Treadaway v. State

308 Ga. 882

843 S.E.2d 784

TREADAWAY

v.The STATE.

S20A0410

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: June 1, 2020

Michael Wayne Tarleton, Office of the Appellate Defender, 104 Marietta Street NW, Suite 600, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Attorneys for the Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Michael Alexander Oldham, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Herbert E. Franklin, Jr., District Attorney, Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, 114 East Patton Street, LaFayette, Georgia 30728, Michael J. Moeller, A.D.A., Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, 7694 Nashville St, Ringgold, Georgia 30736, Attorneys for the Appellee.

McMillian, Justice.

Dora Treadaway was convicted of felony murder in connection with the death of her husband Claude "Randy" Treadaway.¹ On appeal, Treadaway argues that the trial court's summary order denying her motion for new trial should be vacated and remanded for additional factual findings, that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Treadaway committed any unlawful act that proximately caused Randy's death, that the trial court's jury instructions on causation were erroneous, and that trial counsel was ineffective in relying on cross-examination of the State's medical expert rather than calling a defense expert witness and in failing to request the proper charge on causation. We disagree and affirm Treadaway's convictions.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdicts,² the evidence showed that Dora and Randy Treadaway were married and lived together in Chattooga County. Testimony from several witnesses indicated that both were heavy drinkers – Randy was a chronic alcoholic – and that Treadaway was often violent toward Randy.

On the afternoon of August 1, 2009, Terry Trapp drove with his mother to the Treadaways’ residence for a social visit. Upon arriving, Trapp heard Treadaway and Randy arguing loudly, so Trapp and his mother opted to visit Wayne Posey, a neighbor who lived in his own mobile home on the Treadaways’ property. Shortly thereafter, a visibly intoxicated and "very mad" Treadaway went inside Posey's home and announced, "[H]e's going to quit drinking one way or the other and I mean it." Treadaway left but later returned with a broom in her hand, stating, "I believe I've done it this time, I think I killed him." Treadaway announced that she had beaten Randy with the broom handle.³

Trapp went over to the Treadaways’ home to investigate and discovered Randy laying on his right side in an empty bathtub. Randy was naked and in the fetal position. Feeling no pulse and seeing that Randy had turned pale blue, Trapp yelled for help. Posey came over, and he and Trapp pulled Randy out of the bathtub and performed CPR while Trapp's mother called 911. Posey observed that Randy's hair was wet and his body was "moist." During this time, Treadaway was "screaming and crying [about] how much she loved Randy and ... couldn't believe it had happened." When emergency responders arrived, Treadaway stated that she was tired of Randy's drinking and that she had hit him in the back of his head with the broom handle and killed him. Chattooga County deputies observed Treadaway, who was "really intoxicated [and] could[ ] hardly stand up," sitting on the trailer steps crying and saying over and over again "Randy's dead and I killed him."

Treadaway was taken into custody that evening but was not interviewed due to her apparent intoxication. The following day, after she was advised of her rights under Miranda ,⁴ Treadaway denied that she and Randy had been arguing, denied hitting him with a broom that day (although she admitted hitting him with a broom in the past), and claimed that she found Randy lying on the bathroom floor right around the time that Trapp and his mother arrived at the home.

A medical examiner with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation testified that, at the time of autopsy, Randy had fluid in his stomach, enlarged lungs, and multiple blunt-force injuries to his back, neck, and head that had been inflicted immediately prior to his death. The medical examiner also noted that Randy had reportedly expelled approximately one cup of odorless fluid when rolled over at the scene.⁵ The medical examiner opined that Randy died due to drowning and blunt-force trauma and also concluded that Randy's history of alcoholism and blood alcohol content – which was at least 0.4 grams at the time of his death – though not fatal, were circumstances contributing to Randy's death.

The State also presented evidence that Randy, who weighed 126 pounds at the time of his death, had lost all the fingers on his right hand in an industrial accident as a teenager. In addition, he had recently broken both of his feet in an accident and was suffering from significantly reduced mobility, having to "scoot on his bottom" to move around the home.

1. Treadaway contends that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she committed any unlawful act that proximately caused Randy's death. In considering Treadaway's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, our review is limited to whether the trial evidence, when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, is sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which she was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307, 319 (III) (B), 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). "Under this review, we must put aside any questions about conflicting evidence, the credibility of witnesses, or the weight of the evidence, leaving the resolution of such things to the discretion of the trier of fact." Mims v. State , 304 Ga. 851, 853 (1) (a), 823 S.E.2d 325 (2019) (citation and punctuation omitted).

"[T]he felony murder statute requires only that the defendant's felonious conduct proximately cause the death of another person." State v. Jackson , 287 Ga. 646, 660 (6), 697 S.E.2d 757 (2010). "Proximate causation imposes liability for the reasonably foreseeable results of criminal conduct if there is no sufficient, independent, and unforeseen intervening cause." Frazier v. State , ––– Ga. ––––, ––––, 841 S.E.2d 692, 695, 2020 Ga. LEXIS 231, at *8 (Case No. S20A0226, decided April 6, 2020) (citations and punctuation omitted). An unlawful injury is the proximate cause of death when:

(1) the injury itself constituted the sole proximate cause of the death; or (2) the injury directly and materially contributed to the happening of a subsequent accruing immediate cause of the death; or (3) the injury materially accelerated the death, although proximately occasioned by a pre-existing cause.

Taylor v. State , 303 Ga. 624, 627 (1), 814 S.E.2d 353 (2018) (citation and punctuation omitted).

Here, Treadaway admitted numerous times that she struck Randy with a metal broom handle and that she had killed him shortly before he was discovered dead in the bathtub. The medical examiner also testified that Randy had numerous blunt-force injuries that were inflicted just prior to his death, some of which resulted in extensive hemorrhaging under the skin and were consistent with Randy having been hit with a blunt instrument, including the Treadaways’ metal broom, which was admitted as an exhibit at trial. The medical examiner explained that the blunt-force trauma to Randy's head, neck, torso, and extremities would have been painful and may have restricted his movement, making it more difficult for him to extricate himself from a drowning situation and that, in his expert opinion, the blunt-force trauma directly and materially contributed to Randy's death.⁶

Whether Treadaway's actions were the sole cause of Randy's death or would have otherwise caused his death under different circumstances is immaterial. "We consider the elements of the felony not in the abstract, but in the actual circumstances in which the felony was committed." Robinson v. State , 298 Ga. 455, 458 (1), 782 S.E.2d 657 (2016) (citation omitted). And as we have explained before, "the offender takes [her] victim as [s]he finds him." Cordero v. State , 296 Ga. 703, 712 (3), 770 S.E.2d 577 (2015) (citation and punctuation omitted). Viewed as a whole, the evidence was sufficient for a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Treadaway was guilty of felony murder based on the aggravated assault of her highly intoxicated, disabled husband. See Eberhart v. State , 307 Ga. 254, 261-62 (2) (a), 835 S.E.2d 192 (2019) (evidence sufficient to uphold defendant's felony murder conviction based on aggravated assault where medical examiner testified that the victim died from hypertensive cardiovascular disease exacerbated by physical exertion and TASER application); Chaney v. State , 281 Ga. 481, 482 (1), 640 S.E.2d 37 (2007) (upholding defendant's felony murder conviction based on aggravated assault for striking the victim in the head with a gun, which caused him to fall to the pavement, where the medical examiner testified that the victim's skull fracture was caused either by the strike or the fall).

2. Before turning to the merits of Treadaway's remaining enumerations of error, we address her contention that the summary order denying her motion for new trial, which was prepared by the State following an ex parte request by the trial court, should be vacated and remanded to include findings of fact and conclusions of law. She argues that such findings are required for this Court to conduct a meaningful review of the trial court's denial of her claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and for the trial court to consider expert evidence presented at the motion for new trial hearing in deciding whether to grant a new trial on the general grounds. Although we are troubled by the trial court's procedure in ruling...