Neal v. State

313 Ga. 746

873 S.E.2d 209

NEAL

v.The STATE.

S22A0261

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: May 17, 2022

Sara E. Meyers, Houston Judicial Circuit Public Defender, P.O. Box 474, Perry, Georgia 31069, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Parisia Faith Sarfarazi, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, William M. Kendall, Acting District Attorney, Rodrigo L. Silva, A.D.A., Houston County District Attorney's Office, 201 North Perry Parkway, Perry, Georgia 31069, for Appellee.

Boggs, Presiding Justice.

Appellant Anighyah Neal challenges his 2018 convictions for felony murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony in connection with the shooting death of Lance Williams. Appellant contends that the evidence was legally insufficient to support his convictions, that the trial court violated his constitutional right to be present at four bench conferences during voir dire, and that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel at trial. However, the evidence was sufficient to support Appellant's convictions, the record fully supports the trial court's finding that Appellant acquiesced in his counsel's waiver of his right to be present at the bench conferences, and Appellant has not met his burden to show that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. Accordingly, we affirm.¹

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence at trial showed the following. Appellant and VonEric Richardson sold Xanax for Williams, who also sold marijuana and was known to have guns and carry cash. Around midday on July 8, 2016, Richardson borrowed his girlfriend's maroon Mercury Sable, picked up Appellant and Kadarius Kendrick in Perry, and drove to Williams’ house in Byron. Williams got in the car, and Richardson drove to the Academy Sports store in Warner Robins, where Williams bought a box of .45-caliber cartridges and a box of .40-caliber cartridges. Richardson then drove back to Williams’ house, where Richardson and Kendrick waited in the car while Appellant and Williams went inside.

Appellant and Williams walked through the living room and down a hallway to Williams’ bedroom, where Williams put the bag containing the boxes of bullets on top of a stack of shoeboxes in his closet. There were two unloaded guns lying on the bed: a .45-caliber pistol and a .40-caliber pistol. As Appellant and Williams were talking, Williams took ten cartridges out of the box of .45-caliber cartridges, loaded the .45-caliber pistol, and laid the pistol back on the bed. Appellant then picked up the .45-caliber pistol and, standing at the end of Williams’ bed, fired twice at Williams, who was eight inches shorter than Appellant. One bullet struck Williams on the upper right side of his chest and travelled at a downward angle through his right lung, aorta, and left lung before exiting the left side of his back. Appellant ran out of the bedroom, through the hallway, and into the living room, where he tried to leave through the front door but could not get the storm door open. Williams managed to grab a loaded .22-caliber revolver from his closet and follow after Appellant, who shot twice more at Williams in the living room, missing both times. Appellant ran to the bathroom in the master bedroom and broke through a window into the back yard as Williams collapsed on the living room floor by the front door and died.

Craig Hughes, who lived two doors down from Williams, was in his back yard and heard the glass break when Appellant came through the window. Appellant jumped over a privacy fence, ran across Hughes’ back yard, and jumped over a gate into Hughes’ front yard. Hughes called out to Appellant, but Appellant did not respond, so Hughes followed Appellant into the front yard and asked Appellant what he was doing. Appellant turned to face Hughes, "moved his hand towards his pocket as if he had a weapon," and threatened to "kill" Hughes. Appellant did not make any claim that somebody just shot at him, that somebody was trying to get him, or that he was in fear for his life. Hughes saw a maroon Mercury Sable come around the curve from the direction of Williams’ house, Appellant get into the back seat, and the car speed off. Hughes ran behind the car long enough to get the license plate number and went inside his house and called 911; a recording of the 911 call was later played for the jury.

Richardson drove back to Perry and stopped at the house of a friend, Brandon Peavy, who lived across a field from Richardson. Appellant asked Richardson to borrow some clothes, so Richardson walked to his house and brought back some clothes, which Appellant changed into. Appellant took the clothes that he was wearing when he shot Williams and threw them in a fire barrel in Peavy's back yard. When Peavy checked his cell phone and learned that Williams had been killed, Peavy relayed the information to Richardson, Kendrick, and Appellant, but they did not say anything. Several hours later, Appellant called a childhood friend, Cyntavious Mumphery, who was also Williams’ nephew, and asked for a ride to Atlanta. On the way to Atlanta, Williams’ brother called Mumphery and told him that Appellant was the person who killed Williams. Mumphery stopped at a gas station, made Appellant get out of the car, and fought with Appellant. After the fight, Appellant got his bag out of Mumphery's car, threatened Mumphery, and fled on foot.

Shortly after the shooting, responding officers found Williams lying on his back in a pool of blood just inside the front door. A fully loaded .22-caliber revolver was on the floor near Williams’ right hand. Outside, on the ground beneath a window on the back of the house, the officers found broken glass and a magazine containing five .45-caliber cartridges. A search of the yard did not yield any firearms. A crime scene investigator recovered two .45-caliber shell casings from the floor in the living room. In Williams’ bedroom, the crime scene investigator recovered an empty .40-caliber pistol from the bed and two .45-caliber shell casings from the floor. Both rounds fired in the bedroom went through the closet door, which was open, and into the wall. Based on the height of the bullet holes, the crime scene investigator determined that both bullets were traveling at a downward trajectory. There was no physical evidence at the scene that either the .40-caliber pistol or the .22-caliber revolver had been fired.

Appellant was arrested in the Atlanta area five days after the shooting, on July 13, 2016.

The lead investigator, Shane Mann, interviewed Appellant. The interview was video recorded and later played for the jury. In the interview, Appellant claimed that after Williams loaded the .45-caliber pistol, he put it down on the bed beside the .40-caliber pistol and then asked Appellant about $200 that Appellant owed him. Appellant said that when he denied owing Williams any money, Williams picked up the .40-caliber pistol from the bed, pointed it at Appellant, and demanded that Appellant give him everything in his pockets. Appellant claimed that he said, "No," and started to leave the room, and Williams fired the .40-caliber pistol at Appellant. Appellant said that after he heard the "boom" and his ears started ringing, he lay down on the floor at the end of the bed. According to Appellant, he reached up from the floor, grabbed the .45-caliber pistol off the bed, and blindly fired the gun toward the ceiling before getting up and running into the living room.

Appellant also claimed that Williams shot at him again in the living room, that he dropped the .45-caliber pistol and the magazine after he broke through the window, and that he told Hughes that someone was shooting at him.

Appellant testified at trial and again claimed self-defense. Appellant testified that he shot Williams from a crouching position at the end of the bed after Williams pointed the .40-caliber pistol at him and "pulled the trigger." Appellant admitted that Williams never fired a shot at him, that the reason his ears were ringing was because he shot at Williams, that he fled the scene and changed his clothes, and that he did not call 911 to report the incident. The court charged the jury on self-defense.

When properly viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial and summarized above was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Appellant did not shoot Williams in self-defense and that Appellant instead was guilty of the crimes for 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 Anthony v. State , 298 Ga. 827, 829, 785 S.E.2d 277 (2016) ("The jury is free to reject any evidence in support of a justification defense and to accept the evidence that the shooting was not done in self-defense."); Vega v. State , 285 Ga. 32, 33, 673 S.E.2d 223 (2009) (" ‘It was for the jury to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence.’ " (citation omitted)).

2. Appellant contends that the trial court violated his constitutional right to be present by excluding him from four bench conferences during voir dire at which counsel for the parties discussed with the court whether certain prospective jurors should be struck for cause. See Wade v. State , 12 Ga. 25, 29 (2) (1852) (holding that a criminal defendant has "the right to be present, and see and hear, all the proceedings which are had against him on the trial before the [c]ourt" (emphasis omitted)). See also Murphy v. State , 299 Ga. 238, 241, 787 S.E.2d 721 (2016) (holding that "appellant clearly had the right to be present for and to hear the matters discussed in the bench conferences" that "occurred during jury selection, at a time...