Randolph v. State

317 Ga. 146

891 S.E.2d 818

RANDOLPH v. The STATE.

S23A0636

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: August 21, 2023

Frank Michael Starosto, Jr., General Counsel, Star Law, PC, 220 Heritage Walk, Suite 210, Woodstock, Georgia 30188, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Matthew Blackwell Crowder, Assistant Attorney General, Department Of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334-1300, Linda Jeanne Dunikoski, A.D.A., Flynn Duncan Broady, Jr., Cobb County District Attorney's Office, 70 Haynes Street, Third Floor, Marietta, Georgia 30090, for Appellee.

McMillian, Justice.

In March 2016, a jury found James Lorenzo Randolph guilty of malice murder, armed robbery, and other crimes in connection with the armed robbery of Carlos Torres and Dennis Dixon and the shooting death of Rodney Castlin. ¹ On appeal, Randolph asserts that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions because the State failed to corroborate the testimony of an accomplice and that the trial court erred in admitting evidence of two other acts under OCGA § 24-4-404 (b). Because we conclude that the accomplice's testimony was sufficiently corroborated by other evidence admitted at trial, that the trial court did not err in admitting one prior incident of armed robbery, and that any error in admitting the other incident (a home burglary) was harmless, we affirm.

The evidence introduced at trial shows that on December 7, 2000, Torres was working as a front desk clerk at a Wingate Inn in Kennesaw. Around 10:00 p.m., a man jumped over the front counter, pointed a gun at Torres, and said, "Give me the money." Fearing that he would be shot, Torres held the hotel's cash drawer out, and the man took the money from it. Castlin, who was working as the night manager and had been in the back office, came around the corner to see what was going on. The man asked Castlin if there was a safe, and Castlin told him there was not. The man, however, continued to point the gun at Castlin and repeatedly asked where the safe was. The man then hit Torres in the head with the butt of the gun, causing him to fall to the ground and lose consciousness. When Torres awoke, he heard a gunshot and stood up in time to see someone jump over the counter and run out. Castlin was lying on the ground, bleeding from his chest. Torres later described the man as slim, about five feet and eleven inches or six feet tall, and wielding a black revolver. Torres was able to give a description of the shooter to a sketch artist, and the drawing was admitted at trial. Later at trial, a photograph showing what Randolph looked like in 2000 was also admitted.

Dixon was a guest at the hotel that evening and was in the computer room of the lobby when he heard "a bunch of ruckus."

Dixon looked out to see two men dressed in black and wearing masks come through the front door. One of the men put his hands down on the front desk and jumped over it, while the other came into the computer room and ordered Dixon to get on the floor and to empty his pockets. Dixon did not see a weapon, but the man had his hand in his pocket like he was pointing something at Dixon. Fearing that he could be shot, Dixon gave his money to the man. During this time, Dixon heard the other man say numerous times, "[O]pen the safe or I'm going to shoot you." He then heard a gunshot and closed his eyes. After he heard the men run out of the hotel, Dixon hid for a time and then fled down the hall to the room of his traveling companion and called 911.

LeeAnn Bennett, a supervising emergency room nurse, was also a guest at the hotel that night. When she heard someone yelling that someone had been shot, she ran out of her room and found Castlin lying on the floor behind the front desk with an apparent chest wound. His eyes were open, but he was not breathing regularly. She administered aid until EMTs arrived. Castlin was pronounced dead on arrival at a nearby hospital. A medical examiner concluded that Castlin's cause of death was a gunshot wound to the chest.

A crime scene investigator with the Cobb County Police Department collected a .22-caliber bullet from the scene and lifted fingerprints from the front counter, which were entered into a data base that only included fingerprints from Georgia, and no fingerprint match was identified. The Cobb County Police Department continued to periodically run searches of the fingerprints over the years, and eventually, in July 2012, a search of the federal fingerprint database maintained by the FBI yielded a list of possible matches that included Randolph's name. Following a manual comparison, a Cobb County Police Department fingerprint analyst determined that Randolph's fingerprints matched the set of prints lifted from the hotel in 2000. The match was later confirmed by a retired GBI fingerprint expert. ²

Cobb County Investigator John Dawes testified that in June 2012, he spoke with a detective in Jacksonville, Florida, concerning information that the detective had obtained that he believed might be relevant to an old Cobb County case. The detective explained that counsel for Ruel Brown, who was facing unrelated charges in Florida, had represented to him that Brown had information about a shooting that occurred in November or December 2000 at a hotel north of Atlanta with the word "Win" in the name. Dawes determined that Brown was likely referring to the unsolved shooting at the Wingate Inn in Kennesaw. Dawes eventually obtained a statement from Brown in September 2014, in which Brown identified Randolph as the shooter. Following his arrest in South Carolina for the murder of Castlin, Randolph called the mother of his child while detained in jail there and told her that "they got" him "for something fourteen years ago" and that his "life [was] changed now." A recording of this phone call was played for the jury.

Following a grant of immunity, Brown testified on behalf of the State at trial. ³ Brown explained that he had known Randolph since Randolph was 13 or 14 years old. In 2000, Brown lived in Columbia, South Carolina, but traveled back and forth to Atlanta as part of a sex trafficking ring he was involved in. In December 2000, Randolph, who was about six feet tall with a slender build at the time, ⁴ and another man, whom Brown refused to identify, wanted to come with Brown to Atlanta, and Brown agreed. Around 10:00 p.m. on December 7, 2000, the three men went to Cobb County for the purpose of robbing the Wingate Inn. Randolph, carrying Brown's small-caliber handgun, and the third man went inside while Brown waited outside in the car, parked in a position where he could see into the lobby. Brown saw Randolph behind the counter with the gun pointed at a man who had his hands up. Brown saw the flash of the gun being fired and the man fall backward. Randolph and the third man, who had been out of view, ran out of the hotel and into Brown's car, and Brown immediately drove off toward the interstate.

Brown testified that he was really upset and "was kind of giving it to" Randolph because the shooting was not part of the plan. Randolph claimed that he had to shoot because the victim had been coming toward him. The three of them divided up the money that they had stolen from the cash register and from Dixon. Brown initially wanted to drive straight to South Carolina, but decided that they should stay somewhere nearby so they could find out if the victim had died. Brown dropped the gun in a storm drain, and then the three men slept in the car while they waited for the morning newspaper to be delivered. The following morning, after reading that the victim had died, they returned to Columbia, South Carolina.

The State also presented evidence of two prior offenses committed by Randolph. Jagdish Patel testified that on December 4, 2000, three days before the shooting at the Wingate Inn, he was working at a Blimpie restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina when a man came in around 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. with a gun and said, "Give me the money. Otherwise I'll shoot you." The man then climbed over the counter and told Patel to lie down on the floor and asked where the safe was. When Patel told him there was no safe, the man demanded his wallet. The man then took the money from Patel's wallet and the money in the cash register and ran out the back door. Patel described the man as young, thin, and less than six feet tall. A fingerprint located on the cash register was found to match Randolph's, and Randolph pleaded guilty to armed robbery in connection with that incident and served a ten-year sentence.

Edward McIntosh testified that on April 29, 2011, someone kicked in the door to his home in Columbia and stole several televisions, his wife's jewelry, and a laptop. Fingerprints recovered from inside the home matched Randolph's, and the Richland County Sheriff's Department took out an arrest warrant for Randolph, which was still outstanding at the time of trial.

1. Randolph contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions because the State's evidence was based in whole upon the testimony of Brown, an unindicted co-conspirator, and the testimony was not sufficiently corroborated under OCGA § 24-14-8. We are not persuaded.

Although "[t]he testimony of a single witness is generally sufficient to establish a fact," Georgia statutory law provides that, in "felony cases where the only witness is an accomplice," the witness's testimony alone is not sufficient. OCGA § 24-14-8. "Thus, when the only witness is an accomplice, corroborating evidence is required to support a guilty verdict," Barber v. State , 314 Ga. 759, 763 (1), 879 S.E.2d 428 (2022) (citation and punctuation omitted), and the jury was so instructed. However, "only slight evidence of corroboration is required," and, as long as the corroborating evidence "directly connects the...