Stafford v. State

865 S.E.2d 116

STAFFORD

v.The STATE.

S21A0767

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: November 2, 2021

Brian Steel, The Steel Law Firm, P.C., 1800 Peachtree Street, N.W., Suite 300, Atlanta, Georgia 30309, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Kathleen Leona McCanless, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Fulton County District, Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Richard Benjamin Caplan, Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street SW, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

LaGrua, Justice.

Appellant Lil'Che Stafford was found guilty by a Fulton County jury of felony murder and first-degree burglary in connection with the death of Jose Greer.¹ On appeal, Appellant raises four enumerations of error: (1) evidence of an earlier burglary and armed robbery was improperly admitted; (2) a testifying detective inappropriately opined that Appellant was involved in an additional prior robbery; (3) trial counsel was ineffective for failing to request a jury instruction on intervening or unforeseen cause of death; and (4) the detective's testimony regarding the custodial statements of a co-conspirator was improperly admitted because it was inadmissible hearsay and trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to its admission based on the Confrontation Clause. We conclude that there was no reversible error, so we affirm.

1. The evidence concerning the crimes came largely from co-defendant Frederick Clark, who was offered use immunity for his testimony. Clark testified as follows: On December 8, 2015, Appellant met with Clark and co-defendants Mark Spencer, Maxx Pritchett, and Vas Coleman at a house on Mitchell Street in Atlanta. After discussing that they needed money, the group decided to rob the home of a drug dealer they knew as "Cash." Clark drove the men to Sky Lofts Condominiums, where they thought Cash lived. Upon their arrival, Spencer checked the front entryway of the condominium complex for cameras and returned to Clark's car. Appellant, Clark, and Spencer then entered the condominium complex while Coleman and Pritchett remained in the car.

Clark rang the doorbell of a third-floor unit where they believed Cash was residing, while Appellant and Spencer hid out of view. When nobody answered, Clark began using a screwdriver to open the door, and Appellant and Spencer joined him in attempting to break down the door. After seeing someone down the hall, Clark and Appellant began to flee, but Spencer stopped Clark and convinced him to continue trying to get into the unit. Appellant returned to the door to see why Clark and Spencer stopped following him, then stayed. The three men took turns trying to open the door with the screwdriver, and eventually Appellant and Spencer broke the door open together with their forearms. Once inside the unit, the three men stole an iPhone, iPad, laptop computer, and some hats — all of which were placed in a backpack that Spencer was carrying. Appellant also took a jar full of coins. While in the unit, Spencer remarked to Clark that he noticed an ambulance and police in the vicinity, which prompted the three men to leave through a back stairway of the condominium complex. When they got outside, they passed "a guy on the ground." Clark testified that Spencer asked the man if he needed help, but when he received no response, they continued to flee by jumping over a gate. Clark also testified "the coins dropped" as the three jumped over the complex gate to escape.

Unbeknownst to the men, Cash did not live in this unit, but the victim, Greer, did. When Greer heard the commotion at his door, he called 911 to report that his unit was being broken into; he also told 911 that he had fled to his balcony to escape the perpetrators and that he might try to jump off the balcony to get to safety. Ultimately, Greer fell 30 feet to the ground.

A surveillance video recording from the condominium complex showed three men entering the complex through a doorway. Another camera recorded the same three men running down a stairwell and exiting through a different doorway.

William Gadsden, a resident at the condominium complex, saw three men running down the back stairwell of the complex. Gadsden noticed that the men were in their late teens or early twenties, wearing dark clothes, and one was carrying a backpack. After exiting the door of the building, the men climbed over the fence surrounding the complex and fled towards a nearby CVS Pharmacy.

The police arrived at the scene about two minutes after Greer called 911 and moments after Gadsden saw the three men running down the stairwell. The responding officer found Greer lying on the sidewalk, and Greer was able to tell her that he was trying to escape the burglars by climbing to the balcony below, but he slipped and fell. The police found an abandoned jar of coins containing Greer's business card on the sidewalk nearby and found Greer's unit ransacked. Greer was transported to the hospital, where he later died. The medical examiner testified that Greer died from blunt force trauma and classified the manner of death as a homicide.

Clark testified that after jumping over the fence, he and Spencer went in one direction and Appellant went in an opposite direction. Spencer and Clark shed their outer clothing, placed the clothes in the backpack, and disposed of the backpack in an alleyway. They then walked to a nearby Krispy Kreme, where they called an Uber to take them back to the Mitchell Street house. Video surveillance recordings from the Krispy Kreme, recorded about six minutes after Greer's 911 call was placed, showed two men in the store wearing pants that matched those worn by two of the men in the condominium complex surveillance video. According to Clark, after returning to the Mitchell Street house in the Uber, Spencer called Korey Bryant to get a ride back to the alleyway to retrieve the backpack.

Bryant, who was friends with Appellant and his co-defendants, testified that Spencer called him to give Spencer a ride. He picked up Clark and Spencer from the Mitchell Street house on the day of Greer's homicide. As they were leaving the house, they saw Appellant walking towards them. Appellant got into Bryant's car, and Bryant took all three men back towards the area of the crime scene. Spencer directed Bryant to park by a building about a block away from the Sky Lofts Condominiums. Appellant, Clark, and Spencer left the car for a few minutes and returned with a backpack. Bryant then took them back to the Mitchell Street house.

Cell site tower location information for Clark, Coleman, Pritchett, and Spencer placed their cell phones in the area of the Mitchell Street house before the burglary, in the area of the Sky Lofts Condominiums around the time of the burglary, and back in the area of the Mitchell Street house after the burglary. As Appellant did not have a cell phone, there were no cell phone records available for him.

Javon Farquharson, who regularly bought and resold electronics, testified that on the day after the burglary, Appellant and Coleman tried to sell him an iPad and iPhone. They also showed Farquharson a wallet containing an ID card and a red debit or credit card. Farquharson heard Appellant mention that the group "hit a little lick last night" and "I stepped over this dude when I was leaving." Farquharson opted not to purchase the electronics from Appellant and Coleman because he was a convicted felon and he did not "want to get caught up with no dealing in stolen property." Appellant later mentioned that he used the stolen card at a McDonald's restaurant.² Later that night, Farquharson saw a news report of Greer's death and recognized Greer's name from the ID and credit card.

Alani Bellinger, Farquharson's girlfriend, was present when Appellant and Coleman brought the wallet and electronics to Farquharson. Bellinger testified that she could see the face on the ID card in the wallet, and she saw the same face in a news report about Greer's death later that night. She subsequently called a police tip line to report this information.

In addition to the information from the tip line, the police determined from an interview with Farquharson that Appellant and Coleman later sold the stolen electronics at a particular computer store, and Greer's laptop and iPhone were later recovered from that store.³ Based on this information, arrest warrants were issued for Appellant and Spencer. After a review of Appellant's social media accounts, the police determined that Appellant was flying from Denver to Atlanta. Appellant was arrested at the Denver airport on January 13, 2016. Spencer turned himself in at a police station in Washington, D.C.

At some point during the investigation, Clark sought to provide the police with information about the crimes. Clark admitted that he purchased a plane ticket for Appellant to Denver and a bus and plane ticket for Spencer. Based on other information he provided, an arrest warrant was also issued for Coleman. Coleman was arrested in Alabama in February 2016 and was transported to Atlanta, where he was interviewed by the police.

2. Appellant contends that the trial court abused its discretion when it admitted evidence of prior crimes under OCGA § 24-4-404 (b) ("Rule 404 (b)"). We conclude that any such abuse of discretion was harmless error.

Rule 404 (b) provides, in relevant part:

Evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts shall not be admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith. It may, however, be admissible for other purposes, including, but not limited to, proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or

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