Washington v. State

312 Ga. 495

863 S.E.2d 109

WASHINGTON

v.The STATE.

S21A0829

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: September 21, 2021

Christina Michelle Kempter, Kempter Law Group, LLC, 3330 Cumberland Blvd, Suite 500, Atlanta, Georgia 30339, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Mark Samuel Lindemann, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Lyndsey Hurst Rudder, Deputy D.A., Burke Olivia Doherty, Juliana Sleeper, A.D.A., Fulton County District Attorney's Office, 136 Pryor Street, 4th Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, for Appellee.

McMillian, Justice.

Brantley Washington and his co-defendants, Chrishon Siders and Haleem Graham, were convicted of malice murder, first degree burglary, and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of Seine Yale Jackson.¹ Washington appeals, asserting that the trial court erred in admitting hotel surveillance videos from the day before and the day of the crimes, along with the opinion testimony of two detectives describing the surveillance videos and a dashcam video recording of a traffic stop taken on the night of the crimes. Washington also claims that he received ineffective assistance of counsel when his trial counsel failed to object to that evidence. Discerning no error, we affirm Washington's convictions.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury's verdicts, the evidence presented at trial showed that at approximately 1:57 a.m. on January 6, 2016, police officers responded to a call of shots fired at a rental unit behind a house on Glen Iris Drive in Fulton County. The responding officers found Jackson dead; he had been gagged with a belt and necktie, "hog-tied" with extension cords, and shot in the back of the head. Investigation at the scene showed no signs of forced entry, but the apartment appeared to have been ransacked. Officers collected an empty clear jar emitting the odor of fresh marijuana. Later GBI testing of the jar found a fingerprint match for Washington. An autopsy revealed that Jackson suffered wounds consistent with being bound and gagged and had died from any one of four fatal gunshots to the head.

The day before the shooting, Washington, Siders, and Graham arrived together at a Best Western hotel in Walterboro, South Carolina² around 1:28 p.m. in a red Pontiac Grand Prix. Hotel surveillance video recordings depicted the vehicle entering the parking lot and three individuals, identified by Detective Scott Berhalter as Washington, Siders, and Graham, exiting the car. Additional video recordings showed the car leaving the parking lot around 8:21 p.m. that evening. Chris Treadwell, a Taliaferro County³ sheriff's deputy, testified that he conducted a traffic stop on a red Pontiac Grand Prix with South Carolina tags around 11:27 p.m. as it headed to Atlanta and cited Graham, who was driving, for speeding. Two other men were in the vehicle.

Meyonta Murphy testified that she visited her mother, who lived in another rental unit on the same property on Glen Iris Drive, at approximately 1:45 a.m. on January 6, 2016. When she arrived, she noticed an unfamiliar red Pontiac idling in front of the house with two people inside. As she left her mother's apartment about ten minutes later, Murphy passed a man walking up the driveway toward the house. Murphy took note of the vehicle's South Carolina license plate number before she left. Shortly thereafter, Murphy's mother heard nearby gunshots and called 911. Murphy later told investigating officers about her observations of the red Pontiac and the man she encountered, whom she later identified in a photographic line-up as Siders.

Jackson's brother testified that Siders was always asking Jackson to "front" him drugs without payment, but Jackson continued to do business with him because Siders was related to Jackson's uncle. Jackson's friend, Marc Huewitt, testified that Jackson visited him around 6:00 p.m., just hours before Jackson was shot. Jackson mentioned that he was planning to meet with a man related to his uncle later that evening and was "very concerned" because he had a bad feeling about the man.

Detective Scott Demeester, who was qualified as an expert in cell phone data interpretation and cell site analysis, testified regarding data recovered from the defendants’ cell phones. A cell phone associated with Washington called and texted Jackson's cell phone several times in the days leading up to the shooting. At 6:39 p.m. on January 5, Washington texted an unidentified phone number, stating, "This Brantley. Call me asap. I'm ready to buy that thing back from you. I got the money." When Washington called Jackson around 7:45 p.m. that evening, Washington was near the Best Western hotel before leaving shortly thereafter and traveling in a northwestern direction. At 11:23 p.m., Siders's cell phone was near Taliaferro County, approximately two hours and thirty minutes from the Best Western. At 11:45 p.m., Washington's cell phone sent a text to Jackson, stating, "Got a speeding ticket lol." When Washington called Jackson at 1:08 a.m., Washington's cell phone was near Glen Iris Drive. That call was the last call ever made on Washington's cell phone. After that point, the cell phone remained stationary near Interstate 20 in DeKalb County and received numerous calls that went unanswered, consistent with having been "dumped" out of a vehicle. Siders's and Graham's phones placed various calls to each other between 1:10 and 1:48 a.m. while they were in the area of Glen Iris Drive. Approximately one hour after the shooting was reported, Siders's cell phone was on Interstate 20, heading east away from Atlanta. The next time Graham's and Siders's cell phones were used was in Walterboro on the morning of January 6.

Additional hotel surveillance video showed that the Pontiac entered the Best Western parking lot at 6:20 a.m. on the morning after the shooting. Although the video did not show who exited the car, it did show three men unload what appeared to be heavy bags from the Pontiac. At 8:01 a.m., the three men returned to the car and left the hotel. The car then returned at 9:56 a.m. before leaving for the final time at 10:01 a.m. The State also introduced a receipt showing that Graham had checked into a room at the Best Western hotel around 1:28 p.m. on January 5, 2016, and checked out at 10:00 a.m. the following morning.

Siders, the only defendant to testify at trial, told the jury that he knew Jackson through his cousin and that he used to purchase drugs from Jackson. Siders also testified that he and Washington were part of a musical group that Graham managed and that they met in South Carolina on January 5, 2016, to work in a music studio. That evening, they decided to drive to Atlanta for a promotional photo shoot, but Washington stayed at the hotel because he became ill with "flu-like symptoms ... throwing up all over the place." According to Siders, while he and Graham were in Atlanta, he called Jackson to buy "some smoke," but Huewitt answered Jackson's phone and told him to come to Jackson's house. When Siders arrived at Jackson's address, he found Huewitt outside and told him that he wanted "an eighth." Huewitt responded, "An eighth? Man, I thought you wanted some weight. We don't got no eighth," before walking away. Siders testified that he then returned to the car and told Graham that Huewitt was "acting really funny just now," and they went to a nearby club where they stayed for a short while before returning to South Carolina.⁴

1. Washington asserts that the trial court erred by admitting surveillance videos from the Best Western without proper authentication or foundation. He concedes that, because this evidence was admitted at trial without objection, we review this claim only for plain error. See Gates v. State , 298 Ga. 324, 327 (3), 781 S.E.2d 772 (2016) ; OCGA § 24-1-103 (a), (d).

To establish plain error, an appellant must meet each prong of a four-prong test:

[F]irst, there must be an error or defect – some sort of deviation from a legal rule – that has not been intentionally relinquished or abandoned, i.e., affirmatively waived, by the appellant. Second, the legal error must be clear or obvious, rather than subject to reasonable dispute. Third, the error must have affected the appellant's substantial rights, which in the ordinary case means he must demonstrate that it affected the outcome of the trial court proceedings. Fourth and finally, if the above three prongs are satisfied, the appellate court has the discretion to remedy the error – discretion which ought to be exercised if only the error seriously affects the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings.

Lewis v. State , 311 Ga. 650, –––– (4), 859 S.E.2d 1 (2021) (citation, punctuation, and emphasis omitted). As we have noted, affirmatively establishing all four prongs "is a difficult standard to satisfy." Id. (citation and punctuation omitted).

Here, Washington urges that the State's use of a business record certification was not sufficient to authenticate the surveillance videos and that the trial court therefore committed plain error by admitting the evidence without further authentication. However, Washington is unable to satisfy the first prong of the plain error test. In his opening statement at trial, Washington's counsel admitted that his client was at the Best Western hotel and explained that the State would probably introduce surveillance footage showing that Washington was there, but claimed that the State would not be able to show that Washington was at or near the scene of the crime. This opening statement was consistent with Washington's defense theory – that he went to the hotel in South Carolina but did not travel with his co-de...