Moon v. State ( 2021 )

In the Supreme Court of Georgia
Decided: May 3, 2021
S21A0383. MOON v. THE STATE.
WARREN, Justice.
Sergio Moon was tried by a Walton County jury and convicted
of felony murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting
death of Linda Flint, the great-grandmother of his children. 1 On
1 Flint was killed on June 13, 2018. On January 25, 2019, a Walton
County grand jury indicted Moon, charging him with malice murder, felony
murder predicated on aggravated assault, felony murder predicated on
possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, aggravated assault with a deadly
weapon, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of a firearm
during the commission of a felony, and cruelty to children in the first degree.
Moon was tried in February 2019. The jury found Moon guilty of felony murder
predicated on possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of a
firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of a firearm during commission of
a felony, but found him not guilty of the remaining counts. The trial court
sentenced Moon to life in prison for felony murder and a consecutive five-year
term for possession of a firearm during commission of a felony. The conviction
for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon merged for purposes of
sentencing. Moon filed a timely motion for new trial on February 12, 2019, and
amended it through new counsel on December 19, 2019. After a hearing, the
trial court denied the motions, both original and as amended, on August 21,
2020. Moon timely appealed, and the case was docketed in this Court for the
term beginning in December 2020 and submitted for a decision on the briefs.
appeal, Moon argues that the trial court erred when it denied his
request to charge the jury on involuntary manslaughter; the
evidence presented at trial did not show that Moon’s felonious
conduct was “inherently dangerous,” and as a result, his felonious
conduct could not serve as a predicate for felony murder; the
prosecutor made an improper argument at closing; and the evidence
was insufficient to support his felony murder conviction. Seeing no
error, we affirm.
1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the
evidence presented at trial showed the following. Moon lived in an
apartment with Kendra Porter and their three children. Porter’s
grandmother, Flint, was staying in the apartment temporarily. On
June 13, 2018, Moon was inside the apartment, smoking marijuana
and “chilling” with Porter and her cousins, Delvin and Jonrunte
Smith, who lived next door. Later that day, UPS delivered a
package for Moon containing a bore sight—a bullet-shaped device
that fits into a gun’s chamber and shines a laser out of the barrel
when struck by the firing pin. Moon, a convicted felon, sat down at
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the kitchen table and began trying to fit the bore sight into his .40-
caliber handgun. At one point, the laser was pointed at Flint’s head,
and both Porter and Flint told Moon to stop playing with the gun.
As Moon continued manipulating the gun and bore sight, the
gun discharged and a bullet struck Flint in the head and killed her.
At the moment of the shooting, Flint was near the sink preparing
food, Porter’s minor daughter was next to Flint, and the two Smith
brothers were sitting at the table with Moon. Porter and another of
her children were elsewhere in the apartment. When Porter came
toward the kitchen after she heard the gunshot, Moon approached
her, dropped to his knees, and said he had “f***ed up.” After a police
investigation, Moon was eventually arrested.
At trial, the State presented evidence that, shortly before Flint
was shot, Moon had an argument with Flint about money that she
owed him. The State also presented evidence that, after the
shooting, Moon fled the scene and told others that he would kill them
if they told anyone about how Flint died: “whoever tells going to get
killed.” Police officers arrived at the scene after Moon had fled, and
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Porter told them initially that someone broke into the house and
shot Flint, though she later admitted that Moon “had shot her.”
Moon testified in his own defense, and his testimony was
largely consistent with the evidence presented by the State. Among
other things, Moon admitted that he was smoking marijuana on the
day Flint was shot and that he was a convicted felon and knew he
was “not supposed to have a gun.” He also admitted that the gun
discharged as he was attempting to make the bore sight work.
Specifically, Moon testified that when he first placed the bore sight
into the chamber of his .40-caliber gun, it did not work properly, so
he removed the bore sight and the gun’s magazine, which resulted
in a live round being chambered. Moon suggested that he was trying
to eject that live round when the gun discharged:
I took the clip back out because I know once you rack it
again, a live round go in, but when you take the clip out,
if you pull the slide back far enough, it gives two ways for
the bullet to come. It can drop down through the handle
or it can come out through the top part. And when I was
pulling it back, it just went off.
2. Moon contends that the trial court erred when it refused to
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give a jury instruction on involuntary manslaughter as a lesser-
included offense of malice murder or felony murder. Because an
involuntary manslaughter instruction was not warranted, Moon’s
argument fails. 2
Before trial, Moon filed a written request for a pattern jury
instruction on involuntary manslaughter and a more specific
pattern instruction on involuntary manslaughter predicated on the
misdemeanor charge of reckless conduct. The trial court did not give
the requested instructions, however, and Moon objected. The trial
court explained its decision:
I did not give that intentionally. It was the Court’s
determination that, based on the facts of this case, [there]
was either no crime or there is the crime that is charged
in Count 3 [felony murder predicated on possession of a
firearm by a convicted felon]. Therefore, there is no
lesser-included in between there. . . .
Later, in denying Moon’s motion for a new trial on this issue, the
trial court concluded that
if [Moon] was guilty of reckless conduct as requested in
[his] requested charge[,] then he was guilty of an
2Moon’s claim is moot as to the charges of malice murder and felony
murder predicated on aggravated assault for which he was acquitted.
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inherently dangerous act which would then provide the
basis of the felony murder charge with possession of a
firearm by a convicted felon as alleged in count three of
the indictment. Since such a charge would cause
confusion to the jury, it was not error to not give [the
involuntary manslaughter] requested jury instruction.
Involuntary manslaughter is defined in OCGA § 16-5-3 (a) as
“caus[ing] the death of another human being without any intention
to do so by the commission of an unlawful act other than a felony.”
(Emphasis supplied). “[A] charge on involuntary manslaughter
should be given, upon a proper request, when there is slight evidence
to support it.” Cash v. State, 297 Ga. 859, 863-864 (778 SE2d 785)
(2015) (citation and punctuation omitted). Conversely, where
evidence presented at trial shows “the commission of [a] completed
offense . . . or the commission of no offense, the trial court is not
required to charge the jury on a lesser included offense.” Id. at 864(citation and punctuation omitted).
Here, by admitting to being a felon and possessing a gun, Moon
admitted to committing an unlawful act that was a felony. See
OCGA § 16-11-131 (b) (felon in possession of a gun is a felony
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offense). And that felony precluded any instruction on involuntary
manslaughter as a matter of law. See Finley v. State, 286 Ga. 47,
49-50 (685 SE2d 258) (2009) (holding that the trial court did not err
when it denied the defendant’s requested involuntary manslaughter
jury instruction because the evidence at trial “did not reflect that
the killing resulted from an act other than a felony, given [the
defendant’s] status as a convicted felon and his admission that he
possessed a gun, however briefly”). See also Mayweather v. State,
254 Ga. 660, 661 (333 SE2d 597) (1985) (“Where an act that causes
a death is a felony, a requested charge on felony grade involuntary
manslaughter is properly denied.”). Given that Flint’s shooting
indisputably occurred as a result of Moon committing a felony—i.e.,
possession of a gun by a convicted felon—the trial court did not err
by refusing to instruct the jury on involuntary manslaughter. 3
3 Moon focuses his argument on two cases, Manzano v. State, 282 Ga.
557, 559 (651 SE2d 661) (2007), and Seabolt v. Norris, 298 Ga. 583, 586 (783
SE2d 913) (2016), in which we held that the trial court should have given an
involuntary manslaughter instruction. His reliance on these decisions is
unavailing because unlike Moon, the defendants in Manzano and Norris were
not found guilty of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. This distinction
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3. Analogizing the facts of his case to Ford v. State, 262 Ga.
602, 602 (423 SE2d 255) (1992), Moon contends that the evidence
presented at trial did not show that his “status offense” of possession
of a firearm by a convicted felon was “inherently dangerous” such
that it could serve as a predicate offense for felony murder. We
conclude that Moon’s contention lacks merit.
Under Georgia’s felony murder statute, “[a] person commits
the offense of murder when, in the commission of a felony, he or she
causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice.”
OCGA § 16-5-1 (c). Although the text of the statute “does not by its
terms limit the type of felony that may qualify as a predicate for
felony murder,” Shivers v. State, 286 Ga. 422, 425 (688 SE2d 622)
(2010) (Nahmias, J., concurring specially), this Court has
nonetheless held that “dangerousness is a prerequisite to the
inclusion of a felony as an underlying felony under the felony murder
is critical because, unlike Moon’s conduct, the conduct at issue in Manzano and
Norris did not definitively constitute a felony.
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statute of this state,” Ford, 262 Ga. at 602.4 In Ford, a convicted
felon accidentally discharged a pistol while unloading it inside a
house. See id. The bullet went through the floor and into the
basement apartment where it struck and killed the victim, but there
was “no evidence that at the time of the shooting [the defendant]
was aware of the existence of the apartment or of [the victim’s]
presence in it.” Id. The defendant was convicted of felony murder
predicated on a felon-in-possession charge, but this Court reversed
the felony murder conviction because “the status felony was neither
inherently dangerous nor life-threatening under the circumstances
of th[at] homicide.” Id. (emphasis supplied).
Contrary to his claim on appeal, the facts of Moon’s case are
not analogous to those in Ford. Unlike in Ford—where the
defendant was unloading a gun and the record contained no
evidence that he was aware of the victim’s presence in an apartment
4 Some Justices on this Court have doubts about the correctness of the
statutory analysis that led to that holding. But we need not decide in this case
whether Ford should be reconsidered because, as discussed below, Moon is
guilty of felony murder even under Ford’s narrow interpretation of OCGA § 16-
5-1 (c).
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below him—the record here shows that Moon manipulated a loaded
handgun in close proximity to other people in the same room,
including a child; pointed the gun at Flint’s head at some point
before she was shot; continued manipulating the gun after
repeatedly being told to stop; and admittedly engaged in this
conduct after smoking marijuana. We have no trouble concluding
that, based on the facts of this case, Moon’s conduct in possessing
the gun while being a convicted felon was inherently dangerous. See
Shivers, 286 Ga. at 424 (in determining whether a felony is
“inherently dangerous” under Ford, “a court does not consider the
elements of the felony in the abstract, but instead considers the
circumstances under which the felony was committed”) (citation and
punctuation omitted). Accordingly, because the conduct that
proximately caused Flint’s death satisfies both the textual definition
of felony murder under OCGA § 16-5-1 (c) and this Court’s
interpretation of felony murder in Ford, Moon’s claim fails.
4. Moon contends that the prosecutor made an improper
closing argument that “reasonably could have changed the result of
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the trial.” Specifically, Moon claims that the prosecutor argued that
it was inherently dangerous for him to be handling a weapon simply
because he was a convicted felon. Moon’s contention fails because it
was not preserved for appellate review: he did not object to the
State’s closing argument at trial, and we do not review unpreserved
challenges to closing arguments in non-death penalty cases, even for
plain error. See Gates v. State, 298 Ga. 324, 328 (781 SE2d 772)
(2016) (“[B]ecause Gates did not object to the prosecutor’s argument
at trial, he has waived review of these arguments on appeal, as the
alleged errors here based on improper remarks during closing
argument are not subject to review on appeal for plain error.”).
5. Moon also argues that the evidence presented at trial was
not sufficient to support his conviction for felony murder.
Specifically, Moon argues that the State failed to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that he acted in a “dangerous manner per se or
that his conduct was inherently dangerous.” This argument,
however, is substantively identical to Moon’s argument that his
possession of a firearm as a convicted felon was not inherently
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dangerous and therefore could not serve as a predicate for his felony
murder conviction. For the reasons outlined in Division 3, the
evidence presented at trial, when viewed in the light most favorable
to the verdicts, was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find
Moon guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he
was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 318-319 (99
SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979).
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
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