Weems v. State

897 S.E.2d 368

WEEMS

v.The STATE.

S23A1179

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: January 17, 2024

Superior Court, Fulton County, Alford J. Dempsey, Judge

David Allen Hoort, Frances C. Kuo, Georgia Public Defender Council, 270 Washington Street, Suite 5198, Atlanta, Georgia 30334, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Clint Christopher Malcolm, Assistant Attorney General, Meghan Hobbs Hill, Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Matthew Blackwell Crowder, Assistant 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., Mario Kladis, A.D.A., Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, 136 Pryor Street SW, Third Floor, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, Elizabeth Rosenwasser, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capital Square, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, for Appellee.

Pinson, Justice.

On the morning of June 3, 2018, a motorist driving down Bromack Drive in Fulton County saw a man lying in the front yard of a home, covered in blood and shaking back and forth. She called 911, and the man in the yard, Christopher Welch, was taken to the hospital where he died of blood loss from a gunshot wound to his head. As part of the investigation of Welch’s shooting, the police entered the home that Welch was found in front of, and law enforcement found Welch’s girlfriend, Chloe Dowdy, shot to death in one of the bedrooms. That bedroom belonged to Rufus Weems, who was later convicted of two counts of malice murder and other crimes related to Welch’s and Dowdy’s deaths.¹

On appeal, Weems raises several claims. He contends that the evidence was not sufficient to sustain his convictions as a matter of constitutional due process, and under OCGA § 24-14-6 because the State failed to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. He challenges the trial court’s denial of his motion for new trial on the "general grounds" under OCGA §§ 5-5-20 and 5-5-21. And he claims the trial court erred by not allowing a witness to testify remotely and by commenting on the evidence.

Each claim fails. The evidence was sufficient to support Weems’s convictions as a matter of constitutional due process, and it authorized the jury to reject Weems’s hypothesis that someone else was the shooter. As for the trial court’s ruling on the general grounds, Weems has not established that the trial court applied the wrong standard, and his argument is otherwise not properly before us. The trial court was required to deny his motion for remote testimony under the relevant Superior Court rule after the State objected. And Weems has not shown that the trial court’s repeating of a witness’s testimony while ruling on an objection was an improper comment on the evidence. So Weems’s convictions and sentence are affirmed.

1. The evidence at trial, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, showed the following. At the time of the shooting, Weems was staying in a spare room at the home of Lakesha Reed, who lived with her children, her mother (Carrie Reed) and her brother (James Jordan III) on Bromack Drive in Fulton County. On the night of June 2, 2018, all of them, including Weems, ordered pizza and watched a movie at home. By 1:00 a.m. on June 3, 2018, everyone had gone to bed—Lakesha, Carrie, and Weems in their respective bedrooms (with the children split between Lakesha’s and Carrie’s rooms) and Jordan on the couch in the living room. In the early hours of that morning, Jordan woke up because someone was walking from the hall bathroom to Weems’s room with a flashlight. Jordan did not see who this was. Separately, Lakesha saw a stranger, who was using his phone as a flashlight, walk into the hallway bathroom that was across from her bedroom. She later identified the stranger as one of the shooting victims, Christopher Welch.

Still later that morning, close to sunrise, Jordan saw Weems leave and return with another man and go into Weems’s bedroom. After Weems’s bedroom door closed, Jordan heard gunshots. Lakesha and Carrie also heard the gunshots and hid in Carrie’s bathroom with Jordan and the children. While in the bathroom, Lakesha and Carrie each looked out a window and saw Weems—who they each described as wearing a white tank top and basketball shorts—get into his car and drive away. Jordan did not see Weems when he looked out the window, but he saw Weems’s car driving away.

Around 7:00 a.m. on June 3rd, Cynthia Johnson drove past Lakesha’s home, heard gunshots, and saw two men leave the home. One of the men had a dark complexion and a "low haircut" and was wearing a white T-shirt and shorts and carrying a handgun; she saw him get into a car. The other man walked around the side of the building. After seeing this, Johnson stopped at a gas station for a few minutes, then got back in her car and drove by Lakesha’s home again, where she saw Welch lying on the ground, covered in blood and shaking. Johnson stopped and called 911. She did not think that Welch was one of the two men she saw leaving the home earlier that morning. In the meantime, Lakesha, Carrie, and Jordan left their hiding place in Carrie’s bathroom after they heard a woman outside the home scream. They saw blood throughout the hallway leading to the front door.

Soon after, the police arrived. Welch was taken to the hospital, where he died of blood loss from a gunshot wound. At trial, the medical examiner explained that Welch had suffered two gunshot wounds—one to his hand, which was not fatal, and a second to his head, which caused him to bleed to death.

As part of the investigation of Welch’s shooting, the police entered Lakesha’s home soon after arriving on June 3rd. Inside, officers found the body of Chloe Dowdy, Welch’s girlfriend, in Weems’s bedroom. Like Welch, Dowdy had also suffered two gunshot wounds—one to her head, which killed her instantly, and a second to her back.

Jacquelyn Holt testified that Welch and Dowdy had been staying at her apartment, but she asked them to stay somewhere else on the night of June 2nd. Around 11:00 p.m. that night, someone drove Welch to Holt’s house and picked up Dowdy.

Welch’s mother testified that, two or three years earlier, Welch had brought Weems to her house at least twice, but she did not know whether the two men had stayed in touch. She last saw Welch on the Wednesday before his death, when he gave her some money. At that time, she saw that Welch had a large amount of cash in his backpack. A backpack full of cash was found at the crime scene. After the shooting, the Reed family gave law enforcement Weems’s name. Detective Courtney Murphy testified that Weems also fit Johnson’s description of the man she saw outside the house with a handgun. Lakesha, Carrie, and law enforcement tried calling Weems in the hours after the shooting. Lakesha spoke to Weems briefly on the phone, and he denied knowing anything about the shooting and refused to return to her home. Several days after the shooting, law enforcement found Weems and his car at an abandoned apartment building in Jonesboro and arrested him.

[1] 2. Weems contends the evidence was not sufficient to support his two convictions for malice murder or his firearms convictions either as a matter of constitutional due process or under OCGA § 24-14-6.²

[2, 3] (a) When reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence as a matter of due process, we view the evidence presented in the light most favorable to the verdicts to determine whether a rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (III) (B), 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). In doing so, we do not "weigh the evidence on appeal or resolve conflicts in trial testimony," Byers v. State, 311 Ga. 259, 266 (2), 857 S.E.2d 447 (2021) (citation and punctuation omitted), but instead defer "to the jury’s assessment of the weight and credibility of the evidence," Jones v. State, 314 Ga. 692, 695, 878 S.E.2d 502 (2022) (citation and punctuation omitted).

[4, 5] The evidence here was sufficient as a matter of constitutional due process to authorize the jury’s guilty verdicts for the two malice murders, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence showed that Weems knew Welch, Lakesha saw Welch in the house with a flashlight, Jordan saw someone with a flashlight go into Weems’s room, multiple gunshots were heard from his room, Dowdy’s body was found shot to death in the same room, and only Weems emerged from the room unharmed. Weems also left the scene immediately after the shooting and while Welch was still alive but bleeding from his gunshot wounds. As discussed further below, the jury was authorized to reject Weems’s defense that someone else was the shooter. Together, this evidence was constitutionally sufficient to authorize the jury to find Weems guilty of the two murders and the firearms offenses for which he was convicted.³ See Scoggins v. State, 317 Ga. 832, 896 S.E.2d 476 (2023).

(b) When a conviction is based on circumstantial evidence, the State must present sufficient evidence to "exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused." OCGA § 24-14-6. Weems contends the evidence that supported his conviction was entirely circumstantial and the State failed to exclude the hypothesis that an alternative suspect, William Jones, killed Welch and Dowdy.

During the investigation of the shooting, an individual named Christina Eaves gave Jones’s name to the police as a possible suspect, but Detective Murphy did not interview Jones. Weems called Jones to testify at trial. At trial, Jones denied knowing anything about the shooting at Bromack Drive or any of the individuals involved and said he was with his sister in Auburn,...