McGarity v. State

308 Ga. 417

841 S.E.2d 718

MCGARITY

v.The STATE.

S20A0104

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: April 6, 2020

Brown & Gill, Angela Brown Dillon, for Appellant.

Daniel J. Porter, District Attorney, Lee Franklin Tittsworth, Samuel Richard d'Entremont, Assistant District Attorneys; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Michael Alexander Oldham, Assistant Attorney General, for Appellee.

Ellington, Justice.

A Gwinnett County jury found Amy McGarity guilty of murder and other crimes in connection with the death of Kayla Weil.¹ McGarity contends that the trial court erred in denying her motion for a new trial, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to support her conviction for murder and that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of her bad character. Because neither of these claims has merit, we affirm.

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdicts, the evidence presented at trial shows the following. The victim, Weil, and her mother, Stacey Alicea, were drug users who became addicted to methamphetamine. To support her habit, Weil allegedly traded sex for drugs. Frank Wiley was one of the men with whom Weil had such a relationship. Wiley introduced Weil to other drug users, three of whom would later be indicted for crimes connected with her death: McGarity, Cody Williams, and Cedric English. Alicea also knew McGarity because Alicea bought drugs from her.

McGarity rented a house in Buford. English lived there with her. McGarity was a drug user and also a drug dealer, and her house was a popular hangout for other drug users. Drug users went to the house to buy and to use drugs, and to have sex in one of the house's two bedrooms. Alicea, Wiley, and Williams all testified that McGarity had either sold or given them drugs. McGarity was known to be connected to a "mysterious" drug cartel that supplied "the good meth."

On July 17, 2013, Wiley and Weil drove to McGarity's house to hang out, use drugs, and have sex. Wiley testified that, when they arrived at McGarity's house, McGarity was there with English and Williams. Wiley was interested in having sex with Weil, but Weil took English into one of the bedrooms to have sex with him instead. Wiley remained in the living room and got high with McGarity and Williams. After Weil passed out in the bedroom, English returned to the living room and joined the group using drugs.

Wiley testified that, as Weil slept, McGarity angrily complained to the others that Weil had stolen from her. McGarity produced a black handgun that belonged to English, brandished it at the group, and began talking about kidnapping Weil. McGarity said she wanted to give Weil to the drug cartel to satisfy a debt that McGarity owed the cartel for drugs that it had advanced her to sell. When Williams said he wanted no part of such a scheme, McGarity told him he could either help her or end up like Weil. McGarity then pointed the gun at Wiley and told him not to leave the house.

Williams testified that McGarity and English discussed the logistics of transporting Weil to the cartel. They decided that they first needed to restrain her. McGarity told Williams to bind Weil's hands with zip ties, and he complied. Weil was unconscious when Williams bound her hands and feet. When Williams returned to the living room, McGarity said that she wanted to kill Weil. English argued with McGarity about her desire to kill Weil instead of taking her to the cartel. During the argument, Williams heard the sound of a window breaking. He and McGarity went into the bedroom to investigate; English and Wiley stayed in the living room.

Weil, who had awoken, tried to break through a window to escape. Williams testified that, when he grabbed Weil to pull her away from the window, he noticed that she had broken some of the zip ties. Williams pushed Weil onto the bed and McGarity repeatedly struck her on the forehead with the gun. From the living room, Wiley could hear McGarity shouting at Weil. Wiley also heard what sounded like an object striking flesh. The repeated blows caused a large welt to form on Weil's head. When Weil lapsed into semi-consciousness, McGarity told Williams to carry Weil into the bathroom and put her in the tub. Williams testified that, at McGarity's direction, he also retrieved a computer cable from another room and gave it to her. Then, as Williams held Weil down, McGarity wrapped the cable around Weil's neck and strangled her. When he realized that Weil had died, Williams ran out of the bathroom. McGarity followed him a moment later.

Wiley, who had been sitting on the couch the whole time, testified to seeing Williams emerge from the bathroom first, followed by McGarity. Later, when Williams was out of earshot, McGarity told Wiley that Williams had broken Weil's neck. No one called the police. After a few minutes, McGarity and English carried Weil's body out of the house wrapped in blankets. They loaded the body into Williams’ car and left the house. Later, McGarity told Williams that if he said anything to anyone about what had happened, he would become a "liability" and end up like Weil.

In August 2013, McGarity approached another drug-using friend, George Ramsey, to help her dispose of Williams’ car. Ramsey testified that they "wiped down" the vehicle, inside and out, and left it in a grocery store parking lot. McGarity told Ramsey that "it was possible that [the car had been] used to transport a body." Sometime after that, McGarity briefly lived with Ramsey. Ramsey testified that he found McGarity in the back yard one day, sitting in a flower bed and crying. She told him that "[Weil] was dead and [it was] her fault."

Shortly after Labor Day, Alicea was released from prison on charges unrelated to Weil's death, and she started looking for her. She filed a missing person report and began asking friends where her daughter might be. One of the people Alicea contacted was McGarity. McGarity told Alicea that, from what she had heard, Weil had been "sold to the Mexicans" because Weil owed money to a drug cartel.

On October 24, 2013, a person who was helping clean up Chestnut Ridge Park near Lake Lanier Islands found a decomposed body wrapped in blankets in one of the public restrooms. A forensic pathologist testified that, despite the female body's advanced state of decomposition, he was able to determine that the cause of death was ligature strangulation. He also testified that the ligature, a computer cable, was wrapped six times around her neck. He also found zip ties around her wrists and ankles. There was no evidence of a broken neck. It was uncontested at trial that the body was Weil's; the body was identified through DNA testing against a sample from Alicea.

Following leads provided by Alicea, investigators eventually spoke with Wiley. At about the same time, Wiley reached out to the Gwinnett County Police Department to "talk about an unsolved case." Wiley told the authorities about what McGarity and Williams had done. Investigators located Williams’ car, and GBI forensic experts analyzed hair and fibers recovered from the back seat and trunk of the car. Hair samples recovered from the car matched Weil's hair, and fibers from the inside of the vehicle matched those found on the blankets wrapped around her body.

McGarity argues that the evidence presented at trial was not sufficient to prove malice murder beyond a reasonable doubt, arguing that the evidence shows only her mere presence and that the only evidence implicating her in the murder was the uncorroborated and self-serving testimony of co-defendant Williams, who agreed to testify against her in order to receive a life sentence instead of life without parole for his role in Weil's murder.

McGarity is correct in asserting that Williams was an accomplice in the crimes, and in order to sustain a felony conviction under Georgia law, testimony by an accomplice to a crime must be corroborated by other evidence implicating the defendant. See OCGA § 24-14-8.² However,

[c]orroborating evidence may be slight, and may be entirely circumstantial. The evidence need not be sufficient in and of itself to warrant a conviction, so long as it is independent of the accomplice's testimony and directly connects the defendant to the crime or leads to the inference of guilt. Evidence of the defendant's conduct before and after the crime was committed may give rise to an inference that [she] participated in the crime. Once the State has introduced independent evidence implicating the defendant, it is for the jury to decide whether the accomplice's testimony has been sufficiently corroborated.

(Citations and punctuation omitted.) Mangram v. State , 304 Ga. 213, 216 (II), 817 S.E.2d 682 (2018).

In this case, sufficient independent evidence corroborates Williams’ testimony that McGarity killed Weil by strangling her. Moreover, even if McGarity did not strangle Weil to death herself, the evidence was sufficient to corroborate Williams’ testimony concerning McGarity's participation in the crimes.³...