Williams v. State

312 Ga. 386

863 S.E.2d 44

WILLIAMS

v.The STATE.

S21A1171

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: September 8, 2021

Charles Henry Frier, Attorney at Law, P.O. Box 8783, Atlanta, Georgia 31106-8783, for Appellant.

Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula Khristian Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Eric Christopher Peters, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Law, 40 Capitol Square, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30334, Deborah D. Wellborn, A.D.A., Sherry Boston, District Attorney, Elizabeth Haase Brock, A.D.A., Dekalb County District Attorney's Office, 556 North McDonough Street, ste 700, Decatur, Georgia 30030, for Appellee.

Ellington, Justice.

A DeKalb County jury found Leon Williams guilty of malice murder, terroristic threats, and three counts of cruelty to children in connection with the drowning death of his ten-year-old son, Kentae Williams ("Kentae").¹ Williams contends that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support his convictions. He also argues that one of his three convictions for cruelty to children must be vacated because it merged with his malice murder conviction. For the following reasons, we affirm.

Kentae, a child with autism and special needs, spent most of his life in foster care. Williams began providing care for Kentae in June 2016, and he adopted the child on November 19, 2016. During the week of April 24, 2017, Williams attended a work conference. While Williams was away, his mother stayed in Williams's apartment and cared for Kentae.

During the morning of Thursday, April 27, one of Williams's fellow conference attendees observed Williams as he talked on the phone. She testified that Williams was visibly upset. He repeatedly said: "I'm going to show him. My son thinks he's funny. I'm going to show him." Williams was upset that his son was misbehaving at school. The conference ended the following day.

Between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on April 28, Williams's neighbors saw Williams walking with Kentae toward their DeKalb County apartment. Neighbors described Williams's demeanor as "aggressive," "tense," and "furious." They saw Williams holding Kentae by the neck. The neighbors testified that, as Williams passed by them with the child in tow, he complained that Kentae had kicked his teacher and used obscene language. Williams told Kentae twice that he was "going to die tonight." He also said "I'm going to beat him up. I'm going to kill him." The neighbors observed that Kentae appeared terrified. The child held a bag with a belt in it, and one of the neighbors asked: "You have him holding his own butt whipping?" Williams said "yes," explaining that he had just bought the belt. One neighbor testified that she found the exchange so disturbing that she considered calling the police.

Williams's mother testified that, as she sat in the living room watching television, she saw Williams and Kentae enter the apartment. She heard Williams tell Kentae to go upstairs and take a bath. Shortly thereafter, she heard a cry, and she went upstairs to investigate. Kentae, who was sobbing, was standing up in a tub filled with about six inches of water. Williams sat next to the child. Williams's mother assumed that Kentae did not want to take a bath, so she went back downstairs to watch television. Later, Williams called out to his mother, asking her to come upstairs. When she got upstairs, she saw Kentae lying on his bedroom floor, near the door to the bathroom. Williams was giving the child CPR.

Williams's mother called 911 at 8:18 p.m. When first responders arrived at 8:27 p.m., Williams was in the upstairs bedroom attempting to revive Kentae with chest compressions. A paramedic testified that she continued CPR in the ambulance, but Kentae had no pulse. It was difficult to intubate Kentae because his mouth was clenched tightly and he had water in his trachea and lungs. Efforts to revive him with epinephrine failed. The paramedic noticed bruising on Kentae's head, torso, and arms. Also, the skin on the top of Kentae's feet was peeling and beginning to slough away. The paramedic noticed that Kentae's blood was pooling toward his back and his feet were starting to stiffen, as if rigor mortis had begun to set in, which typically happens about two hours after death. On the way to the hospital, Williams told the paramedic that he had left Kentae in the bathroom to change clothes, and that when he returned to help him bathe, Kentae was unresponsive. According to the paramedic, Williams repeatedly complained that "DFCS isn't going to give me another kid now." Once at the hospital, a doctor pronounced Kentae dead. Several people told Williams to stay at the hospital, but he left.

Kentae's death was determined to be a homicide caused by drowning. The emergency room doctor noted that Kentae's body temperature upon arrival at the hospital was about 102 degrees, warmer than it should have been, which was consistent with his body being left in a warm bath for an extended period of time. The medical examiner testified that Kentae's treatment records indicated that rigor mortis had begun to set in when the paramedics arrived, which meant that he had probably been dead for approximately two hours.

Both the emergency room doctor and the medical examiner noticed that Kentae had blisters from recent second degree burns on the tops of his feet, but not on the soles of his feet. He had circular bruises on his calves, which the medical examiner testified could have been caused by someone grasping Kentae's calves in order to hold his feet under the hot water spigot, which could also explain why the burns were only to the tops of his feet. Kentae also had a recent deep bruise on his shoulder, which was consistent with someone forcefully pressing him under the water. The medical examiner testified that it would have taken about two to three minutes to drown the child. Additionally, Kentae had recent, extensive, and deep bruising and a pattern of marks on his body consistent with being struck repeatedly by a belt and a belt buckle. The police collected seven belts from Williams's apartment. While in the apartment, they noticed that the tub's cold-water knob was missing.

Williams was arrested a few hours after Kentae was pronounced dead. Williams spoke with a detective shortly after his arrest, and his recorded custodial interview was played for the jury. Williams first said that, when he got back from the conference on Friday, he picked Kentae up from school, went to a Family Dollar store, and encountered neighbors on the way home. He told Kentae to take a bath when they returned to the apartment. Williams said he walked out of the bathroom around 8:15 p.m. to change clothes, and when he came back about five minutes later, he found Kentae lying on his side in the tub, unresponsive. After Williams gave his account, the investigator ended the interview.

Moments later, Williams asked to continue the interview, and the detective agreed. Williams admitted turning the hot water on and running it over Kentae's feet, but claimed that he turned it off when the child complained that it was too hot. Williams admitted that the bruising on Kentae's body was the result of his striking the child five times with a belt. He also admitted holding Kentae down underwater, twice. Williams explained that Kentae was "swimming," and that he twice pushed him down under the water for 30 to 45 seconds, which he acknowledged was too long, and that his actions could have caused Kentae's death. Williams also admitted to making a "joke" to his neighbors that he was going to kill Kentae that night.

1. Williams contends that the State's evidence was insufficient to support his convictions by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. With respect to his conviction for murder, Williams also argues that the State's evidence was entirely circumstantial and failed to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of his guilt. For the following reasons, these contentions are without merit.

When evaluating a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence as a matter of constitutional due process, this Court views all of the evidence presented at trial in the light most favorable to the verdicts and asks whether any rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U. S. 307, 319 (III) (B), 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). Even assuming that the evidence presented on the offense of murder was wholly circumstantial, as Williams argues, to sustain the conviction as a matter of Georgia statutory law,

the proven facts had to be consistent with the hypothesis of his guilt and exclude every reasonable hypothesis save that of his guilt. Not every hypothesis is reasonable, and the evidence does not have to exclude every conceivable inference or hypothesis; it need rule out only those that are reasonable. The reasonableness of an alternative hypothesis raised by a defendant is a question principally for the jury, and when the jury is authorized to find that the evidence, though circumstantial, is sufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis save that of the accused's guilt, this Court will not disturb that finding unless it is insupportable as a matter of law.

(Citation and punctuation omitted.) Cochran v. State , 305 Ga. 827, 829 (1), 828 S.E.2d 338 (2019). See also OCGA § 24-14-6 ("To warrant a conviction on circumstantial evidence, the proved facts shall not only be consistent with the hypothesis of guilt, but shall exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused.").

(a) Malice murder. Williams contends that the State's evidence failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed malice murder by drowning Kentae.² He also argues that the evidence supports two other possibilities: that Kentae's death was either an accident or a suicide. We disagree.

The evidence was...