Pauley v. State

355 Ga.App. 47

842 S.E.2d 499

PAULEY

v.The STATE (two cases).

A20A0271

A20A0272

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

April 27, 2020

Sharp Georgia Law Firm, Randall Paul Sharp, for Appellant.

Leigh E. Patterson, District Attorney, John F. McClellan, Jr., Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.

Gobeil, Judge.

Lester Owensby Pauley was charged in two separate indictments with several offenses involving multiple women. Both Pauley and the State consented to joining the cases for trial. Following a jury trial, Pauley was convicted of rape, three counts of aggravated assault, and false imprisonment for crimes involving T. T.; kidnapping, rape, aggravated sexual battery, false imprisonment, and terroristic threats with respect to his ex-wife, L. C.; and kidnapping, rape, aggravated battery, false imprisonment, and terroristic threats related to another ex-wife, M. W. Pauley filed a motion for new trial, which the trial court denied. On appeal, Pauley asserts that: (1) there was insufficient evidence to sustain any of his three rape convictions; (2) there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction for aggravated sexual battery as to L. C.; (3) the State was barred from prosecuting certain counts related to M. W. due to the expiration of the applicable statute of limitation; and (4) his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance in multiple ways. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to timely challenge that four of the five¹ counts in the indictment relating to M. W. — kidnapping, aggravated battery, false imprisonment, and terroristic threats — were barred by the applicable statute of limitation. We therefore reverse these four convictions. We affirm all of Pauley's remaining convictions.

On appeal from a criminal conviction, the evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to support the verdict, and the defendant no longer enjoys a presumption of innocence; moreover, an appellate court determines evidence sufficiency and does not weigh the evidence or determine witness credibility.

Williams v. State , 333 Ga. App. 879, 879, 777 S.E.2d 711 (2015) (citation and punctuation omitted). So viewed, the evidence shows that M. W. met Pauley in February 2008 and married him a few months later on August 1, 2008. M. W. previously had been married for 43 years prior to her late husband's death in 2007. Prior to marrying Pauley, M. W. described that their relationship "wasn't a very good relationship," and there were several times when Pauley "forced himself on [M. W.]." When M. W. tried to resist Pauley's attempts to force her to have sex, Pauley would respond: "I'm a young man and I'm not going to do without sex." Pauley insisted M. W. sleep in the nude and demanded sex every night contrary to her wishes.

Although there were times that the couple engaged in consensual sex, Pauley also forced M. W. to have sex against her will. In one specific incident, M. W. recalled that she was on the couch in the living room when Pauley forced her to perform oral sex while he "held [her] down" and "manhandled [her]." M. W. tried to get her cell phone, but Pauley grabbed the phone first and "put it down" her throat, and then he raped her. M. W. recalled that Pauley told her not to fight him while he had her head turned as he could "snap [her] neck just like that." M. W. was "choking and coughing," and "feared for [her] life at that time." After he raped her, Pauley took the phone out of M. W.’s mouth. She described the encounter as "a terrible, terrible, horrible experience," and she would not "want anyone else to ever have to go through that." M. W. explained that she never told anyone what was happening in the relationship because she was ashamed and embarrassed and had always thought of herself as an intelligent woman. M. W. also was afraid to leave Pauley because she did not know what he would do if he found her, and he had previously threatened her family. In one instance, when Pauley pushed M. W. down to the floor, M. W. managed to call law enforcement and she later attempted to apply for a temporary restraining order for physical abuse, but she did not report being raped.

On yet another occasion, M. W. described that Pauley dragged her from the bedroom to the back door and pulled off her pants and panties and raped her. Pauley then grabbed her hair and dragged her to the kitchen door and threatened to put her out without any clothes on, but then said "nah, I think I'll keep you a while longer." Pauley dragged M. W. by the hair to the bedroom after she threatened to leave him. She fought back, tried to keep her legs together, and held on to her pants, but Pauley "turned that waistband inside out, ripped it loose from the — where it was sewed down, getting it off of [M. W.]. And he raped [M. W.]."

In August 2008, after Pauley tried to force her to have sex again, M. W. was able to get to her cell phone and call 911 for assistance in leaving the house. When the officers arrived, they made Pauley move his truck so that M. W. could leave. This marked the end of the marriage, and M. W. went to court to get a restraining order against Pauley and then filed for a divorce. However, M. W. did not report to authorities that Pauley had sexually abused her until late 2014. She explained that she had not filed charges earlier because she felt ashamed.

L. C. first met Pauley on April 21, 2014, and they were married the next day and moved in together. Prior to meeting Pauley, L. C. had not been in a relationship for 21 years. L. C. described that the couple's sex life was "abnormal," and initially they only engaged in oral sex because "[Pauley] couldn't do nothing." The couple started out having consensual sex but then Pauley started to force L. C. to have sex with him. Pauley would spit tobacco juice "up in" L. C. every time the couple had sex. L. C. "was scared of [Pauley] really and [she] was afraid to say anything so he just done what he wanted to do. Then [she would] have to roll over and he'd do it from the back." On one occasion, Pauley forced L. C. to have sex in his truck. Another time, Pauley put a screwdriver into L. C.’s anus even though she told him that she did not want to have sex with him and it hurt. L. C. noted, "[h]ow are you going to fight a man off that weighs 280 pounds?" Another time, after L. C. refused to have sex with Pauley, he dragged her to the bedroom and forced her to take off her clothes and walk around nude. He then got on top of her and broke her ribs, and she told him to get off her because she could not breathe. Oftentimes, Pauley would force L. C. to sit on his lap nude and then he would either drag her to the couch or the bedroom "and he just done what [he] wanted to." L. C. did not fight back because she was afraid of Pauley, and he warned her that he would kill her if she tried to leave or hire a hitman. Pauley also had a gun in every room and threatened to shoot L. C. if she tried to touch his wallet. L. C. lived with Pauley for about six weeks after they got married until she finally left him. She later took out a temporary restraining order on Pauley and divorced him in 2014.

T. T. met Pauley in the summer of 2014 through a friend, and he offered her a place to stay in his house. In return, she would buy groceries, cook, and take care of the house. Prior to meeting Pauley, T. T. had developed an addiction to painkillers, and she lived in a shack behind a house where she had access to drugs. T. T. indicated that she never planned to take Pauley as a boyfriend. A few months after she moved in, Pauley started to try to control her and "make [her] his woman." The couple had sex, and T. T. indicated that she did not fight Pauley, but "he knew [she] didn't want to." T. T. noted that when the couple had sex, "[Pauley] would have trouble. He would have to try to get it there and then work on it to try to get it to where it would go in there." Pauley told T. T. that he wanted to marry her, but T. T. refused his proposal and the two never married.

T. T. started to fear Pauley because if the couple had a disagreement, he would pick her up and choke her until she would pass out. On one occasion, Pauley forced her to perform oral sex on him in the living room, but she was unable to do so and Pauley was unable to get an erection. Pauley then grabbed a gun and forced her to go to the bedroom. T. T. described that "[t]he sex was different. He — he was holding the headboard of the bed and he had [her] legs thrown up and he was screaming help me, [T. T.], help me." Pauley "couldn't do what he needed to do ... [h]e couldn't come." Pauley then beat T. T. with his fists, causing injuries to her face. T. T. begged Pauley to stop and told him that he was hurting her.

In late November 2014, T. T. left Pauley's house because she "felt that he was fixing to do something very serious to [her]." T. T. then called a friend to come and pick her up. The following day, Pauley pulled up outside where T. T. was staying, got out of his truck, grabbed her by the throat, and started choking her. He "slung [her] around" and kidnapped her dog. T. T.’s friend called the police, and T. T. was able to recover her dog.

Based on the foregoing, a Floyd County grand jury returned an indictment in February 2015, charging Pauley with the following crimes involving T. T. in Case No. 15-CR-00239: rape (Count 1), aggravated assault with intent to rape (Count 2), false imprisonment (Count 3), aggravated assault with a firearm (Count 4), and aggravated assault by choking (Count 5). Subsequently, in May 2015, a Floyd County grand jury returned a separate indictment in Case No. 15-CR-01160 charging Pauley with the following offenses involving L. C.: kidnapping (Count 2), rape (Count 3), aggravated sexual battery (Count 4), false imprisonment (Count 5), and terroristic threats (Count 6); and the following charges with respect to M. W.: kidnapping (Count 7), rape (Count 8), aggravated battery ...