Roberts v. State

296 Ga. 719FINAL COPY
S14A1497. ROBERTS v. THE STATE.
HINES, Presiding Justice.
Keith Jerome Roberts appeals the denial of his motion for new trial, as
amended, and his convictions for malice murder, kidnapping, and false
imprisonment in connection with the death of Carlnell Walker caused by
hyperthermia from entrapment inside the trunk of an automobile. Roberts
challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support his convictions and the
effectiveness of his trial counsel. Finding the challenges to be without merit, we
affirm.1
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The murder and related crimes occurred between June 21, 2006 and July 8, 2006. On
March 21, 2007, a Clayton County grand jury returned a 13-count indictment against Roberts and
Miles Jonathan Allen, Theodore Paul Holliman, and Breylon Wendell Garland, charging: Count 1 -
malice murder; Count 2 - felony murder while in the commission of burglary; Count 3 - felony
murder while in the commission of armed robbery; Count 4 - felony murder while in the commission
of kidnapping; Count 5 - aggravated assault with intent to murder; Count 6 - aggravated assault with
intent to rob; Count 7 - aggravated assault with a knife; Count 8 - aggravated battery; Count 9 -
kidnapping; Count 10 - false imprisonment; Count 11 - burglary with the intent to commit
aggravated assault; Count 12 - burglary with the intent to commit theft; and Count 13 - armed
robbery. Roberts was tried alone before a jury April 23-27, 2012; he was granted a directed verdict
on Counts 2, 3, 11, 12, and 13. The jury found him guilty on Counts 1, 4, 5, 9, and 10, and not guilty
on Counts 6 and 7. An order of nolle prosequi was entered as to Count 8. On June 7, 2012, Roberts
was sentenced to life in prison on Count 1, a consecutive term of life in prison on Count 9, and 10
years in prison on Count 10, to be served consecutively to the sentence on Count 9. The verdict on
Count 4 stood vacated by operation of law, and the verdict on Count 5 was found to merge with that
on Count 1 for the purpose of sentencing. Trial counsel filed a motion for new trial on Roberts’s
behalf on May 4, 2012, and new counsel filed on Roberts’s behalf amended motions for new trial
The evidence construed in favor of the verdicts showed the following.
On July 8, 2006, Clayton County police discovered Carlnell Walker’s body
while performing a “welfare check” at the residence Walker was renting in
Clayton County. The police found Walker’s decomposing body tied up in the
trunk of his car in the closed garage. Walker had been beaten and stabbed with
a sharp object, his front tooth was knocked out, and his mouth had sustained
blunt force trauma. His mouth was “gagged” with electrical tape, and his hands
were tied behind his back with a coaxial cable, a USB cable, and electrical tape.
He was barefoot. Walker had been dead for several days. His position when
discovered indicated that he was alive when he was placed in the trunk, and it
was determined that despite his injuries, had he been able to free himself he
could have avoided death by entrapment in the hot car trunk.
Walker, Roberts, and Allen had attended the same college, and Roberts
and Allen had been roommates in college. The three men knew each other and
socialized together. Walker was involved in a car wreck in 2006, and shortly
before his murder, he was advised that he might recover $50,000 in damages as
on November 20, 2013 and November 21, 2013. The motion for new trial, as amended, was denied
on March 28, 2014. A notice of appeal was filed on April 2, 2014, and the case was docketed in this
Court’s September 2014 term. The appeal was argued orally on October 7, 2014.
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a result of the wreck. He told his landlord, who also had ties to the same
college, that he was expecting a settlement check. Walker was viewed as an
“entrepreneur,” and was seen on his created website holding up “a wad of
money.” Roberts, Allen, and others referred to Walker by the nickname “C-
Money.”
When the police arrived at Walker’s residence, they found the back door
open, and no signs of forced entry. However, the house showed signs of a
struggle with debris on the floor and blood throughout. Items, including a pair
of scissors and remnants of Walker’s hair, were on the living room floor, and
they were placed in a pile in a manner indicating that someone intended to burn
them. The globe from a hurricane oil lamp was on the floor near the debris and
close to dried smeared blood, which blood was determined to be Walker’s and
part of a pattern of someone actively bleeding. An empty bottle which had
contained lamp oil was found near the debris. Roberts’s fingerprints were
recovered from the lamp globe; no other fingerprints, including Walker’s, were
on it. The base of the lamp was found undisturbed on top of a television
approximately eight feet away from the globe, and there were no usable
fingerprints found on the base. Roberts’s fingerprints on the lamp globe were
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consistent with someone reaching and taking the globe off of the lamp base.
Palm prints of Walker’s blood were found on the walls, and these prints were
determined to have been made by Allen. There were patterns of blood in the
bathtub consistent with someone with shoes standing behind someone without
shoes who was actively moving. A substance that felt like the lamp oil found in
the living room was around the edge of the bathtub. Jeans found in the laundry
room contained DNA matching the profiles of Walker and Allen. A claw
hammer which appeared to have blood on the metal part was also found in the
laundry room. Drawers were pulled out, and the attic access panel was out of
place. The blood pattern and locks of Walker’s hair on the floor were consistent
with one person restraining a body while another was cutting the hair. The
blood patterns in the halls suggested two people dragging Walker through the
house. The small amount of physical evidence on the bumper of the vehicle in
which Walker’s body was found was consistent with more than one person
lifting Walker’s body into the trunk.
When Allen was taken for palm and fingerprinting on July 20, 2006,
police observed that he had a healing three-inch-long cut on his right hand
which appeared to have been made by a knife. During the warranted search of
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Roberts’s apartment, police found a sock stained with Allen’s blood on the
master bedroom floor.
1. Roberts contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his
conviction on any count because the State did not meet its burden to prove that
his fingerprints were impressed on the lamp globe at the time the crimes were
committed, and that such fingerprints were the sole evidence that he participated
in the crimes. He further urges insufficiency because of what he offers as a
reasonable explanation of why his fingerprints were on the globe, that is, that he
was frequently in Walker’s home and that power to the home was often off
necessitating use of the oil lamp.
As Roberts maintains, when fingerprint evidence is the only evidence
linking a defendant to the crimes on trial, the State must prove to the exclusion
of other reasonable hypotheses that the fingerprints could have been impressed
only at the time of the commission of the crimes. Rivers v. State, 271 Ga. 115,
116 (1) (516 SE2d 525) (1999); Leonard v. State, 269 Ga. 867, 868 (1) (506
SE2d 853) (1998). It is equally true that under former OCGA § 24-4-6, and
present OCGA § 24-14-6, in order to warrant a conviction based solely upon
circumstantial evidence, the proven facts must be consistent with the hypothesis
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of guilt and must exclude every reasonable theory other than the guilt of the
accused. Clark v. State, 296 Ga. 543 (769 SE2d 376) (2015). And, when the
circumstantial evidence supports both a theory consistent with guilt and one
consistent with innocence, the evidence does not exclude every other reasonable
hypothesis except guilt, and therefore, is insufficient to prove the defendant's
guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. O’Neill v. State, 285 Ga. 125 (674 SE2d 302)
(2009).
First, Roberts’s fingerprints were not the only evidence linking Roberts
to the crimes. The evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom showed that
Roberts and Allen were close friends and were part of Walker’s social inner
circle; that Walker was perceived by some to have money, and indeed, cash on
hand, and that Walker had not kept silent about the fact that he was to receive
a substantial money settlement; the crime scene evidence suggested Walker
knew his attackers, and that they were searching for something of value, tortured
Walker to find out where it was, and when they were unsuccessful in doing so
placed Walker in the hot car trunk; that the physical evidence of Allen’s hand
injury was consistent with having been sustained in the attack upon Walker; and
that Allen’s blood-stained item from an obvious injury was found in Roberts’s
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bedroom.
Moreover, the circumstances surrounding the fingerprints lead to the only
reasonable explanation that they were impressed during commission of the
crimes. See Crawford v. State, 292 Ga. App. 463 (1) (664 SE2d 820) (2008).
Although Roberts cites testimony from his younger brother to the alleged effect
that Roberts visited Walker’s home on multiple occasions, and that Walker
possessed the hurricane lamp because his power frequently went out, and
therefore, that Roberts had an innocent reason to touch the hurricane lamp, such
evidence does not aid Roberts’s hypothesis of innocence. Indeed, it belies it.
Roberts’s brother’s exact testimony was that Walker had resided not only in the
ransacked home in Clayton County where the crimes occurred but in a different
home as well, and that Roberts had been inside one of these unspecified homes
only on “several different occasions.” There was no testimony from the brother
that Roberts was ever at Walker’s residence when the power was out. In fact,
the testimony was that when Roberts and his brother visited Walker, they would,
inter alia, watch television, an activity which plainly required electric power.
Further, the lack of Walker’s or another’s discernible fingerprints on the lamp
or its base belie his or other’s frequent recent use of the lamp, or indeed its use
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for the intended purpose at all. The empty bottle of lamp oil found near the
globe and the pile of debris support the inference that the globe was removed
from the lamp base in order to obtain the oil to incinerate evidence of the crimes
and/or to torture Walker. Moreover, there was no testimony from the brother
or other evidence that Roberts actually touched the lamp or its globe at any time
other than that of the attack upon Walker. See In the Interest of J. D., 275 Ga.
App. 147, 149 (1) (619 SE2d 818) (2005) (The testimony that the witness was
“pretty sure” the defendant had been to the house before the burglary was not
an innocent explanation of why the defendant’s fingerprints were found on the
window used to gain entry.) Furthermore, the absence of other fingerprints on
the globe, the positioning of Roberts’s fingerprints on the globe as impressed by
lifting it off of its base, the globe being found on the floor amidst the rubble of
the crime scene, and the emptied bottle of lamp oil lead to the only reasonable
conclusion that Roberts’s fingerprints were left on the globe at the time of the
crimes.
“[C] ircumstantial evidence must exclude only reasonable inferences and
hypotheses and it is not necessary that such guilt be devoid of every inference
or hypothesis except that of the defendant’s guilt.” Reeves v. State, 294 Ga. 6738
(755 SE2d 695) (2014) (Emphasis supplied.) And, the circumstantial evidence
in this case does not equally support a theory consistent with Roberts’s
innocence. O’Neill v. State, supra.
The evidence, though circumstantial, was sufficient to enable a rational
trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Roberts was guilty of the
malice murder of Walker and the related crimes. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S.
307 (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979).
2. Roberts further contends that his trial counsel was ineffective for
failing to investigate and call as a witness at trial, his friend and college
freshman roommate, Hall, who he claims would have provided an innocent
explanation for his fingerprints on the lamp globe. He maintains that Hall
would have testified that he and Roberts helped Walker move into his Clayton
County home, thereby touching Walker’s furniture and other belongings, that
Roberts helped Walker unpack, and that Roberts visited Walker’s home multiple
times. He further urges that this testimony is not cumulative of that of Roberts’s
brother because although the brother’s testimony puts Roberts in Walker’s home
on multiple occasions, Hall’s testimony puts Roberts’s hands on Walker’s
furniture, and thus, Roberts was prejudiced by the jury not hearing this
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testimony.
In order for Roberts to prevail on his claim that his trial counsel was
ineffective, he has to demonstrate under the standard of Strickland v.
Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (104 SCt 2052, 80 LE2d 674) (1984), that his trial
counsel's performance was deficient, and that but for counsel’s deficiency, there
is a reasonable probability that the outcome of his trial would have been more
favorable. Allen v. State, 293 Ga. 626, 627 (2) (748 SE2d 881) (2013). In order
to show a deficiency, Roberts must overcome the strong presumption that his
trial counsel's performance was within the broad range of reasonable
professional conduct, the reasonableness being judged from counsel's
perspective at the time of trial and under the particular circumstances of the
case. Id. To satisfy the second Strickland prong of prejudice requires that
Roberts demonstrate the reasonable probability that, absent the claimed
professional errors by counsel, the result of his trial would have been different.
Id. See Hites v. State, 296 Ga. 528 (___ SE2d ___) (2015).
At the hearing on Roberts’s motion for new trial, as amended, trial
counsel, who was an experienced criminal defense attorney, testified he
thoroughly prepared for Roberts’s case with the assistance of two other
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attorneys; he was aware of the importance of the issue of when Roberts’s
fingerprints were made on the lamp globe; the defense needed to rebut the
inference that Roberts’s fingerprints were impressed on the globe at the time of
the crimes and that he called Roberts’s brother to testify to rebut such inference,
to humanize Roberts, and to tell the jury about the relationship between Walker
and the others; counsel did not recall either interviewing Hall, or Hall’s name
being provided to him; if the potential witness’s name had been given to him,
counsel would probably have written it down, had the person interviewed, and
given the State notice of the witness; and counsel’s practice was not to call more
than one witness on the same point because of the likelihood they would
contradict one another.
First, in reviewing a trial court's decision on the alleged ineffectiveness of
counsel, this Court is to accept the trial court's factual findings and credibility
determinations unless they are clearly erroneous, but to independently apply the
legal principles to the facts. Scandrett v. State, 293 Ga. 602, 605 (4) (748 SE2d
861) (2013). In this case, the trial court found that trial counsel’s performance
was not deficient in the manner claimed because there was no evidence that trial
counsel was ever informed that Hall was a witness to Roberts helping Walker
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move into his house, and based upon the evidence at the hearing in the matter,
this Court cannot conclude that such finding is clearly erroneous. Id. What is
more,
[t]he decision of whether to call a witness to testify at trial is a
matter of trial strategy and tactics, and such a strategic and tactical
decision cannot be deemed deficient performance unless the
decision is so unreasonable that no competent attorney would have
made it under similar circumstances.
Hites v. State, supra, citing Miller v. State, 296 Ga. 9, 12 (4) (a) (764 SE2d 823)
(2014). And, it cannot be said that trial counsel’s strategy was unreasonable
especially in light of what Hall’s testimony would have been. At the motion-
for-new-trial hearing, Hall testified that while he, Roberts, and an unnamed
college student helped Walker move into the Clayton County house, Hall did not
unpack any of the items, did not witness any unpacking, never saw the lamp
and/or its globe during the move, and assumed that if it was with Walker’s
belongings it was boxed up; and that Walker’s mother had helped box up items.
Hall further testified that Walker’s girlfriend was “in and out sporadically”
during the move, and that inasmuch as Roberts stayed at the residence to help
unpack, Hall could “only assume” that either Walker or Roberts “unpacked the
lamp.” There is nothing in Hall’s testimony about him witnessing Roberts
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unpacking any of Walker’s belongings, much less touching any part of the lamp
during the move or on any other occasion; thus, even if it was assumed that trial
counsel was informed about Hall being a potentially positive witness, and that
the failure to call him at trial was deficient, there is no reasonable probability
that the result at trial would have been different had Hall testified for the
defense. Simply, the ineffectiveness of trial counsel has not been shown. Hites
v. State, supra.
Judgments affirmed. All the Justices concur.
Decided March 16, 2015.
Murder. Clayton Superior Court. Before Judge Benefield.
Garland, Samuel & Loeb, Edward T. M. Garland, Amanda R. Clark
Palmer, for appellant.
Tracy Graham-Lawson, District Attorney, Elizabeth A. Baker, Kathryn L.
Powers, Frances C. Kuo, Assistant District Attorneys, Samuel S. Olens,
Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula
K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Matthew B. Crowder, Assistant
Attorney General, for appellee.
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