Jones v. State ( 2021 )

In the Supreme Court of Georgia
Decided: May 17, 2021
S21A0035. JONES v. THE STATE.
NAHMIAS, Presiding Justice.
Appellant Alpherd Jones was convicted of felony murder in
connection with the beating death of his girlfriend, LaShanda
January. In this appeal, he contends that the evidence presented at
his trial was insufficient to support his conviction and that the trial
court erred by admitting evidence of January’s diary entries under
OCGA § 24-8-807 and by admitting other-act evidence under OCGA
§ 24-4-404 (b). We affirm. 1
1 January died on May 18, 2017. In March 2018, a Toombs County grand
jury indicted Appellant for felony murder based on aggravated battery and
aggravated battery. At a trial from February 25 to 27, 2019, the jury found
Appellant guilty of both counts. The trial court sentenced him as a recidivist to
serve life in prison without the possibility of parole for felony murder, and the
aggravated battery count merged. Appellant filed a timely motion for new trial,
which he later amended with new counsel. After a hearing, the trial court
denied the motion in February 2020. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal,
and the case was docketed to the term of this Court beginning in December
2020 and submitted for decision on the briefs.
1. (a) Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the
evidence presented at Appellant’s trial showed the following. On
May 4, 2017, January did not show up for her 4:00 p.m. shift at the
restaurant where she worked. Around 4:15 or 4:30 p.m., a co-worker
called the motel where January stayed in Vidalia. A male voice
answered the phone; identified himself as January’s boyfriend,
whom the co-worker knew to be Appellant; and said that January
had not been feeling well, took some medicine, lay down, and was
not responding to him. The co-worker suggested that Appellant call
for an ambulance.
About six hours later, at 10:26 p.m., Appellant called 911 and
said that January was vomiting blood. When paramedics arrived at
the motel room, January was lying on the bed, unresponsive. There
was bruising around her eyes and on the side of her head; her face
was swollen; her eyes were dilated; and there was dried, vomited
blood on the bed. Both paramedics testified that, given January’s
injuries, they suspected that she had been beaten. When one of them
asked Appellant what had happened, he said that January fell in
2
the bathtub and hit her head, lay down on the bed because she felt
unwell, and later started vomiting. He also claimed that January
had been talking with him moments before the paramedics arrived.
A police officer who arrived while the paramedics were tending
to January observed scratches on Appellant’s left arm that appeared
to have been caused by fingernails. Appellant told the officer that
January’s injuries were “accidental.” Appellant then left to pick up
January’s seven-year-old godson C.L., who lived with them in the
motel room but was at a friend’s house. Officers searched the room
and found blood on a pillow, two washcloths, and the bed where
January had been lying and small amounts of blood on the sink,
toilet, and bathroom floor. There was no damage to the bathtub,
which was dry. The officers collected three cell phones; a later
download of the data from one of the phones showed that its web
browser was used to search for “what to put on a black eye” at 5:32
p.m. on the day that January was injured.
When Appellant returned to the motel with C.L., an officer
interviewed Appellant there; the interview was audio recorded, and
3
the recording was later played for the jury. Appellant told the
following story. January, who regularly took blood pressure
medication, was not feeling well that day. At one point, while she
was sitting on the toilet, she fell into the bathtub and hit her head.
Appellant helped her lie down on the bed, but she then fell off the
bed onto the floor. She took two Aleve tablets, and they both lay
down on the bed. When Appellant next checked on her, she did not
answer him and vomited blood, and he called 911. When the officer
said that he did not believe Appellant, Appellant admitted that he
and January had argued but maintained that he had not hurt her.
Around 3:00 a.m., the officer interviewed Appellant again at a
police station; this interview was video recorded, and the recording
was also played for the jury. Appellant told the officer the following.
He and January had been dating for about two years. She sometimes
had headaches due to her high blood pressure, and on the previous
day, she told him that her blood pressure was high and that she was
not feeling well. She took a bath but at some point fell backwards
and hit her head on the soap dish that protruded from the wall of
4
the bathtub. He helped her up, and she sat on the toilet. She then
vomited, and he cleaned up the bathroom. He helped her walk
toward the bed, where she sat down, fell forward, hit her head on
the railing at the edge of the bed, and fell between the bed and the
wall. He helped her up, and they both fell asleep on the bed. When
he awoke, she vomited blood, and he called 911. He insisted that he
had not hurt January. When the officer asked him to tell the truth,
Appellant said, “I’ll talk when the appropriate time comes.” After
the interview, Appellant was arrested. Several days later, during an
interview with another investigator, Appellant said that he and
January “g[o]t along just fine,” but “it was just one of those days,”
and he “can’t take it back.”
Early on the morning after January was injured, the officer
interviewed C.L. at the motel. C.L. said that on the previous day,
Appellant hit January hard in the stomach with his hands and
threw her on the bed, that her eye was red, and that Appellant then
told C.L. to go into the bathroom, where C.L. heard January say, “Al,
no.” Also at the motel, C.L. told a caseworker from the Division of
5
Family and Children Services that January had been punched,
kicked, and dragged across the floor by her hair and that she had
blood coming out of her mouth. C.L. also told the caseworker that
“there was a big knife.” During a forensic interview later that day,
C.L. said that he saw Appellant punching January in her nose,
mouth, and cheek, kicking her in the stomach, and dragging her by
the hair. C.L. said he was then sent to the bathroom and heard
January say, “No, Al, no, stop, stop.” He also said that Appellant had
a knife but put it down. C.L. briefly testified at trial that he saw
January “g[e]t killed” and that she was stabbed. 2
When January arrived at the hospital, she was unconscious,
her face was swollen and bruised, she had no reflexes, and she had
been intubated because she was unable to breathe on her own. CAT
scans showed that January had a large bleed in her brain that was
causing the brain to herniate into the brain stem. A radiologist who
reviewed January’s CAT scans testified that it was one of the worst
2 Police found a “pocketknife” in the motel room but did not take it into
evidence. January had no stab wounds.
6
brain injuries he had seen, likening it to the type of trauma caused
by a severe car wreck. The CAT scans also showed a fractured
scapula, four broken ribs, and a fractured pelvis. The radiologist
testified that these injuries were inconsistent with Appellant’s
version of events. January was pronounced clinically brain dead two
weeks later; she was then removed from her breathing machine and
died moments later. An autopsy showed that her cause of death was
multiple blunt force trauma injuries, and the medical examiner
testified that January’s injuries were not consistent with a fall in
the bathtub or off a bed.
The State also presented evidence that January had written in
her diary about Appellant’s anger and her fear of him, which left her
constantly worried. In addition, to show Appellant’s criminal intent,
the State presented other-act evidence about an incident in
December 2004 in which Appellant hit, kicked, and stabbed his
then-girlfriend, Jessica Porter, in their home after she told him that
she wanted to break up; he then claimed to the police that he had
accidentally stabbed her when he tried to take a knife away from
7
her. Appellant did not testify at trial.
(b) Appellant contends that the evidence presented at his trial
was legally insufficient to support his conviction under Jackson v.
Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979). Appellant
asserts that some of the State’s witnesses were not credible, but “‘[i]t
was for the jury to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to
resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence.’” Vega v.
State, 285 Ga. 32, 33 (673 SE2d 223) (2009) (citation omitted).
Appellant also asserts that the State failed to prove his
criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt. But when properly
viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, see Jackson,
443 U.S. at 319, the evidence presented at trial showed that
Appellant was the only person in the motel room with C.L. and
January when she was injured, and C.L.’s statements established
that January’s injuries were the result of Appellant’s violent attack.
Moreover, after Appellant reported to January’s co-worker that
January was unresponsive, he waited several hours before calling
911. He then gave shifting accounts of how January was injured,
8
and the medical evidence was inconsistent with his claims that her
injuries were accidental. Finally, the State presented evidence that
Appellant had committed a similar attack against his former
girlfriend.
This evidence authorized a rational jury to conclude that
Appellant acted with the malicious intent to cause January bodily
harm, which resulted in her death. See OCGA §§ 16-5-24 (a)
(defining aggravated battery); 16-5-1 (c) (defining felony murder).
Thus, the evidence presented at Appellant’s trial was sufficient to
authorize the jury to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of
felony murder based on aggravated battery. See Jackson, 443 U.S.
at 319. See also Valrie v. State, 308 Ga. 563, 564-566 (842 SE2d 279)
(2020) (holding that the defendant’s felony murder conviction based
on aggravated battery was supported by sufficient evidence,
including medical evidence that contradicted his shifting stories to
the police and his failure to promptly seek aid for the victim).
2. Appellant contends that the trial court abused its discretion
by admitting evidence of January’s diary entries. We disagree.
9
(a) Before trial, the State filed a motion seeking the admission
of the diary entries under OCGA § 24-8-807 (Rule 807), the residual
exception to the hearsay rule. After a pretrial hearing at which
January’s sister Patrie Mordon3 testified, the trial court issued an
order ruling, over Appellant’s objection, that the diary evidence was
admissible under Rule 807.
During the trial, Mordon testified, as she had at the pretrial
hearing, that she was very familiar with January’s handwriting and
that January had written two particular entries in the diary, which
the prosecutor had Mordon read out loud. The first entry was a letter
directed to “Al,” and the second was directed to “Mr. Alphred [sic]
Jones.” The entries expressed that during January and Appellant’s
relationship, Appellant said that he was sick of January and C.L.,
that he seemed “angry most of the time,” that January was “scared”
and felt like she was “walk[ing] on eggshells” around him, that
3 The transcript of the pretrial hearing identifies January’s sister as
“Latra Mording,” but when she testified at trial, she introduced herself and
spelled her name as “Patrie Mordon.”
10
Appellant always blamed her for things, that he “t[oo]k[] his anger
and emotion out on [her] for no reason at all,” and that she was
“constantly worr[ied]” about doing something to make him angry. 4
(b) Rule 807 says, in pertinent part:
A statement not specifically covered by any law but
having equivalent circumstantial guarantees of
trustworthiness shall not be excluded by the hearsay rule,
if the court determines that:
(1) The statement is offered as evidence of a material fact;
(2) The statement is more probative on the point for which
it is offered than any other evidence which the proponent
can procure through reasonable efforts; and
(3) The general purposes of the rules of evidence and the
interests of justice will best be served by admission of the
statement into evidence.
Rule 807 “applies only when certain exceptional guarantees of
trustworthiness exist and when high degrees of probativeness and
necessity are present.” Smart v. State, 299 Ga. 414, 421 (788 SE2d
442) (2016) (citation and punctuation omitted). A trial court should
consider the totality of the circumstances in determining whether to
admit evidence under Rule 807. See Reyes v. State, 309 Ga. 660, 668
4The prosecutor also tendered the whole diary into evidence. Appellant
has not challenged any specific portion of the diary other than the two entries
that the prosecutor had Mordon read to the jury.
11
(847 SE2d 194) (2020).
When determining whether statements are sufficiently
trustworthy to be admissible under Rule 807, the court considers the
“‘circumstances under which [the statements] were originally
made’” rather than the “‘credibility of the witness reporting them in
court.’” Smart, 299 Ga. at 422 (citation omitted). In this case, the
diary entries contained January’s own words concerning her
unhappy relationship with Appellant and his angry and controlling
behavior, and there was no evidence indicating that she had a
motive to fabricate her statements when she wrote them. Thus, the
trial court did not abuse its discretion by determining that the diary
evidence had sufficient guarantees of trustworthiness to be
admissible under Rule 807. See Smart, 299 Ga. at 419-422
(upholding the admission under Rule 807 of the murder victim’s
“letters to God” and text messages to family and friends describing
her abusive relationship with the appellant and noting that “[w]e
cannot say that . . . [a victim’s] own writings, which describe acts of
domestic violence, do not, in fact, bear an increased level of
12
trustworthiness”). See also Jacobs v. State, 303 Ga. 245, 250-251
(811 SE2d 372) (2018) (concluding that statements and text
messages from the murder victim to her close friends and
confidantes, which described the nature of her relationship with the
appellant and his “abusive, controlling, and violent behavior toward
[the victim],” were sufficiently trustworthy to be admissible under
Rule 807).
The statements in the diary entries also met the materiality
requirement in subsection (1) of Rule 807, because they provided
details about Appellant’s unwarranted anger toward January and
her fear of him. The entries were therefore material as evidence of
“‘the nature of the relationship between [Appellant] and [January]
that sheds light on Appellant’s motive in committing the offenses
charged.’” Rawls v. State, 310 Ga. 209, 215 (850 SE2d 90) (2020)
(citation and brackets omitted). See also Smart, 299 Ga. at 418
(“[The] testimony was relevant to help the jury understand why [the
appellant] might have used violence against [the victim].”).
Moreover, Appellant has not shown under subsection (2) of
13
Rule 807 that there was other evidence that the State could have
procured with reasonable efforts that would have been more
probative to show Appellant’s motive than the diary entries, which
provided January’s firsthand account of her relationship with and
fear of Appellant before she was beaten to death in their motel room.
See Smart, 299 Ga. at 422 (noting that a domestic-violence victim’s
own writings and text messages to family and friends may be “highly
probative,” given the “often-secretive nature of domestic violence”).
Accordingly, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by admitting
the evidence under Rule 807. 5
5 Appellant also argues that the diary entries were not properly
authenticated because the evidence establishing how the State came into
possession of the diary was inconsistent. At the pretrial hearing, Mordon
testified that she got the diary from her mother, who got it from a detective
who was investigating January’s death. At trial, Mordon testified that she got
the diary from “Ms. Betty,” whom further evidence showed to be the director of
the domestic violence center to which the motel owner brought January’s
belongings from the motel room after the incident. This inconsistency in
Mordon’s testimony, however, is immaterial to the issue of whether the diary
entries were adequately authenticated. Mordon testified that she was very
familiar with her sister January’s handwriting and identified January’s
handwriting in the pertinent diary entries. Moreover, the diary entries
referenced Appellant’s relationships with January and C.L. and were directed
to “Al” and “Mr. Alphred [sic] Jones.” Thus, the trial court did not abuse its
discretion by concluding that the State presented sufficient evidence that the
diary entries were written by January. See OCGA § 24-9-901 (b) (2) & (4)
14
3. Finally, Appellant contends that the trial court erred by
admitting other-act evidence under OCGA § 24-4-404 (b) (Rule 404
(b)). We see no abuse of discretion.
(a) Before trial, the State filed a notice of intent to offer other-
act evidence showing that in December 2004, Appellant beat and
stabbed his former girlfriend, Jessica Porter. After a pretrial
hearing at which the State presented testimony from Porter and
Detective Charles Whitaker, who investigated the attack, the trial
court issued an order ruling, over Appellant’s objection, that the
other-act evidence was admissible for the purposes of showing intent
and the absence of mistake or accident.
At trial, Porter testified to the following. She had been in a
relationship with Appellant and was living with him in December
2004. On December 20, after she told him that she was breaking up
(stating that the requisite authentication of evidence may be satisfied by,
among other things, “[n]onexpert opinion as to the genuineness of handwriting,
based on familiarity not acquired for purposes of the litigation,” and
“[a]ppearance, contents, substance, internal patterns, or other distinctive
characteristics, taken in conjunction with circumstances”). See also Smith v.
State, 300 Ga. 538, 540-541 (796 SE2d 666) (2017).
15
with him, he hit her on the head with a liquor bottle, knocking her
down between the bed and the wall, and proceeded to beat, kick, and
stomp on her, saying that she was going to die that day. When Porter
tried to escape, Appellant dragged her toward the kitchen, where he
stabbed her in the back several times with a butcher knife before the
police arrived and arrested him. Porter was taken to a hospital and
treated for several days for stab wounds and a concussion. Detective
Whitaker testified that he interviewed Appellant, who claimed that
Porter was “suicidal,” that she “liked to play with knives,” that she
“was always beating him up and threatening him with weapons,”
that she had a knife while they were arguing that day, and that
when he tried to take it from her, he “accidentally stabbed her in the
back.” The State also tendered into evidence certified copies of
Appellant’s June 2005 guilty pleas to aggravated assault and false
imprisonment, for which he was sentenced to serve eight years in
prison. During the final jury charge, the trial court instructed that
the State offered the other-act evidence to show intent and that the
jury was to consider the evidence only insofar as it related to that
16
issue. 6
(b) Under Rule 404 (b), “[e]vidence of other crimes, wrongs, or
acts shall not be admissible to prove the character of a person in
order to show action in conformity therewith,” but such evidence
may be admissible for other purposes, including to prove intent.
OCGA § 24-4-404 (b). For such evidence to be admissible, the
proponent of the evidence must show three things:
(1) the evidence is relevant to an issue in the case other
than the defendant’s character; (2) the probative value of
the evidence is not substantially outweighed by its undue
prejudice; and (3) there is sufficient proof for a jury to find
by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant
committed the other act.
Kirby v. State, 304 Ga. 472, 479 (819 SE2d 468) (2018). Appellant
6 As mentioned earlier, in its pretrial order, the trial court had ruled that
the evidence was admissible for the purposes of showing both intent and
absence of mistake or accident. When the other-act evidence was admitted
during the trial, the court gave the jury a limiting instruction saying that the
evidence was admissible only for the purpose of showing absence of mistake or
accident. During the charge conference, the trial court told the parties that it
would not give a jury instruction on the defense of accident, but the court noted
that the other-act evidence was still admissible to show intent, and the court
so instructed the jury in the final charge. Because we conclude below that the
other-act evidence was admissible to show Appellant’s intent (and because the
purposes of intent and absence of mistake or accident are closely related in this
case), we need not separately address whether the evidence was admissible for
the additional purpose of showing absence of mistake or accident.
17
concedes that the State satisfied the third part of this test, so we will
address only the first and second parts.
(i) To determine whether other-act evidence is relevant to a
non-character issue, we look to the definition of “relevant evidence”
in OCGA § 24-4-401, which says that evidence is relevant if it has
“any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of
consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less
probable than it would be without the evidence.” Relevance is thus
“a binary question – evidence is either relevant or it is not.” Kirby,
304 Ga. at 480.
To prove the charged crimes of aggravated battery and felony
murder based on that offense, the State had to show that Appellant
had the malicious intent to cause bodily harm to January. See OCGA
§ 16-5-24 (a). Appellant’s intent was a major issue at trial, not only
because he pled not guilty but also because he had repeatedly
claimed that he did not hurt January and suggested that her
injuries resulted from accidental falls while she was ill. See
Thompson v. State, 308 Ga. 854, 858 (843 SE2d 794) (2020). The
18
evidence that Appellant previously acted with malicious intent to
injure Porter when he beat her badly enough to cause a concussion
and stabbed her several times with a butcher knife made it more
probable that he possessed the same intent to commit aggravated
battery against January, so the first part of the Rule 404 (b) test was
satisfied. See Strong v. State, 309 Ga. 295, 309 (845 SE2d 653)
(2020). See also Olds v. State, 299 Ga. 65, 72 (786 SE2d 633) (2016)
(“[E]vidence that an accused committed an intentional act generally
is relevant to show . . . that the same defendant committed a similar
act with the same sort of intent[.]”).
(ii) The second part of the Rule 404 (b) test is governed by
OCGA § 24-4-403 (Rule 403), which says in pertinent part that
“[r]elevant evidence may be excluded if its probative value is
substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.” The
exclusion of evidence under Rule 403 “is an extraordinary remedy
which should be used only sparingly.” Hood v. State, 299 Ga. 95, 102-
103 (786 SE2d 648) (2016) (citations and punctuation omitted).
When other-act evidence is presented to show intent, Rule 403
19
requires a case-by-case, “‘common sense assessment of all the
circumstances surrounding . . . the extrinsic act and the charged
offense.’” Kirby, 304 Ga. at 481 (citation omitted). These
circumstances include the prosecutorial need for the other-act
evidence, the other act’s overall similarity to the charged crimes, and
its temporal remoteness. See id.
In this case, the State had a significant need for the other-act
evidence. Most of the evidence indicating that Appellant beat
January was circumstantial; the only eyewitness was a young child;
and Appellant maintained during his police interviews that he never
attacked January and that she was injured by accidental falls. To
satisfy its burden of proof and to rebut Appellant’s explanation for
how January was injured, the State needed evidence that her death
was not accidental and that Appellant harmed her with malicious
intent. See Harrison v. State, 310 Ga. 862, 868 (855 SE2d 546)
(2021); Thompson, 308 Ga. at 859.
As for similarity, the other-act evidence showed that Appellant
beat, kicked, and dragged his then-girlfriend Porter in their home
20
after an argument, which aligns with C.L.’s account of how
Appellant attacked January. And as in this case, Appellant claimed
that Porter’s stabbing injuries were accidental. Appellant points out
that he used a liquor bottle and a knife in his attack on Porter, but
those differences do not undermine the significant similarities
between the incidents. See Kirby, 304 Ga. at 484. In addition, C.L.
reported to the caseworker and the forensic examiner that Appellant
had a knife during his attack on January.
Although the 2004 incident occurred more than 12 years before
January’s murder, the incident was “not so remote as to be lacking
in evidentiary value.” Id. (citation and punctuation omitted).
Moreover, Appellant was sentenced to serve eight years in prison for
his convictions related to the attack on Porter. While the record does
not clearly reflect how much prison time Appellant actually served,
he was likely incarcerated for a substantial portion of the time
between that incident and January’s murder. See id. (“[T]he prior
crime need not be very recent, especially where a substantial portion
of the gap in time occurred while the defendant was incarcerated.”
21
(citation and punctuation omitted)).
The evidence of the 2004 incident was prejudicial, as is all
inculpatory evidence, but in light of its significant probative value,
it was not a “‘matter of scant or cumulative probative force, dragged
in by the heels for the sake of its prejudicial effect.’” Id. at 484
(citation omitted). See also Anglin v. State, 302 Ga. 333, 337 (806
SE2d 573) (2017) (“[I]n a criminal trial, inculpatory evidence is
inherently prejudicial; ‘it is only when unfair prejudice substantially
outweighs probative value that the rule permits exclusion.’”
(emphasis in original; citation omitted)). And the jury learned that
Appellant had already admitted his guilt and was convicted and
sentenced to eight years in prison for attacking Porter, making it
less likely that the jury would want to punish him for the other act
rather than for the charged crimes. See Kirby, 304 Ga. at 485. In
addition, the trial court instructed the jury during the final charge
that the other-act evidence was to be considered only for the limited
purpose of showing Appellant’s intent. See Harrison, 310 Ga. at 868.
For these reasons, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in
22
determining that the probative value of the other-act evidence was
not substantially outweighed by its prejudicial effect. Accordingly,
the court properly admitted the other-act evidence under Rule 404
(b). See, e.g., Harrison, 310 Ga. at 869; Thompson, 308 Ga. at 860.
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
23