Williams v. State

1

WILLIAMS v. THE STATE.

No. S23A1159

Supreme Court of Georgia

January 17, 2024

PETERSON, Presiding Justice.

Eric Williams appeals his convictions and sentence for malice murder and other offenses, stemming from the shooting death of Sean Brooks and non-fatal shooting of Michael Waters outside of a Chatham County nightclub in 2017.^[1] Williams argues that the trial court erred by (1) denying Williams's motion to suppress evidence extracted from his cell phone; (2) admitting a YouTube video offered as a demonstrative aid; (3) admitting evidence of Williams's refusal to submit to a gunshot residue test; and (4) resentencing Williams sua sponte under the recidivist provision of OCGA § 17-10-7 (b) (2). Williams also raises several claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. We conclude that Williams has not shown that the trial court plainly erred in admitting evidence of his refusal to submit to a gunshot residue test, that any errors in admitting the YouTube video or denying the motion to suppress were harmless, and that the trial court did not err to the extent that it resentenced Williams pursuant to OCGA § 17-10-7 (b) (2). And, with respect to each claim of ineffective assistance of counsel we conclude that trial counsel either did not perform deficiently in the way claimed or that any claimed deficiency did not prejudice Williams's defense, even when considered collectively with the other deficiencies of counsel and trial court errors that we presume. We therefore affirm.

The evidence presented at trial may be summarized as follows.^[2]In October 2017, the defendant, Williams was dating and living with Charietta Williams ("Charietta"). Charietta had previously dated the victim, Brooks, and the two had a son known as "Baby Sean." Charietta and Brooks frequently argued about the care of Baby Sean. Williams had negative feelings toward Brooks and had made threats against him, telling Charietta that he wanted to murder Brooks because of the way he disrespected her. Early in the morning of October 8, 2017, Brooks was fatally shot outside a Chatham County nightclub. Police responded around 2:50 a.m. based on a 911 call and an automatic notification system that detects the sound of a gunshot in a given area.

Another patron of the bar, Waters, was shot in the leg during the shooting; he survived. Waters reported that just prior to the shooting, he observed the shooter and another man arguing with Brooks. Brooks told Waters that the dispute was over "some kind of female problem" or, more specifically, a "baby momma."

Christian Kelly testified that she drove Williams and Williams's father to the club that night. V7-117-118, 121-123, 129» She reported seeing Williams with a black gun in a holster on his hip prior to the shooting. Immediately after the shooting, Williams and his father ran to Kelly's car, and Kelly drove them away from the scene. In the car, Kelly heard Williams say to his father, "Dad, I think I shot him."^[3] Kelly dropped off Williams's father and drove Williams to the hotel where Charietta was working. Charietta reported seeing a gun on Williams's hip when he arrived at the hotel. According to Charietta, while Williams and Charietta were driving from the hotel to her home, Williams informed Charietta that he shot Brooks.

Iesha Reed, a bystander who knew neither Williams nor Brooks, testified that she heard men outside the club arguing about "something pertaining to a child" before she heard gunshots. She identified Williams as the shooter in a photographic lineup.

1. Williams argues that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence seized from his cell phone. Assuming without deciding that the admission of this evidence was error, we conclude that any error was harmless.

As established at a pre-trial hearing, Detective Jason Manley proceeded to Charietta's home on the day of the shooting. Detective Manley testified at the hearing that, by this point, Kelly already had implicated Williams in the shooting and indicated that she believed Williams would be found with Charietta. The detective testified that he encountered Williams at the house and noticed that "as soon as our eyes made contact, [Williams] immediately started manipulating" his cell phone. Williams and Charietta agreed to go to police headquarters for interviews. The detective "seized [Williams's cell phone] from his person" before they left Charietta's home. After placing Williams under arrest following the interview, police obtained a search warrant for the phone. The affidavit offered in support of the warrant application detailed information that implicated Williams in the shooting and made statements about the importance of cell phones in criminal investigations, but the affidavit did not mention any observation about Williams "manipulating" the cell phone or offer any particular statements about Williams's cell phone's connection to the crime. The warrant itself was rather sparse, stating by way of limitation only that "[t]here is now located [on Williams's phone] certain instruments, articles, persons, or things, namely: Information and data which are being possessed in violation of Georgia Law(s): . . . 16-5-1 Murder[.]"

Later, police obtained a passcode for the phone from Charietta.

Williams filed a motion to suppress evidence gathered from the search of his phone, arguing that police illegally seized the phone without a search warrant or probable cause, and illegally searched his phone when they "without [a] warrant or probable cause deputized [Charietta] as [an] agent of the State to open his cell phone[.]"A more particularized motion to suppress filed later specifically sought suppression of a particular photograph obtained from the phone, raising similar complaints. Defense counsel did not raise additional grounds for suppression in a hearing on the motion. The trial court denied the motion to suppress the photograph in a written order, stating: "The Court disagrees with Defendant's premise, finding the police had a valid search warrant for the contents of the cell phone. Further, the password was obtained from an independent source voluntarily." The information extracted from the cell phone was admitted at trial.

Citing cases largely decided under the Fourth Amendment, Williams argues that the evidence should have been suppressed because the cell phone was seized from his hands without probable cause and was searched based on an overly broad search warrant that was not supported by probable cause. Although Williams did preserve his claim of error as to the seizure of the cell phone, it does not appear that Williams raised below all of his arguments about the search of the phone^[4] And the parties' arguments (which are not well developed in the record below or well briefed by the parties) raise complex issues about cell phone seizures and searches, such as the extent to which a warrant application must connect a phone to be searched to the underlying crime, and the sort of particularity needed in a warrant for a cell phone search See, eg, State v Wilson, 315 Ga 613, 628 (884 S.E.2d 298) (2023) (Pinson, J, concurring) ("[I]f this generic 'criminals use cell phones, too' logic is enough for probable cause to get a warrant to search a suspect's cell phone - it is hard to imagine a case in which police cannot get that warrant.").^[5]But we need not resolve these difficult questions. Even assuming that Williams preserved all of his arguments about the seizure and search of his cell phone, the strength of the State's case against Williams and the limited value of the evidence extracted from the cell phone render any error harmless.

"[A]n error of constitutional magnitude may be deemed harmless if the State can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the error did not contribute to the verdict[.]" Johnson v. State, 310 Ga. 685, 696 (4) (c) (853 S.E.2d 635) (2021) (citation and punctuation omitted). The State's case against Williams was strong. The jury heard evidence that Williams had negative feelings toward Brooks, threatened Brooks, and told Charietta that he wanted to kill Brooks because he perceived Brooks as disrespecting her.^[6] Consistent with the notion that the shooting stemmed from a dispute between Williams and Brooks over the mother of Brooks's child, the surviving victim (Waters) and a disinterested eyewitness (Reed) reported that the shooter and the victim had some sort of argument over a "female," a "baby momma" or "a child." Reed also identified Williams as the shooter. Kelly testified that she dropped Williams off at the club that night, saw he had a gun, and drove him away from the scene after the shooting. Both Kelly and Charietta reported that Williams confessed to the shooting in their presence.

Given this strong evidence that Williams shot Brooks, the value of the evidence extracted from Williams's cell phone was minimal. Among the evidence extracted from the phone Williams on appeal specifically cites a photograph of himself with a firearm and a "closeup" of the weapon; a text message from Williams to his father at 1:33 a.m. on the morning of the shooting that read, "Um parked on the Side of the club . . . UM WIT YA . . . 312"; and another text message at 6:32 a.m. that morning from Williams's father that read, "One dead . . . one shot n da leg." Although the State attempted to link the photograph of Williams carrying a gun taken from his phone to the gun that Kelly and Charietta described Williams as carrying, the description given - a black gun in a holster - was rather general, and thus the photograph did not definitively link Williams to the shooting even if that testimony were credited by the jury. And the photograph extracted from Williams's phone showing him carrying a...