Outlaw v. State

311 Ga. 396

858 S.E.2d 63

OUTLAW

v.The STATE.

S21A0305

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: May 3, 2021

Maryann F. Blend, for appellant.

Daniel J. Porter, District Attorney, Lee F. Tittsworth, Samuel R. d'Entremont, Assistant District Attorneys; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Eric C. Peters, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

Nahmias, Presiding Justice.

Appellant Charles Outlaw was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of Angela Rabotte. In this appeal, he contends that the trial court erred by denying his motions to suppress evidence derived from his cell phone records and statements that he made during a meeting in jail with his girlfriend. He also argues that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to request a jury instruction on voluntary manslaughter. These claims are meritless, so we affirm.¹

1. The evidence presented at Appellant's trial showed the following. Appellant and Rabotte had known each other as children and had reconnected in February 2014; they were friends and may have been romantically involved. In the early morning hours of March 29, 2014, Rabotte worked as a dancer at a bachelor party in Smyrna. When the party ended around 5:00 a.m., another dancer saw Rabotte carrying a money counter and overheard her on her cell phone arguing and asking for a ride home.

Later that day, Rabotte's friends became concerned when she did not arrive home. They reported to the police that she was missing and organized a search party in Norcross on March 31. Appellant was there, and a detective interviewed him that evening. Appellant said that he drove a Dodge Dart to pick up Rabotte after the party in Smyrna; on the way to Gwinnett County, they argued; he parked near his girlfriend Lakisha Fort's house in Norcross and walked to the house while Rabotte stayed in the car so Fort would not see her; and when he returned about 15 minutes later, Rabotte and the bags of clothes and money counter she had been carrying were gone. On April 1, after a second interview, Appellant was arrested on charges (cocaine possession and violating the terms of his probation) unrelated to Rabotte's murder.

On April 3, Rabotte's dead body was found in a wooded area near Lilburn Industrial Way in Lilburn, where it appeared to have been carried and then covered with pine straw. The medical examiner who performed Rabotte's autopsy testified that Rabotte died from a contact gunshot wound to the left side of the back of her head. Investigators searched the Dodge that Appellant had been driving and found gunshot primer residue on the interior roof above the driver's area. Investigators also searched a house that Appellant often visited and found wrapped in a blanket in the attic a money counter that was the same make, model, and color as the one Rabotte was seen carrying at the bachelor party.

About three weeks after the murder, on April 24, Appellant's girlfriend Fort visited him in jail. A detective had provided her with a small audio-recording device, which she hid in her clothing and used to record the meeting with Appellant; the audio recording of the meeting was played for the jury during the trial. The recording reflects that Appellant maintained that he did not kill Rabotte. Fort testified, however, that during several lengthy pauses (which are also reflected on the recording), Appellant whispered, mouthed words, and used body language to tell her that he and Rabotte argued in the car; Rabotte put a gun to his head; and he took the gun and shot her in the back of the head.

Fort also testified that her brother told her that Appellant had woken him on the morning Rabotte was last seen alive, saying "I think I killed the old girl." Appellant's jail cellmate testified that Appellant admitted shooting Rabotte in the head with a handgun as they argued, then putting her in the trunk, disposing of her body, and having the car cleaned.

In addition, Rabotte's cell phone records showed that on the morning she was last seen, March 29, her phone was in Smyrna at 4:52 a.m., near Jimmy Carter Boulevard at 5:32 a.m., and heading toward Lilburn at 5:41 a.m. Rabotte's phone was not used again after that time. The records for Appellant's two cell phones, one of which received service from MetroPCS and the other from Verizon, showed that on March 29, both phones were near Jimmy Carter Boulevard around 5:24 a.m. The MetroPCS records placed that phone near Lilburn Industrial Way, where Rabotte's body was found, at 5:49 a.m.

2. Appellant contends first that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence of cell-site location information (CSLI) that was obtained from his cell phone records. See Lofton v. State , 310 Ga. 770, 775 n.3, 854 S.E.2d 690, 696 n.3 (2021) (explaining CSLI). We disagree.

(a) On April 10, 2014, seven days after Rabotte's body was found, the State filed motions that requested court orders requiring Verizon and MetroPCS to disclose Appellant's cell phone records, including CSLI, from March 27 through April 5, 2014. The motions detailed the facts of the investigation into Rabotte's murder and said that the records would be "relevant and material to the investigation." The trial court then issued orders that required Verizon and MetroPCS to disclose the requested records under the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA). See 18 USC § 2703 (c) (1) (B) & (d).²

Before trial, Appellant filed a motion to suppress the CSLI evidence derived from the MetroPCS records; the trial court ultimately denied the motion summarily. During the trial, the court admitted into evidence and an investigator testified about the Verizon and MetroPCS records and two maps that the investigator had created. As mentioned above, one of the maps plotted both of Appellant's phones near Jimmy Carter Boulevard, which was the area where Rabotte's phone was also located, around 5:24 a.m. on March 29; the other map plotted Appellant's MetroPCS phone near Lilburn Industrial Way, where Rabotte's body was later found, at 5:49 a.m.

(b) Appellant argues that the State's failure to obtain a search warrant for his cell phone records violated his right against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Appellant relies on the United States Supreme Court's 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States , 585 U.S. ––––, 138 S.Ct. 2206, 201 L.Ed.2d 507 (2018), which held that "accessing seven days of CSLI constitutes a Fourth Amendment search" for which the government generally must obtain a search warrant based on probable cause, not merely a court order issued pursuant to 18 USC § 2703 (d). Carpenter , 138 S.Ct. at 2217 n.3, 2221. Appellant argues that the trial court therefore should have suppressed the CSLI evidence derived from his cell phone records under the exclusionary rule for violations of the Fourth Amendment. See Illinois v. Krull , 480 U.S. 340, 347, 107 S.Ct. 1160, 94 L.Ed.2d 364 (1987) ("When evidence is obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the judicially developed exclusionary rule usually precludes its use in a criminal proceeding against the victim of the illegal search and seizure."). We can assume without deciding that Appellant preserved for ordinary appellate review his claim that the trial court should have suppressed the CSLI evidence obtained from his Verizon records, because the exclusionary rule did not preclude the admission of either that evidence or the CSLI evidence derived from his MetroPCS records.

As we recently explained in Lofton , two good-faith exceptions to the exclusionary rule apply to this situation. See 310 Ga. at 782, 854 S.E.2d at 701. Lofton challenged the denial of his motion to suppress CSLI evidence derived from a detective's request for the disclosure of Lofton's cell phone records under another provision of the SCA, 18 USC § 2702 (c) (4), on the ground that the detective's failure to obtain a search warrant for the records violated the Fourth Amendment under Carpenter . See Lofton , 310 Ga. at 775-778, 854 S.E.2d at 696-699.³ Noting that Carpenter was decided four years after Lofton's trial, we held that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule for searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on " ‘a statute that appeared legitimately to allow a warrantless ... search’ " applied, because at the time, 18 USC § 2702 (c) (4) authorized the detective to obtain the cell phone records without a search warrant. Lofton , 310 Ga. at 783, 854 S.E.2d at 701-702 (quoting Krull , 480 U.S. at 360, 107 S.Ct. 1160 ). We then determined that the exception for "searches conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on binding appellate precedent that is later overruled" also applied, because at the time of the investigative conduct, appellate precedent binding in Georgia courts held that a search warrant was not required to obtain CSLI. See id. (citing Davis v. United States , 564 U.S. 229, 241, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011) ).⁴

Similarly, in this case, Carpenter was decided more than four years after the State requested and acquired Appellant's cell phone records in April 2014. At that time, 18 USC § 2703 (c) (1) (B) and (d) authorized the State to obtain a court order requiring the disclosure of the records if the State offered "specific and articulable facts" showing that there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that the records were "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation." Appellant does not dispute that the State's motions requesting the court orders complied with those provisions of the SCA. And although Lofton involved a different SCA provision ( 18 USC § 2702 (c) (4) ), the good-faith exception for objectively reasonable reliance on a statute that appeared legitimately to allow a warrantless search applies with equal force here, because 18...