he hit me.’ " Hill testified that during this incident, he "openhand slapped" Marshall. And about two weeks before Marshall’s death, Marshall’s mother and sister saw Hill "sw[i]ng at [Marshall] and knock[] her across the kitchen," and then grab her "by the hair of the head." After this altercation, Marshall had "knots on her head" and bruises on her elbows and knees.

Witnesses also testified that Marshall’s husband was a source of contention between Marshall and Hill. Marshall’s daughter testified that if Marshall said "anything about my dad," Hill "would hit her and she would hit him back" and that on one occasion when Marshall was "talking about getting back with my dad," Hill said, "you don’t have a chance, neither of you have a chance." Similarly, one of Marshall’s friends testified that he overheard an argument between Marshall and Hill, during which Marshall said she was going to be with her husband "when he came home," and Hill responded, "not if I can help it."

On August 11, 2017—the day before Marshall’s body was discovered and about a week before Marshall’s husband was scheduled to be released from prison on parole—Marshall spent the day with Hill and a friend, drinking and swimming. Hill testified that at the end of the day, he dropped off his friend at his house and then drove to Marshall’s house. The friend later told people that Marshall and Hill argued on the drive home, and Hill said to Marshall, "I’m going to kill you tonight, b**ch."

Marshall’s father and grandmother testified that Marshall, who was intoxicated, came home around 8:30 or 9:00 p.m., got a plate of food, and took it to her room. At about 11:30 p.m., she left her room and got a second plate of food, and then went back to her room and shut the door. They did not see her again. At some point, Marshall’s father and grandmother heard "loud thumping noises" coming from her room, which sounded "like she was moving furniture," but they did not check on her. The next morning, Marshall’s father went to her room and discovered that her window was open and that her cell phone and purse were in the room, but Marshall was not.²

At trial, Hill testified that when he dropped Marshall off, he parked his white Oldsmobile Cutlass down the street so her grandmother would not see him, and after Marshall went inside, he met her at her window. They spent about 30 to 45 minutes together on her back porch before Hill left to drive to Atlanta, where he stayed for two days, until August 13.

On August 13, an officer from the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, acting on an anonymous tip that a person driving a white Cutlass nearby "was suspected of murder," maneuvered his car to follow the Cutlass. Hill "started swerving across the yellow lines," the officer "attempted to stop him," and the "vehicle fled." The officer chased Hill for about half a mile, reaching a speed of 100 miles per hour in a 45-miIe-per-hour zone. Hill then crashed the Cutlass, and the officer arrested him.

Hill was interviewed by investigators from the Newton County Sheriff’s Office on August 15 and said that he stayed at a strip club in Atlanta from around 11:00 p.m. on August 11 until the club closed at 3:00 a.m. the next morning. He then went to a hotel in Atlanta, where he stayed until August 13. When asked where his Cutlass was at 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. on August 12, he said it was parked "right down the street" from the strip club and explained that after leaving the club, he went "riding around" Atlanta and it "took [him] a while" to find a hotel room.³

Surveillance video from the strip club in Atlanta showed that Hill entered the club at 12:53 a.m. and left at 2:26 a.m. on August 12. However, his car did not remain in Atlanta: an officer from the Newton County Sheriff’s Office saw Hill’s Cutlass in Newton County at 3:40 a.m.⁴ Surveillance video from the hotel shows that Hill arrived at the hotel in Atlanta at 5:33 a.m.⁵

The State also presented evidence that one evening in 2010, when Hill was 16 or 17 years old, he was spending time with his ex-girlfriend and accused her of wanting to leave to spend time with one of her male friends. He then strangled her to the point that she passed out, and she woke up with her pants and underwear on the ground.⁶ Hill later pled guilty to aggravated assault in connection with this incident.⁷

[1] 1. Hill first argues that the evidence discussed above was not sufficient to support his conviction as a matter of constitutional due process. When reviewing this challenge, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdicts 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. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). See also Lopez v. State, 318 Ga. 664, 667–68, 898 S.E.2d 441, 445 (2024). Hill also argues that the evidence was not sufficient to support his conviction under OCGA § 24-14-6, which says; "To warrant a conviction on circumstantial evidence, the proved facts shall not only be consistent with the hypothesis of guilt, but shall exclude every other reason- able hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused."

[2, 3] The evidence here, when viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, showed that Hill had a history of physically abusing Marshall (as well as another girlfriend), threatened to kill Marshall the evening before she was found dead, was the last person to see Marshall on the night that she died, attempted to flee law enforcement officers, and then lied to law enforcement officers about where he was on that night Marshall died. The evidence presented at trial and recounted in part above was constitutionally sufficient to support the jury’s conclusion that Hill murdered Marshall. See, e.g., Lopez, 898 S.E.2d at 445-446 (holding that the evidence was constitutionally sufficient to support the appellant’s conviction for malice murder where the appellant and another person were the only people with the victim when he was shot, the appellant admitted that she and the victim "typically fought" and fought right before the shooting, and the appellant gave "shifting accounts" of how the shooting occurred); Jones v. State, 314 Ga. 400, 406, 877 S.E.2d 232 (2022) (holding that the evidence—which included that the appellant had been violent toward the victim in the past and had lied to investigators about how the shooting occurred—was constitutionally sufficient to support the appellant’s conviction for malice murder). And although the evidence was wholly circumstantial, it was sufficient to support the jury’s rejection of every reasonable hypothesis save that of Hill’s guilt; in particular, given the circumstances and Hill’s initial failure to mention his trip home and back to Atlanta in the middle of the night, the jury could have rejected Hill’s story about why he drove to Newton County. See, e.g., Lopez, 898 S.E.2d at 445-446 (holding that the evidence presented was also sufficient under OCGA § 24-14-6).

3. Hill argues that the trial court abused its discretion by denying his three motions for mistrial. For the...