Goodwin v. State

739 S.E.2d 712, 320 Ga. App. 224, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 714, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 164
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedMarch 11, 2013
DocketA12A1762
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 739 S.E.2d 712 (Goodwin v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Goodwin v. State, 739 S.E.2d 712, 320 Ga. App. 224, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 714, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 164 (Ga. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

BARNES, Presiding Judge.

A jury convicted Larry Gerald Goodwin of two counts of child molestation and one count of misdemeanor marijuana possession, and sentenced him to serve twenty years in confinement followed by twenty years on probation. The trial court denied Goodwin’s motion for new trial, finding that his trial counsel had not been ineffective. On appeal, Goodwin contends that the trial court erred in not allowing him to present hearsay evidence about the victim’s first interview with authorities, and that his trial counsel was ineffective in several respects relating to that interview. He also contends that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to put him on the stand to testify, and that the trial court erred in limiting his ability to question [225]*225the State’s trial counsel under oath during the hearing on his motion for new trial. For the reasons that follow, we find no error and affirm.

Goodwin was indicted for two counts of child molestation.1 The indictment charged him with committing the offenses between January 1, 2009 and April 27, 2010 against the same victim who was younger than 16. In Count 1 he was accused of having the victim place her hands on his penis and rub, with the intent to arouse and satisfy his sexual desires, and in Count 2 he was accused of placing his hands on the child’s vagina, with the same intent. The State called three witnesses to prosecute the molestation charges: an investigator with the Spalding County Sheriff’s Department, the victim, who was eight years old at the time of trial, and the victim’s mother as a rebuttal witness.2

Viewing the evidence presented at trial in the light most favorable to the prosecution, the Spalding County investigator testified that after she received a referral about the case from a Cobb County detective, she set up a forensic interview with the seven-year-old victim and her mother. During the interview, the child said that Goodwin, who was married to the victim’s grandmother, “had done some things to her that. . . she described as being nasty.” The child said Goodwin “would make her rub his wee-wee, referring to his penis, with lotion and .. . she would have to hold on to it. And at the time she said she got tired, and she couldn’t let go until he tells her to let go.” The child also said he had “touched her private. He also had her to suck it. And there was an occasion where he placed his penis on her backside.” The child was “very descriptive” in her statement and in drawings she made.

A week later, the investigator conducted a follow-up interview, during which the child said the last time she had been to the defendant’s house she stayed for a week during spring break, which was a month before the interview. When asked if anything happened while she was there with her grandparents, she said it did, that Goodwin “made her rub his wee-wee with lotion.” The victim specified that Goodwin “would put the lotion in her hands and would tell her to rub it,” and that when she rubbed it, “it would spit ... a white substance with bad germs.” She said these events took place in Goodwin’s bedroom and near a large tool box in the barn, and that the [226]*226lotion had no smell, was white, and was in a brown bottle he kept in drawers in the barn and the bedroom.

The investigator obtained and helped execute a search warrant for Goodwin’s house, where searchers found a brown bottle on the bedroom floor, a container of lotion on the floor beside the night stand in Goodwin’s bedroom, and another container of lotion in a desk drawer inside the barn, which also contained a large tool box. Multiple bottles of lotion were found inside the closet in another bedroom.

Throughout the trial, Goodwin attempted to introduce evidence about interviews with the victim and her mother by a Cobb County detective a few weeks before the case was transferred to Spalding County, but the trial court sustained the State’s hearsay objections because the detective was not present at trial.

The excluded evidence included recorded interviews with the victim and her mother after the victim told a counselor at school that her legs were bruised because her brother left them when he “kissed her private.” In the interview, the victim said most of her bruises were caused by her older brother punching and kicking her. The victim’s body had no suspicious marks, and the only reference to sexual abuse during this interview was her disclosure that several years before her brother’s friend asked her to “suck his wee wee.” In an interview without the child present, her mother said the victim had previously said her brother punches her, but the brother denied it, and the mother was not sure if the victim was telling the truth or not as she “has been known to lie.” The detective concluded that there was no evidence of child molestation and turned the matter over to DFCS.

Eleven days later, the mother called the detective to report that during a discussion about making good choices, the victim began crying and revealed that Goodwin “makes her rub lotion on his ‘wee wee’ and told her to keep it a secret.” The detective then referred the case to Spalding County for further action because that is where the victim said the incidents with Goodwin had taken place.

Trial counsel testified at the motion for new trial hearing that he wanted the jury to hear evidence that the victim initially alleged that her brother had been punching her in her private area, but the “key part” he wanted from the recorded interviews was that the mother said the victim lied all the time and did not know whether to believe her or not. Counsel described his unsuccessful efforts to serve the Cobb County detective with a subpoena to appear at trial, but he ultimately announced ready for trial because he thought the State had subpoenaed the detective as it had when the case was previously called for trial.

[227]*2271. Goodwin contends first that the trial court erred in not allowing into evidence hearsay testimony related to the interviews, arguing that the evidence was admissible as an exception to hearsay because the Cobb County detective was “unavailable.” In Goodwin’s statement of facts in his brief, he discusses some of his unsuccessful attempts throughout trial to introduce evidence regarding the Cobb County detective’s interviews and report. In his argument on this first enumeration, however, he does not describe the specific rulings he contends are error. Instead, he argues that, despite Goodwin’s proffers to support his claim that the detective was unavailable and therefore the evidence was admissible as an exception to hearsay, “the court sustained numerous objections to trial counsel’s use of [the] Cobb County Detective[’s] report and opinions.” Then Goodwin avers that the trial court “finally recognized the strength of those arguments and then apparently relied upon the state’s statement that [the detective] would be available.”

Goodwin’s general summary of the “numerous” rulings related to this issue establishes no error. Goodwin seems to be relying on the general necessity exception under former OCGA § 24-3-1,3 which has an “unavailability component,” rather than on former OCGA § 24-3-10

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King v. State
794 S.E.2d 110 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 2016)
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New v. State
755 S.E.2d 568 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2014)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
739 S.E.2d 712, 320 Ga. App. 224, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 714, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 164, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/goodwin-v-state-gactapp-2013.