Jones v. State

902 S.E.2d 599

JONES

v.The STATE.

S24A0351

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: May 29, 2024

Superior Court, DeKalb County, Brian E. Lake, Judge

William Davis Hewitt, The Appellate Division - Georgia Public Defender Council, 100 Bull Street, Suite 200, Savannah, Georgia 31401, 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, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Deborah D. Wellborn, A.D.A., Sherry Boston, District Attorney, Agatha K. Romanowski, DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, 556 North McDonough Street, Decatur, Georgia 30030, Elizabeth Rosenwasser, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capital Square, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Boggs, Chief Justice.

Appellant Darious Jones challenges his 2016 conviction for felony murder in connection with the beating death of Faith Parke. Appellant contends that the evidence was constitutionally insufficient; that, due to his mental condition, the trial court erred by allowing him to decide whether to testify without further inquiry; that the trial court erred in refusing to give the voluntary manslaughter-related instructions that he requested; and that the trial court erred in sentencing him to life without the possibility of parole. However, as explained below, we con clude that the evidence was sufficient because, among other things, Appellant arranged to meet Parke at the location where she died; Appellant’s DNA and fingerprints were at the crime scene, including on a doorstop bar near Parke’s body; and Parke had injuries matching the pattern on the end of that doorstop bar. Furthermore, Georgia law does not require a trial court to advise a defendant concerning his right to testify or to make the type of inquiry that Appellant asserts the trial court should have made here, and the trial court properly refused to give Appellant’s requested instructions regarding voluntary manslaughter because no evidence supported them. Finally, Appellant’s sentencing argument fails. Accordingly, we affirm.¹

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence at trial showed the following. On May 11, 2015, Appellant texted and called Parke, arranging to meet and to pay her money in exchange for sexual acts. After texting and calling each other’s phones throughout the night and into the next morning, they eventually agreed to meet on May 12 at a vacant house next door to where Appellant lived with his mother, and that Appellant would pay $80 for 30 minutes of Parke’s, time. A neighbor who lived across the street from the vacant home testified that at around 9:00 a.m. on May 12, she saw a young female wearing a striped dress and talking on a cell phone park a PT Cruiser vehicle in front of the vacant house. The neighbor did not see the female enter the house.

A few hours later, Bernard Nguyen, a maintenance man, arrived at the vacant home to prepare it for a new tenant. As he began cleaning on May 12, he noticed blood in an upstairs bathroom. He then noticed blood near the stairs that he overlooked when he first went up the stairs. Not finding anyone upstairs, he checked a downstairs bedroom, where he saw a woman later identified as Parke face-down on the floor in a pool of blood. Nguyen called his wife and then 911, Nguyen further testified that the home had two sliding glass doors that led to the outside, one in the living room and another in the bedroom where he found Parke’s body. Both sliding glass doors usually had matching metal doorstop bars that secured them, and both bars were in place the day before when Nguyen left. On May 12, however, the doorstop bar was missing from the door of the bedroom where he found Parke.

Investigator Kelly Freeman of the DeKalb County Police Department responded to the scene. She observed that the doorstop bar was missing from the door in the bedroom where Nguyen discovered Parke’s body. However, she found the missing doorstop bar in the closet of that bedroom. In the kitchen trashcan, she found what appeared to be bloody paper towels, a condom, and a condom wrapper. Nguyen testified that when he left the house the day before, there was no blood anywhere inside, nor was there a condom in the trashcan. Investigator Freeman took photos of Parke’s head, including "possible brain matter" that was exposed due to a "defect to [Parke’s] head" and possible defensive wounds. Parke’s wounds were so severe that Investigator Freeman could see directly into Parke’s skull. Photos that Investigator Freeman took at the crime scene were admitted into evidence and showed that Parke was wearing striped clothing.

Sergeant M.S. McLendon of the DeKalb County Police Department testified that he obtained a search warrant for Parke’s car and inspected her cell phone. He found the last phone number that Parke’s phone contacted, discovered that the phone number belonged to Appellant, and found Appellant’s address, which was next door to the crime scene. Sergeant McLendon further testified that he obtained a search warrant for Appellant’s DNA, went to Appellant’s house, and transported Appellant to the police station to execute the search warrant. At the police station, Sergeant McLendon noticed "cuts and injuries" on Appellant’s hands.

Jennifer Jones, Appellant’s mother, testified that Appellant was about 21 at the time of Parke’s death, had "ADHD, … opposition defiant disorder, mild mental retardation, and … [a] learning disability," and graduated high school with a "transitional diploma" for students with "disabilities that most likely would not be able to pass the high school graduation test because their IQ is too low and they already know that they won’t." Jennifer further recalled that on May 16, police came to her house, which she shared with Appellant and other relatives. An officer drove Appellant to the police station, and Jennifer followed them to the station. Jennifer informed police that Appellant "had a disability."

On the way home from the police station that evening with Appellant, Jennifer "kept asking him what’s going on." Appellant "had a frightened look on his face" and eventually told her that "it was a accident. You know I wouldn’t hurt nobody." Appellant’s eyes filled with tears as he spoke. They drove home without talking further. When they got home and were walking into the house, Appellant said, "[I]t’s a bag in the garage " Jennifer found a black trash bag in the garage of her home but could not bring herself to open it. The next day, Jennifer drove Appellant to the police station to "turn him in," took the bag with her, and again told police that Appellant "ha[d] a disability." Police obtained a search warrant for the bag, which one officer testified smelled "like a decomposing body," and examined it. Inside, officers found various items, including clothes, shoes, a washcloth, gloves, and a towel, which were bloody. Police then arrested Appellant for murder.

At trial, Erica Turner of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation testified as an expert for the State in latent print examinations. Turner identified Appellant’s fingerprint on the doorstop bar that police collected from the closet of the bedroom where Parke’s body was found. She also matched to Appellant a fingerprint on a piece of vinyl siding that was located on the outside of the house near the sliding glass door leading to that bedroom.

Betzaida Maldonado of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation testified for the State as an expert in DNA analysis and typing. Maldonado testified that the condom police found in the trashcan of the home contained Appellant’s DNA.

Dr. Gerald Gowitt, the chief medical examiner for DeKalb County who performed Parke’s autopsy, testified for the State as an expert in forensic pathology. Dr. Gowitt explained that Parke’s injuries were mostly "confined to the head and neck and right and left arms" and that her injuries were "too numerous to count." He further recounted that during the autopsy he discovered "pattern injuries" on the left side of Parke’s head and face that matched the end of a doorstop bar recovered from the scene. The pattern injuries were "entirely consistent with being struck with a significant amount of force by the end of that pipe, not by the shaft part, but by the end of that pipe, enough to bruise the skin and leave a mark on the skin in the form of a bruise that looks like the end of the rubber stopper" on the doorstop bar, and Dr. Gowitt testified that he was fairly confident that Parke’s injuries were "made by the end of [the] doorstop" bar. He also noted that Parke had a bite mark on her left elbow, that some of her injuries appeared to be defensive, and that she had $50 in cash tucked underneath her clothing. Dr. Gowitt concluded that Parke would have been "awake and aware of what was happening to her" for a portion of the beating and that her cause of death was blunt head trauma.

[1–3] 2. Appellant first contends that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of constitutional due process to support his conviction. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). In Appellant’s estimation, the State presented conflicting and questionable evidence at trial that might have confused the jury and did not authorize the jury to find that the State proved the essential elements of the crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. "In evaluating a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence as a matter of constitutional due process, we view the evidence presented at trial 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." Lopez v. State, 318 Ga. 664, 667, 898 S.E.2d 441 (2024). Indeed, "it is well settled that it is the role of the jury to resolve conflicts...