Talley v. State

314 Ga. 153

875 S.E.2d 789

TALLEY

v.The STATE.

S22A0242

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: June 30, 2022

Donald Franklin Samuel, Garland, Samuel & Loeb, P.C., 3151 Maple Drive, N.E., Atlanta, Georgia 30305, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Paula Khristian Smith, Christopher M. Carr, Kathleen Leona McCanless, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Fani T. Willis, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Virginia Lee Davis, Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street SW, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Kevin Christopher Armstrong, Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30306, for Appellee.

Bethel, Justice.

A Fulton County jury found Mario Talley guilty of the malice murder of Rodney Walker, the aggravated assault and attempted armed robbery of Isiah Knight, and other offenses. Talley appeals from the denial of his motion for new trial, arguing that the trial court erred by admitting certain evidence at trial and that his trial counsel provided constitutionally ineffective assistance. We affirm.¹

1. The evidence presented at trial showed the following.² Around 11:00 p.m. on March 9, 2014, Knight was at his apartment on the west side of Atlanta, where he was known to sell drugs. He testified that he answered the door and saw Talley and Walker standing outside. Talley told Knight that Tavarus Simon was also outside. When he saw Talley and Walker and heard that Simon was outside, Knight picked up his .22-caliber rifle. He testified that he did this because he was outnumbered three-to-one.

Knight let Talley and Walker inside. He never saw Simon or let him into the apartment. Once inside, Talley and Walker asked Knight if they could see his rifle. Knight refused, and Talley then asked him for a pistol. As Knight reached down, Talley pulled out a handgun, pointed it at Knight, and said, "You know what time it is." Knight then raised his rifle and attempted to fire it. However, the gun jammed, and he was unable to fire. Talley then shot Knight twice.

After being shot, Knight ran toward a back room of the apartment. Talley ran out of the apartment, and Walker followed him. Knight then heard gunshots outside the apartment. A few minutes later, his neighbor knocked on the door. He let her inside, told her he had been shot, and asked her to call the police. Knight then went out into the hallway. He saw a truck pull up to the building, and he asked his neighbor to pull him inside her apartment because he was worried that others might be coming to "finish the job."³

Knight later identified Talley, Walker, and Simon in photographic lineups, specifically identifying Talley as the person who shot him. Knight also identified Talley as the shooter during his trial testimony. Knight testified that he never saw Walker with a gun the night of the shooting and that the only person he saw fire a gun was Talley.

Shanitha Armour testified that, on the night of the shooting, she was sitting on the steps at the front of Knight's apartment building. She testified that Simon, Walker, and "Anlo," who was later identified by Talley as D'Angelo Williams, walked by her and that Walker told her that "the best thing for you to do is leave." According to Armour, Walker was carrying a pistol at the time. She said that Walker, Simon, and two other men then went upstairs to Knight's apartment and that Williams stayed with her.⁴ Armour then heard shots fired upstairs, and she ran to the side of the building. She then saw Walker run out of the building "bleeding real bad." Simon tried to help Walker move away from the building, but Walker collapsed and fell to the ground. The two other men that had gone upstairs ran to a green truck that was parked nearby. Armour identified Walker and Simon in photographic lineups, but she was unable to identify anyone she recognized in a photographic lineup that included Talley's picture.

Karetta Harris, Knight's neighbor from across the hall, also heard the confrontation and the gunshots and then saw at least four men out in the hallway through her peephole. She observed one man "wildly" shooting a gun as he ran away from Knight's apartment.⁵ Harris testified that, after the shooting and commotion ended, Knight fell into the doorway of her apartment. She helped him back to his apartment, applied pressure to his wounds, and called 911.

Walker's girlfriend, Saleema Glaze, lived in a nearby apartment complex. After the shooting, Simon left Knight's complex and went to Glaze's apartment. He told her that Walker had been killed. Glaze ran up the hill to Knight's apartment complex. She testified that, as she arrived, she saw three young men run out of the complex with guns in their hands. Two of the men were carrying duffel bags. Glaze could only identify one of the men she saw, a man she knew as "Hollywood." She saw the men get into a car and drive away. Glaze did not see Talley at any point that evening.

Glaze walked the rest of the way into the complex and saw that the police had arrived. She told the police that she had heard that Walker had been killed and that she could not find him. Walker's body was later found near one of the other buildings in the complex.

Glaze also testified that Walker told her that he and Talley had an "argument or altercation" about a week before the incident at the apartment complex. The argument was about some type of "criminal enterprise." Glaze testified that Talley told Walker that he "wasn't going to fight him; he was just going to kill him." On cross-examination, Glaze testified that Walker considered Talley to be "one of his best friends" and that Talley had helped Walker start a music career. She also testified that although Walker and Talley had an altercation, they had "gotten cool afterwards" and "made up."

The medical examiner later determined that Walker was hit by multiple gunshots that were consistent with having been fired by someone standing below him on a set of stairs from less than two feet away. Walker showed signs of other injuries that were consistent with falling down stairs and onto a hard surface. The medical examiner determined that Walker died as the result of a gunshot wound to his neck and that the manner of his death was homicide.

Knight had two cousins, Wilbur McDew and Antonio Edwards, the latter of whom was known as "Hollywood." Around 11:00 p.m. on the night of the shooting, McDew and Edwards were with Knight's brother, Willie Lyons, at a recording studio in east Atlanta. Knight called Edwards and told him that Walker and Talley had tried to rob him and that he had been shot. Lyons, McDew, and Edwards left the studio and drove to Knight's apartment complex in Lyons's black SUV.⁶ When they arrived, Lyons went upstairs to Knight's apartment, but the door was locked. The police were interviewing Harris at the time, and an officer told Lyons that Knight had been taken to a hospital. Lyons was not permitted to go into Knight's apartment, and he, McDew, and Edwards got back into the SUV and drove away from the complex.

They returned later in the evening, and a police officer allowed Lyons and McDew to enter Knight's apartment while Edwards stayed in the car. Lyons found a rifle that belonged to him next to the door of the apartment. The rifle had blood on it, and Lyons placed it into a purple duffel bag and carried it out of the apartment. They also removed some marijuana that was in a trash bag. Lyons and McDew testified that they did not remove any shell casings, bullets, or other guns from the apartment.

As Lyons and McDew exited the apartment, someone in the parking lot began yelling that the two of them had shot Walker. Lyons and McDew were stopped by the police and separated, and the bags they were carrying were confiscated. By that point, Edwards had driven away. Lyons and McDew testified that neither they nor Edwards were carrying guns when they came to Knight's apartment and had not "run around with guns" at any point that evening.⁷

The police later obtained a search warrant for Knight's apartment.⁸ Inside, they located three bullets and four shell casings that had been fired from a .40-caliber handgun. An additional .40-caliber shell casing was found on the ground outside the apartment building. A firearms examiner testified that all of the bullets and shell casings had been fired from a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and that the shell casings had all been fired from the same pistol. The pistol was never recovered by the police.

Talley was arrested on March 16 and, after being given Miranda warnings,⁹ was interviewed by two detectives. An audio and video recording of the interview was played for the jury. Talley said that, although he had heard that Walker had been shot and killed, he was not at Knight's apartment at the time of the shootings but that he had been to the complex before. He stated that he had been at his mother's house when the shootings occurred. He later elaborated that he drove his girlfriend to the Atlanta airport in a rental car around 5:00 p.m. that evening. Walker, Simon, and Williams followed him to the airport and picked him up after he dropped off the rental car. The group came to Talley's mother's house around 7:00 p.m. to pick up some music recording equipment. Some of the men left with the equipment but returned it to Talley at his mother's house around 9:00 p.m. Talley stayed at his mother's house the rest of the night and played cards with his cousin, his mom, and her boyfriend until 3:00 a.m.

On April 4, Talley called his mother from jail.¹⁰ In that call, a recording of which was played for the jury, Talley told his mother that his story was "not going to work." His mother then told him that Williams and one of the others had already spoken to the police and that Talley should not have done so. She then told him that he should say that he omitted details about his whereabouts the night of the shootings when he was interviewed by the police because he...