Jackson v. State

730 S.E.2d 69, 316 Ga. App. 588, 2012 Fulton County D. Rep. 2253, 2012 WL 2579218, 2012 Ga. App. LEXIS 618
Court of Appeals of Georgia·Decided July 3, 2012·No. A12A0654·Published·Cited by 29 cases

Opinion

BARNES, Presiding Judge.

A jury found Anthony Jackson guilty of two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of aggravated battery, and burglary.1 The trial court denied his motion for new trial. On appeal, Jackson raises multiple enumerations of error. He contends that there was insufficient evidence to convict him of the charged offenses, that the burglary count of the indictment was fatally defective, and that the trial court erred by not permitting him to impeach one of the victims with a first offender guilty plea. Jackson further contends that the trial court committed several errors in its charge to the jury and that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

1. Jackson challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to convict him of the charged offenses. In reviewing whether the evidence was sufficient,

we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, with the defendant no longer enjoying a presumption of innocence. We neither weigh the evidence nor judge the credibility of witnesses, but determine only whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, a rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.

(Citations and punctuation omitted.) Sidner v. State, 304 Ga. App. 373, 374 (696 SE2d 398) (2010).

Viewed in this manner, the evidence showed that Jackson and the female victim, his former girlfriend, had been involved in an “off and on” intimate relationship lasting several years, had a daughter together, and lived with one another for a period of time at the victim’s apartment in Chatham County. Their relationship was tumultuous and marked by episodes of physical violence. In October 2005, the girlfriend broke up with Jackson for the last time and told him to stay out of her apartment, and he moved back into his mother’s house. Because she had ended her relationship with Jackson, the girlfriend had the locks changed on her apartment doors.

In the early morning hours of January 15,2006, Jackson’s former girlfriend and her new boyfriend were spending the night at her [589] apartment. The girlfriend and her boyfriend had been romantically involved previously, and Jackson and the boyfriend knew of one another.2

At the time of the attack at issue in this case, the girlfriend and her boyfriend were together in bed in the upstairs bedroom. The girlfriend was watching television, and her boyfriend was asleep beside her. Jackson suddenly entered the bedroom with a steak knife in his hand that had been retrieved from the downstairs kitchen. He approached the bed “real fast” with the knife. The boyfriend awoke when he heard his girlfriend say in a frightened voice to Jackson, “How the f**k you get in my house?” The girlfriend tried to grab the knife from Jackson, but he cut her hand. When the boyfriend sat up in bed, Jackson stabbed him in the spine. As Jackson tried to pull the knife out, the blade broke off in the boyfriend’s back. Jackson then reached for a baseball bat that the girlfriend kept by her bed for personal protection, and the boyfriend began “tussling” with him over it. During the struggle over the bat, the boyfriend fell from the bed onto the floor, and Jackson fled from the bedroom. Unable to get up from the floor, the boyfriend realized that he could not feel his legs.

After Jackson fled from the bedroom, his former girlfriend headed downstairs to call the police on the land-line in the kitchen. Upon retrieving another steak knife from the kitchen, Jackson attacked her on the stairway. While calling her a “bitch” and a “whore,” Jackson cut his former girlfriend with the knife on the back of her head, on the side of her face, and on her shoulder and back. Jackson slashed her across the nose with the knife and stabbed her in the stomach. Jackson eventually stopped striking his former girlfriend with the knife and fled from the apartment.

The girlfriend ran outside and had a neighbor call 911. After the police and emergency medical technicians arrived at the scene, she and her boyfriend were taken to the hospital. Her boyfriend was hospitalized for over a month after the attack. He was paralyzed as a result of his spinal cord injury. The girlfriend received staples and stitches for her cuts and stab wounds, and she continues to bear scars on her body from the knife attack. After the attack, Jackson’s former girlfriend and her boyfriend got married and have remained married, although his paralysis has made their marriage difficult over the years.

[590] Based upon his entering and remaining in the apartment and his stabbing of his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend, Jackson was charged and tried before a jury on two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of aggravated battery, and burglary.3 The two victims of the knife attack testified to the events as set out above, and the jury also heard from the patrol officer who responded to the scene of the attack, as well as the forensic investigator and detective who were involved in the case. Jackson chose not to testify, although he presented witness testimony through which he attempted to establish that he was still living with his girlfriend at the time of the attack. After hearing all of the testimony, the jury found Jackson guilty of the charged offenses, and the trial court merged the aggravated assault convictions into the aggravated battery convictions for sentencing purposes. Jackson filed a motion for new trial, which the trial court denied, leading to this appeal.

When viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence presented at trial and summarized above was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find Jackson guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the two counts of aggravated battery and burglary for which he was convicted.4 See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 319 (99 SC 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979). The testimony of the victims, standing alone, was sufficient to sustain the convictions. See OCGA § 24-4-8 (“The testimony of a single witness is generally sufficient to establish a fact.”); Obeginski v. State, 313 Ga. App. 567, 569 (1) &n. 5 (722 SE2d 162) (2012). And it was the role of the jury, not this Court, “to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence.” (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Farris v. State, 290 Ga. 323, 324 (1) (720 SE2d 604) (2012).

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Jackson v. State, 730 S.E.2d 69, 316 Ga. App. 588, 2012 Fulton County D. Rep. 2253, 2012 WL 2579218, 2012 Ga. App. LEXIS 618 (Ga. Ct. App. 2012).

730 S.E.2d 69 (Jackson v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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