Reese v. State

317 Ga. 189

891 S.E.2d 835

REESE v. The STATE.

S23A0550

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: August 21, 2023

Matthew Kyle Winchester, Law Offices of Matthew K. Winchester, Garland Law Building, 3151 Maple Drive NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30305, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Elizabeth Haase Brock, Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Kevin Christopher Armstrong, Senior A.D.A., Alex Martin Bernick, Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street SW, Third Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Warren, Justice.

After a jury trial in May 2018, Larry Reese was convicted of the malice murder of Claynesia Ringer, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony based on shooting Ringer, and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. ¹ Reese raises three claims of error on appeal: (1) that the trial court plainly erred by failing to instruct the jury on justification, no duty to retreat, and the State's burden to disprove affirmative defenses; (2) that the trial court plainly erred by not giving an accomplice corroboration charge; and (3) that Reese received constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel.

1. (a) Shortly before 3:00 a.m. on August 19, 2015, Ringer was shot and killed inside a red Nissan Versa parked on the street in front of Reese's house. Ringer and Reese knew each other and lived down the street from each other. Evidence showed that Ringer borrowed the Versa from a friend and drove it to Reese's house after her phone sent text messages to Reese's phone asking to purchase marijuana.

The State's theory of the case was that Reese was a paranoid drug dealer who shot Ringer after she approached his house in the early morning hours in the Versa—a car he did not recognize. Reese's theory of the case, by contrast, was that Reese shot at the car in self-defense. That is so, Reese argued, because Ringer, along with an unidentified person (and potentially one of the men she had spent time and exchanged text messages with earlier that evening), went to Reese's house that night to rob Reese under the guise of purchasing marijuana from Reese. In the course of that attempted robbery, either Ringer or her companion first shot at Reese before Reese returned fire in self-defense, shooting and killing Ringer.

(b) The evidence presented at trial showed the following. At 2:49 a.m., Reese's mother (with whom he lived), called 911 to report a shooting in front of her house. Police arrived at the scene within minutes and found Ringer dead in the driver's seat of a Nissan Versa in front of Reese's house. The car was still running, the driver door was open, and the other doors were closed and locked. The car was parked directly in front of Reese's house facing an SUV registered in Reese's name. There were multiple bullet holes and defects around the car's driver door, including on the door, the doorframe, and the driver window. Helen Weathers, a forensics supervisor with the Fulton County Police Department, testified that the hole in the window was consistent with a bullet traveling through the window from the outside of the vehicle to the inside. The medical examiner's office recovered a .45-caliber metal jacket bullet from Ringer's body during her autopsy.

Among other things, fifteen one-dollar bills ² and Ringer's cell phone were found inside the car. No gun was found inside the car or at the scene of the shooting. A pack of cigarettes with Reese's fingerprints on it and a few cigarette butts were found near Reese's SUV. In Reese's driveway, officers found a single key. And in Reese's front yard, officers found a key ring attached to a bright yellow tag, which contained a key to Reese's SUV and to his house.

Five .45-caliber shell casings were found in Reese's yard. Officers found two shell casings close to the key ring; the other three were found days later when officers returned to Reese's yard with a metal detector. In addition, officers found two .45-caliber metal jacket bullets, a metal jacket, and bullet fragments in and around the Versa. No bullet defects were discovered in cars parked in Reese's driveway or in the front door of his house. Officers also noticed surveillance cameras on the outside of Reese's house pointed towards his yard: one on the left side of his house and another on the right side.

Based on the presence of surveillance cameras that might have recorded the shooting and on Reese's keys that officers found in his yard near the .45-caliber shell casings, officers obtained two warrants to search Reese's house, one for recorded surveillance videos and another for firearms. The search yielded, among other things, a DVR system with recordings from the surveillance cameras affixed to the outside of Reese's house, 14.7 ounces of marijuana, a small scale, and cash. Reese's fingerprint was found on a bag of marijuana in the house.

A later search of the contents of Ringer's cell phone revealed communications with three phone numbers around the time of the crimes. One phone number belonged to Reese; another belonged to Gerald Bell, who lived across the street from Reese and down the street from Ringer; and another ended in -8146, which Dwoskin Wright, a friend of Ringer's, identified as his own during an interview with investigators. ³

Ringer's phone also showed various text messages and phone calls with Reese's phone from around 12:30 a.m. until around 1:30 a.m. on the night of the shooting; the text messages were about Ringer having sex with one of Reese's friends and Ringer arranging for someone to have sex with Reese, each in exchange for money. The text messages showed that neither arrangement worked out, and a message was sent from Reese's phone saying the situation sounded like a "set up" anyway.

Ringer's phone received a text message from the -8146 phone number at 1:24 a.m. saying, "I'm finna pull up." Ringer's phone sent a text message to the -8146 phone number with her address at 2:02 a.m.; at 2:09 a.m. the user of the -8146 phone number communicated that the user was on the way; shortly afterwards, Ringer's phone and the -8146 phone number exchanged text messages discussing marijuana.

Ringer's phone sent a text message to Bell's phone at 2:30 a.m., saying that a friend wanted to purchase a gram of marijuana for ten dollars. Also at 2:30 a.m., Ringer's cell phone made a three-second phone call to Reese's cell phone.

At 2:31 a.m., Bell's cell phone responded to the message from Ringer's phone asking to buy marijuana, asking, "U gone Kum get it," and Ringer's phone responded saying, "Ya" at 2:40 a.m. Then, at 2:43 a.m., Ringer's phone sent a text message to Reese's phone, asking to buy two grams of marijuana for fifteen dollars, and her phone called Reese's phone again at 2:44 a.m., this call lasting for 20 seconds.

Ringer's phone then received two missed calls from Bell's phone number at 2:48 a.m., a text message from his phone number asking to bring him a "blunt" at 2:49 a.m., and another text message from his phone number at 3:09 a.m. saying, "Yoo kall me real quick." Ringer's phone also received multiple missed phone calls and FaceTime calls from the -8146 phone number between 2:46 a.m. and 2:59 a.m.

In November 2015, officers finished reviewing the surveillance videos from outside Reese's house. The videos included footage of the shooting, which the two cameras affixed to Reese's house captured from different angles. The video recorded from the camera on the left side of Reese's house captured what Reese now concedes is him firing a gun and running across his yard. The video recorded from the cameras on the right side of Reese's house captured the Versa parking in front of Reese's house, a flash near the road, and then a larger flash in Reese's yard. Reese concedes on appeal that the larger flash was a muzzle flash that resulted when he fired a gun. ⁴

(c) Video recordings from the surveillance system were played at trial. The State played the two surveillance videos portraying the shooting side-by-side as one exhibit, but the trial court expressly reserved for the jury the question whether the videos were synchronized. ⁵

A GBI firearm examiner, Investigator Jason Roach, testified at trial about the surveillance videos, explaining that the first flash of light shown on the camera from the right side of Reese's house, near the road, was not "consistent with a muzzle flash" and was "more consistent" with "a bullet impact." He also testified that there was a muzzle flash seen near the person standing in Reese's yard, which occurred after the sparks from the "bullet impact." On cross-examination, Reese's trial counsel asked if Investigator Roach could determine where the gunshot that caused the bullet-impact flash came from. Investigator Roach testified that if the two surveillance videos were synchronized, then there was a possibility that the bullet-impact flash resulted from a gunshot fired by Reese that was depicted in the left-side surveillance video. But Investigator Roach could not rule out that the bullet-impact flash came from a shot fired "somewhere else that wasn't captured on video."

Investigator Roach also explained that he determined the five .45-caliber shell casings were fired from one gun, and that the three .45-caliber bullets and the metal jacket were fired from one gun, but he could not match a bullet fragment recovered from the Versa with the bullets and the metal jacket recovered from in and around the Versa or in Ringer's body because the fragment had been "severely damaged." Nor could he determine whether the .45-caliber shell casings were fired from the same gun as the .45-caliber bullets, metal jacket, and bullet fragments.

Bell—who lived across the street from Reese and around the corner from...