Bowen v. State

792 S.E.2d 691, 299 Ga. 875, 2016 Ga. LEXIS 691
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
DecidedOctober 31, 2016
DocketS16A0850
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 792 S.E.2d 691 (Bowen v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bowen v. State, 792 S.E.2d 691, 299 Ga. 875, 2016 Ga. LEXIS 691 (Ga. 2016).

Opinion

Thompson, Chief Justice.

Appellant Rodqucas Bowen was found guilty by a jury of felony murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of victim Henry Wright, Jr.1 The trial court denied appellant’s motion for new trial, and he appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence and alleging trial court error in limiting the scope of voir dire and in admitting pre-trial photographic identification evidence. Finding no error, we affirm.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence at trial established as follows. On April 9, 2009, appellant went to buy drugs at a drug or “trap” house operated by Paul Parker and cousins Antonio and Dontravious Fagin out of an apartment in Fulton County. That afternoon, Antonio Fagin and Wright, who worked as the trap house door man, were the only people present in the apartment and were unarmed.2 Appellant knocked on the trap house door, and Antonio, who did not know appellant’s name, but [876]*876recognized his face, told Wright to let him inside.3 After selling appellant marijuana in the living room, Antonio returned to the adjacent kitchen area where he was cooking chicken. About a minute later, he heard gunshots and, looking over the countertop into the living room, saw a man with dreadlocks and a baseball cap standing by the front door pointing a gun at him. Appellant, who was still in the apartment, entered the kitchen, and Antonio, noticing a gun-like bulge under appellant’s shirt, ran out the back door leaving appellant inside. A woman who lived near the apartment testified that she saw two men, one with little or no hair and one with “dreads,” walk up to the trap house shortly before the shooting occurred. She stated that, after hearing the shots, she saw both men leave the apartment through the front door followed by an injured Wright, who staggered toward the street corner before collapsing on the curb.

Antonio testified that while running from the back of the building, he used his cell phone to call Dontravious and, having seen Wright collapse on the sidewalk, informed Dontravious and Parker that Wright had been shot. As the three men met up near the exit gate of the apartment complex, they spotted appellant walking nearby and ran after him. Robert Barrett, who was walking in the complex after getting off work, testified that he saw Wright lying on the curb. Approaching Wright, Barrett then saw appellant, whom he had known for 13 years, walking toward him. The two men greeted each other, and, as Barrett went to aid Wright, he saw the other men run toward appellant. Confronted by Antonio and the others, appellant denied having anything to do with Wright’s shooting and, displaying a gun, told the unarmed group to back off. When they complied, appellant ran to a nearby gas station where he carjacked a woman, Brittany Turner, and escaped in her car. Wright, who had been shot in the arm and the chest, died shortly thereafter from the gunshot wound to his torso.

Police investigating the scene found a trail of blood running from where Wright had collapsed to the porch of the trap house apartment. The apartment itsélf, however, had been cleaned before the police arrived, and no shell casings or fingerprints were found inside. During the course of the investigation, police received information naming appellant, along with two other individuals, Moxtious Cain and Xza-rious Terrell, as being involved in Wright’s death. Thereafter, Antonio picked appellant out of a photo lineup as the man he sold marijuana to in the apartment just prior to the shooting, and Dontravious picked [877]*877appellant out of a separate photo lineup as the man he and the others confronted outside the apartment following the shooting. Brittany Turner also picked appellant out of a photographic lineup and identified him as the man who carjacked her at the gas station.

1. Appellant asserts that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support his convictions. In addressing challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, we view the evidence presented in the light most favorable to the verdict and determine only whether a rational trier of fact could have found beyond a reasonable doubt from that evidence that the defendant was guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. See Ellis v. State, 292 Ga. 276, 278 (736 SE2d 412) (2013). Resolving evidentiary conflicts and inconsistencies is the role of the factfinder and, on appeal, this Court neither re-weighs the evidence nor assesses the credibility of witnesses. See Browner v. State, 296 Ga. 138, 140 (1) (765 SE2d 348) (2014); Batten v. State, 295 Ga. 442, 443 (1) (761 SE2d 70) (2014).

Pursuant to OCGA § 16-2-20 (a), “[e]very person concerned in the commission of a crime is a party thereto and may be ... convicted of commission of the crime.” While proof of a shared criminal intent with the actual perpetrator is necessary to establish that one is a party to the crime, “shared criminal intent may be inferred from the person’s conduct before, during, and after the crime.” Grant v. State, 298 Ga. 835, 837 (785 SE2d 285) (2016). Here, appellant’s conduct before, during, and after the crime suggests that his presence in the apartment at the time of the shooting along with the man with dreadlocks was not coincidental and supports the State’s theory that the two men knew each other and were acting in concert. Among other things, the evidence shows that appellant and the man with dreadlocks arrived together at the apartment, were both armed, were the only people in the living room of the apartment at the time Wright was shot, and left the apartment together through the front door following the shooting. Further, when confronted by others following the shooting about his involvement in the .crime, appellant threatened them with a handgun and ran to a nearby gas station where he carjacked a woman and stole her vehicle in order to flee the scene. We conclude that the evidence in this case was sufficient for the jury to have found appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt — either directly or as a party to a crime — of the crimes for which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 319 (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979); Powell v. State, 291 Ga. 743, 744 (1) (733 SE2d 294) (2012) (“A person who does not directly commit a crime may be convicted upon proof that a crime was committed and that person was a party to it.”) (Citations and punctuation omitted.).

[878]*8782. Appellant further contends that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion for new trial on general grounds, the consideration of which involves different issues than mere sufficiency of the evidence. See Allen v. State, 296 Ga. 738, 740 (770 SE2d 625) (2015) (noting that “[e]ven when the evidence is legally sufficient to sustain a conviction, a trial judge may grant a new trial if the verdict of the jury is ‘contrary to . . . the principles of justice and equity,’ OCGA § 5-5-20, or if the verdict is ‘decidedly and strongly against the weight of the evidence.’ OCGA § 5-5-21”).

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Bluebook (online)
792 S.E.2d 691, 299 Ga. 875, 2016 Ga. LEXIS 691, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bowen-v-state-ga-2016.