Taylor v. State ( 2021 )

In the Supreme Court of Georgia
Decided: December 14, 2021
S21A1092. TAYLOR v. THE STATE.
BOGGS, Presiding Justice.
After an October 2012 jury trial, Daniel Taylor was convicted
of malice murder and possession of a firearm during the commission
of a felony in connection with the shooting death of his father,
Richard. 1 The trial court denied Taylor’s motion for new trial, and
he appeals, contending only that the evidence was insufficient as a
1 The shooting occurred on May 12, 2011. On August 9, 2011, a Fulton
County grand jury indicted Taylor for malice murder, felony murder,
aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a
felony. Taylor was tried before a jury from October 15 to 17, 2012, and found
guilty on all counts. Taylor was sentenced to serve life in prison for malice
murder, plus five years in prison on the firearms charge; the trial court merged
the aggravated assault charge into the malice murder count, and also
improperly merged the felony murder charge, which actually was vacated by
operation of law. Taylor’s trial counsel filed a timely motion for new trial, which
was amended by appellate counsel on June 6, 2019. After a hearing on March
10, 2021, the motion was denied on March 15, 2021. Taylor’s notice of appeal
was filed on April 13, 2021, and the case was docketed in this Court for the
August 2021 term and submitted for a decision on the briefs.
matter of statutory law because it was entirely circumstantial and
the State failed to exclude every reasonable hypothesis other than
his guilt. Because the evidence was sufficient as a matter of
statutory law, we affirm.
Construed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, the
evidence showed that, in the early morning hours of May 12, 2011,
Taylor, his mother, Cherrie Ann Taylor, and his father, Richard,
were sleeping in the living room of their home. Shortly before 2:00
a.m., Taylor’s father was killed by a single 9mm bullet to the chest.
Taylor’s half-brother, Glen, and Glen’s teenage daughter were also
present in the home. At trial, Taylor’s family members claimed that
they could not recall most of the events surrounding the shooting or
testified inconsistently with earlier statements to police officers or
emergency personnel. The State then presented evidence of the
family members’ earlier statements, some of which were recorded
and some testified to by witnesses, as follows.
The first police officer on the scene testified that Cherrie Ann
told him she saw Taylor standing over his father and then heard
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gunshots. She identified Taylor by name, and when the officer found
Taylor in the back yard of the house and asked him his name, he
gave the officer the same name. The officer then detained Taylor and
placed him in the back of a patrol car. An EMT who responded to the
scene testified that Cherrie Ann told him that she heard gunshots
and “saw her son standing over her husband with a gun in his hand.”
At the scene, Cherrie Ann also gave a recorded statement to
the lead investigator. She said that she, Richard, and Taylor were
asleep in the living room, with Taylor sleeping on the floor between
her and Richard. The sound of a gunshot woke her up and she saw
Taylor, with a green gun in his hand, held “down to his side,”
standing over Richard. She screamed for someone to call the police,
and Taylor left the room.
Glen also gave a recorded statement to the lead investigator,
in which he stated that he was asleep in the basement when he
heard Cherrie Ann screaming. He ran upstairs and saw Taylor in
the family room, “pacing” with his hands in his pockets. Glen ran to
find Cherrie Ann, and she told him, “Daniel [Taylor] was standing
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up over him and he shot him.” Glen also stated that when the police
arrived, Taylor “took off.”
Approximately two weeks later, Glen’s daughter was asked to
give a recorded statement at Atlanta Police headquarters; she was
accompanied by Cherrie Ann and Glen, who stated that they had
additional information to give the lead investigator. Cherrie Ann
told the investigator that she “was not one hundred percent sure”
that it was Taylor standing over Richard with a green gun in his
hand. Glen gave a second recorded statement, saying that when he
came upstairs, Taylor walked past him from the kitchen-living room
area into the family room and started pacing back and forth with his
hands in his pockets, and then stopped and sat down. Glen asked
Taylor, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” but Taylor did not
answer. Glen told the investigator that the house doors were locked
at night and only Cherrie Ann had a key. He also stated that on the
day before the shooting, Taylor and Richard talked for a long time
upstairs behind locked doors, and the family was never able to find
out what they were discussing. Glen agreed with the investigator
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that this was “weird” or “odd.” The lead investigator testified that
Cherrie Ann also had referred to this conversation, stating that “her
husband had a weird look to him” and that she asked what he and
Taylor were talking about, but he would not tell her.
Glen’s daughter gave a recorded statement, stating that she
was in her bedroom in the middle of the night when Taylor came in
and asked her what time it was. She stated that this was unusual.
She saw him walk downstairs and “a few minutes later” heard
gunshots. She went downstairs and found her grandmother, Cherrie
Ann, screaming, and Taylor was not there.
While Glen and his daughter testified at trial that they could
not remember much of what they told the police, Cherrie Ann
changed her account of the incident entirely. She testified that the
person she saw standing over her husband was a tall, heavy
stranger with a limp, dressed in bulky clothing so that she could not
tell if the person was a man or a woman, but she was certain the
person was not Taylor. She did confirm, however, that the gun the
stranger was holding was green and that she thought it was Taylor’s
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gun.
The lead investigator testified that, after he took initial
statements from Cherrie Ann and Glen, he spoke to Taylor, who was
in the back of a patrol car. After reading Taylor the Miranda
warnings, 2 the investigator asked if Taylor “would be willing to tell
me where the firearm” was. Taylor responded that, if the
investigator would go to his bedroom and bring him his keys and a
cross from his bed, he would tell the investigator where the gun was.
The investigator went and got the items, and Taylor then told him
that if he went into the room to the right of the front door,3 the gun
would be underneath the cushion of the couch immediately on the
left. The investigator looked under the cushion, where Taylor said
the gun would be, and found a loaded, green Glock 9mm handgun
with one round missing and an additional full magazine, as well as
2 See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (86 SCt 1602, 16 LE2d 694)
(1966).
3Other witnesses described this as the “family room,” where Glen told
the police he had seen Taylor pacing after the shooting.
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a black holster sitting on top of the same cushion. 4
Evidence was also presented that Taylor previously purchased
and registered the handgun the investigator found under the sofa
cushion after Taylor directed him there. A ballistics expert testified
that this pistol fired the 9mm shell casing found near Richard’s
body, and that the spent bullet recovered from the body, which was
“extensively” fragmented, was consistent with having been fired
from a Glock pistol. Gunshot primer residue was found on Taylor’s
hands, indicating that he was “in the vicinity” of a weapon when it
was fired.
After a jury instruction on similar transaction evidence, 5
Taylor’s uncle testified about an incident that occurred
approximately four weeks before the shooting. While the uncle and
4 In a later recorded audio statement to the lead investigator, Taylor
stated that he was upstairs reading his Bible when he heard a gunshot and
came downstairs to find his father had been shot. He had no explanation for
his telling the investigator where to find the firearm, claiming that it was “déjà
vu” or perhaps that he was “seeing things.” Taylor did not testify at trial.
5 This testimony was admitted under the pre-2013 standard for similar
transaction evidence. See generally Reeves v. State, 294 Ga. 673, 675 n.3 (2)
(755 SE2d 695) (2014).
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Taylor were at the uncle’s house, Taylor without any warning pulled
out a pistol and pointed it at his uncle’s head, and then held him at
gunpoint for about an hour while asking apparently random
questions.6
In his brief on appeal, Taylor argues only that the evidence was
circumstantial and that the State failed to exclude every reasonable
hypothesis save for his guilt, as required by former OCGA § 24-4-6.7
The State does not concede that all the evidence presented was
circumstantial. But we need not decide that point, because even if
we assume that the evidence presented at trial was entirely
circumstantial, it nonetheless satisfied the requirements of that
Code section.
The fact that the evidence of guilt was circumstantial does
not render it insufficient. But, as a matter of Georgia
statutory law, 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
6 In his statement to the lead investigator, Taylor denied any
confrontation with his uncle.
7 Taylor’s 2012 trial took place while the former Evidence Code was still
in effect, but the relevant provision is now codified as OCGA § 24-14-6 and is
otherwise unchanged. See Tyler v. State, 311 Ga. 727, 731 n.3 (2) (859 SE2d
73) (2021).
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reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the
accused. Not every hypothesis is reasonable, however,
and it is for the jury to determine whether an alternative
hypothesis passes muster. Where the jury is authorized
to find the evidence sufficient to exclude every reasonable
hypothesis except of the accused’s guilt, this Court will
not disturb that finding unless it is insupportable as a
matter of law.
(Citations, footnote, and punctuation omitted.) Anglin v. State, __
Ga. __ (1) (863 SE2d 148, 153) (2021). And “[i]t is the role of the jury
to resolve conflicts in the evidence and to determine the credibility
of witnesses, and the resolution of such conflicts adversely to the
defendant does not render the evidence insufficient.” (Citations and
punctuation omitted.) Jones v. State, 310 Ga. 886, 888 (1) (855 SE2d
573) (2021).
Here, the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to meet this
standard. Taylor’s mother told police officers and an EMT that she
heard a gunshot and saw Taylor standing over Richard with his
pistol – the murder weapon – in his hand. Moreover, the mother told
Glen that Taylor “was standing up over [Richard] and he shot him.”
Other witnesses stated that Taylor went downstairs only minutes
before the shooting; that shortly after the shooting he emerged from
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the area where the shooting took place; that after the shooting, he
was distraught and pacing in the room where the murder weapon
was eventually found; and that he “took off” when the police arrived.
Taylor made inconsistent statements regarding what had occurred
that evening. Evidence also was presented of a lengthy, private, and
apparently unusual discussion between Taylor and Richard the day
before the shooting. Ballistics evidence indicated that Taylor’s pistol
fired the fatal shot, and gunshot primer residue was found on
Taylor’s hands. Finally, Taylor negotiated with the lead investigator
for certain personal items in exchange for revealing the location of
the murder weapon, which was recovered by the investigator in the
place Taylor described. The jury was authorized under former
OCGA § 24-4-6 to find that this evidence excluded every reasonable
hypothesis save that of Taylor’s guilt. 8
In his brief on appeal, Taylor proposes several theories that he
contends the evidence failed to exclude. For example, he contends
8 We no longer routinely consider the issue of sufficiency as a matter of
constitutional due process in non-death penalty cases, when it is not raised by
an appellant. See Jones, 310 Ga. at 889 n.3 (1).
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the murder could have been committed by a stranger entering the
locked home or by another family member; or, he claims, Richard
could have committed suicide. He contends that he could have been
wakened by the gunshot – even though his niece stated that he was
awake a few minutes before Richard’s murder – and, startled, could
have picked up the pistol and then concealed it for his mother’s
safety, thus transferring gunshot residue to his hand and giving him
knowledge of the murder weapon’s location. But the evidence
presented at Taylor’s trial was legally sufficient to exclude every
reasonable hypothesis other than Taylor’s guilt. The jury was
properly instructed on circumstantial evidence, and “[i]t is apparent
from the verdict that the jury in this case found the state had
excluded all reasonable hypotheses except that of guilt.” Reeves v.
State, 294 Ga. 673, 674-675 (1) (755 SE2d 695) (2014). See also
Jackson v. State, 311 Ga. 626, 630-631 (2) (859 SE2d 46) (2021)
(circumstantial evidence sufficient when witnesses saw appellant
with handgun near scene of shooting, saw appellant and victim
fighting, and saw car similar to that owned by appellant speeding
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away immediately after shooting).
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
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