304 Ga. 213 FINAL COPY
S18A0846. MANGRAM v. THE STATE.
GRANT, Justice.
DayQuan Mangram was convicted of malice murder and related crimes
in connection with the shooting death of Untavious Gillard.1 In this appeal,
Mangram challenges the sufficiency of the evidence corroborating the
testimony of a co-indictee and contends that the trial court erred in denying
his motion for mistrial after the State introduced testimony about a rumor that 1
Gillard was killed on May 25, 2012. On September 7, 2012, Mangram, Shaquilla White, and Rena Lang were indicted by a Brantley County grand jury for malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and concealing a death. Mangram was also indicted for possession of a handgun by a person under the age of 18 years. White pled guilty before trial to concealing a death and was sentenced to ten years, with five to serve in prison and the remainder on probation. Mangram and Lang were tried jointly April 30 – May 3, 2013. The jury found Mangram guilty on all counts in the indictment. The trial court sentenced him to life in prison for malice murder, years consecutive for concealing a death, five years consecutive for possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and 12 months for possession of a handgun by a person under 18. The trial court purported to merge the aggravated assault into the felony murder count and the felony murder count into the malice murder count; in reality, the felony murder count was vacated by operation of law and the aggravated assault count merged with the malice murder count. See Culpepper v. State, 289 Ga. 736, 738 (715 SE2d 155) (2011). On May 9, 2013, Mangram filed a motion for new trial, which was subsequently amended on February 26, 2016, and supplemented on May 19, 2016. The trial court denied the motion for new trial on February 6, 2017. Mangram filed a timely notice of appeal on February 23, 2017, and the case was docketed in this Court for the April 2018 term and submitted for decision on the briefs. 1 the victim had a bounty on his head. We affirm.
I.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence
presented at trial showed the following. On May 25, 2012, Rena Lang and
Shaquilla White picked up Mangram and Gillard in Lang’s silver Chevrolet
Impala. Lang directed White to drive to the home of an acquaintance in
Brantley County so that Lang could collect money that the acquaintance
owed her. When they arrived at the acquaintance’s mobile home, Lang and
White got out of the vehicle, leaving Mangram and Gillard sitting in the back
seat.
Lang and White knocked on the front door, did not receive an answer,
and went around to try the back door. When they reached the side of the
home, Lang saw her acquaintance’s vehicle and stopped to let the air out of
the tires. While she was doing so, White and Lang heard a gunshot from the
direction of Lang’s car.
The two women ran back around the mobile home and found Mangram
standing outside the Impala, saying over and over, “Play with my people . . . ”
Gillard was slumped over and bleeding in the back seat. Lang’s initial
response to Mangram was, “Not in my car, Quan.” After a moment, Lang,
2 White, and Mangram got into the front seat of Lang’s vehicle, and White
drove them away. A neighbor, who heard three gunshots and saw two people
run from behind the mobile home across the street and get into a silver or
gray sedan, called 911 at 3:35 p.m. and reported the incident. She described
a thin black male wearing shorts (matching Mangram’s description) and a
heavy-set black female with red hair wearing a halter top and blue jean shorts
(matching Lang’s description). The neighbor did not see a third person.
Mangram and Lang directed White to drive down a nearby dirt road,
where they pulled over and Mangram dragged Gillard by his feet out of the
car and into a grassy area that was difficult to see from the road. Mangram
ordered Lang to loot Gillard’s pockets. She did so and found a gun, which
she gave to Mangram, and money, which she put in her bra. Lang alerted
Mangram that his fingerprints were visible on one of Gillard’s shoes,
prompting him to remove the shoe and take it with him.
The three then got back into Lang’s car, with Mangram once again in
the back seat, and White drove them back to Brunswick. On the way, White
and Lang asked Mangram why he had shot Gillard. All Mangram would say
was that Gillard had “played with [his] people,” and that the women should
“chill the f*** out.” Mangram or Lang threw Gillard’s cell phone over the
3 side of a bridge on their way back to Brunswick. Lang told Mangram to
throw the murder weapon out too, but he said he needed to return it to its
owner.
The three drove to a car wash in Brunswick and attempted to clean
Gillard’s blood and brain matter out of the back seat. Security cameras at the
car wash captured them arriving in Lang’s car at 4:06 p.m.2 and using the car
wash’s power sprayer and foaming scrub brush to clean the interior of the
vehicle, including the floors, seats, windows, doors, and headliner. Mangram
was bare-chested because he had used his shirt to scoop Gillard’s brain
matter out of one of the vehicle’s cup holders. Mangram collected some of
Gillard’s belongings from the vehicle, including the shoe that he had
removed from Gillard’s body, and put them into a bag with Mangram’s shirt
and the two guns. After the three finished cleaning Lang’s car, White and
Lang dropped Mangram off at his grandmother’s house. He took the bag of
clothing and guns with him.
The next day, White and Lang contacted a mobile car detailer. Lang
asked him to clean out the back of her car; she claimed that she had spilled
2 A special agent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation testified that she timed the drive from the location where the body was found in Brantley County to the car wash in Brunswick. It took the agent 25 minutes and 35 seconds to make the drive. 4 raw chicken blood and juice in the back seat on the way to a barbecue to
account for the reddish stains. The detailer found the interior of the car
soaked with water and Fabuloso all-purpose cleanser. He vacuumed out the
water and cleanser and shampooed the carpets. Two days later, Lang called
him back and told him to bleach the interior, explaining that she was tired of
the strong, foul odor and that she had decided to have the interior dyed a
different color once the stains were bleached out.
On May 28, 2012, a Florida couple riding a four-wheeler discovered
Gillard’s body and called 911. Buzzards apparently had eaten some of the
flesh from Gillard’s face, but investigators eventually identified the body
from Gillard’s fingerprints. The medical examiner determined that Gillard
had been fatally shot two or three times in the left side of the head and once
in the back of the neck. Gillard also had at least one gunshot wound going
through his left hand and forearm. Two bullets were found inside Gillard’s
skull, and one was located under Gillard’s head at the scene where his body
was found.
After the body was discovered and investigators began tracing Gillard’s
last movements, White went to the Glynn County Police Department and told
them what had happened. She claimed that she had been too afraid of
5 Mangram and Lang to contact police earlier; Mangram had threatened her,
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304 Ga. 213 FINAL COPY
S18A0846. MANGRAM v. THE STATE.
GRANT, Justice.
DayQuan Mangram was convicted of malice murder and related crimes
in connection with the shooting death of Untavious Gillard.1 In this appeal,
Mangram challenges the sufficiency of the evidence corroborating the
testimony of a co-indictee and contends that the trial court erred in denying
his motion for mistrial after the State introduced testimony about a rumor that 1
Gillard was killed on May 25, 2012. On September 7, 2012, Mangram, Shaquilla White, and Rena Lang were indicted by a Brantley County grand jury for malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and concealing a death. Mangram was also indicted for possession of a handgun by a person under the age of 18 years. White pled guilty before trial to concealing a death and was sentenced to ten years, with five to serve in prison and the remainder on probation. Mangram and Lang were tried jointly April 30 – May 3, 2013. The jury found Mangram guilty on all counts in the indictment. The trial court sentenced him to life in prison for malice murder, years consecutive for concealing a death, five years consecutive for possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and 12 months for possession of a handgun by a person under 18. The trial court purported to merge the aggravated assault into the felony murder count and the felony murder count into the malice murder count; in reality, the felony murder count was vacated by operation of law and the aggravated assault count merged with the malice murder count. See Culpepper v. State, 289 Ga. 736, 738 (715 SE2d 155) (2011). On May 9, 2013, Mangram filed a motion for new trial, which was subsequently amended on February 26, 2016, and supplemented on May 19, 2016. The trial court denied the motion for new trial on February 6, 2017. Mangram filed a timely notice of appeal on February 23, 2017, and the case was docketed in this Court for the April 2018 term and submitted for decision on the briefs. 1 the victim had a bounty on his head. We affirm.
I.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence
presented at trial showed the following. On May 25, 2012, Rena Lang and
Shaquilla White picked up Mangram and Gillard in Lang’s silver Chevrolet
Impala. Lang directed White to drive to the home of an acquaintance in
Brantley County so that Lang could collect money that the acquaintance
owed her. When they arrived at the acquaintance’s mobile home, Lang and
White got out of the vehicle, leaving Mangram and Gillard sitting in the back
seat.
Lang and White knocked on the front door, did not receive an answer,
and went around to try the back door. When they reached the side of the
home, Lang saw her acquaintance’s vehicle and stopped to let the air out of
the tires. While she was doing so, White and Lang heard a gunshot from the
direction of Lang’s car.
The two women ran back around the mobile home and found Mangram
standing outside the Impala, saying over and over, “Play with my people . . . ”
Gillard was slumped over and bleeding in the back seat. Lang’s initial
response to Mangram was, “Not in my car, Quan.” After a moment, Lang,
2 White, and Mangram got into the front seat of Lang’s vehicle, and White
drove them away. A neighbor, who heard three gunshots and saw two people
run from behind the mobile home across the street and get into a silver or
gray sedan, called 911 at 3:35 p.m. and reported the incident. She described
a thin black male wearing shorts (matching Mangram’s description) and a
heavy-set black female with red hair wearing a halter top and blue jean shorts
(matching Lang’s description). The neighbor did not see a third person.
Mangram and Lang directed White to drive down a nearby dirt road,
where they pulled over and Mangram dragged Gillard by his feet out of the
car and into a grassy area that was difficult to see from the road. Mangram
ordered Lang to loot Gillard’s pockets. She did so and found a gun, which
she gave to Mangram, and money, which she put in her bra. Lang alerted
Mangram that his fingerprints were visible on one of Gillard’s shoes,
prompting him to remove the shoe and take it with him.
The three then got back into Lang’s car, with Mangram once again in
the back seat, and White drove them back to Brunswick. On the way, White
and Lang asked Mangram why he had shot Gillard. All Mangram would say
was that Gillard had “played with [his] people,” and that the women should
“chill the f*** out.” Mangram or Lang threw Gillard’s cell phone over the
3 side of a bridge on their way back to Brunswick. Lang told Mangram to
throw the murder weapon out too, but he said he needed to return it to its
owner.
The three drove to a car wash in Brunswick and attempted to clean
Gillard’s blood and brain matter out of the back seat. Security cameras at the
car wash captured them arriving in Lang’s car at 4:06 p.m.2 and using the car
wash’s power sprayer and foaming scrub brush to clean the interior of the
vehicle, including the floors, seats, windows, doors, and headliner. Mangram
was bare-chested because he had used his shirt to scoop Gillard’s brain
matter out of one of the vehicle’s cup holders. Mangram collected some of
Gillard’s belongings from the vehicle, including the shoe that he had
removed from Gillard’s body, and put them into a bag with Mangram’s shirt
and the two guns. After the three finished cleaning Lang’s car, White and
Lang dropped Mangram off at his grandmother’s house. He took the bag of
clothing and guns with him.
The next day, White and Lang contacted a mobile car detailer. Lang
asked him to clean out the back of her car; she claimed that she had spilled
2 A special agent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation testified that she timed the drive from the location where the body was found in Brantley County to the car wash in Brunswick. It took the agent 25 minutes and 35 seconds to make the drive. 4 raw chicken blood and juice in the back seat on the way to a barbecue to
account for the reddish stains. The detailer found the interior of the car
soaked with water and Fabuloso all-purpose cleanser. He vacuumed out the
water and cleanser and shampooed the carpets. Two days later, Lang called
him back and told him to bleach the interior, explaining that she was tired of
the strong, foul odor and that she had decided to have the interior dyed a
different color once the stains were bleached out.
On May 28, 2012, a Florida couple riding a four-wheeler discovered
Gillard’s body and called 911. Buzzards apparently had eaten some of the
flesh from Gillard’s face, but investigators eventually identified the body
from Gillard’s fingerprints. The medical examiner determined that Gillard
had been fatally shot two or three times in the left side of the head and once
in the back of the neck. Gillard also had at least one gunshot wound going
through his left hand and forearm. Two bullets were found inside Gillard’s
skull, and one was located under Gillard’s head at the scene where his body
was found.
After the body was discovered and investigators began tracing Gillard’s
last movements, White went to the Glynn County Police Department and told
them what had happened. She claimed that she had been too afraid of
5 Mangram and Lang to contact police earlier; Mangram had threatened her,
saying “play with my life and see what happens to yours.” Mangram
eventually turned himself in to law enforcement as well. He was 17 years old
at the time.
II.
Mangram contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion for a
directed verdict of acquittal because there was insufficient evidence to
corroborate White’s testimony. We disagree.
In order to sustain a conviction, testimony by an accomplice to the
crime must be corroborated by other evidence implicating the defendant.
OCGA § 24-14-8; Crawford v. State, 294 Ga. 898, 900-901 (757 SE2d 102)
(2014). Corroborating evidence may be slight, and may be entirely
circumstantial. See Robinson v. State, 303 Ga. 321, 322-323 (812 SE2d 232)
(2018). “The evidence ‘need not be sufficient in and of itself to warrant a
conviction, so long as it is independent of the accomplice’s testimony and
directly connects the defendant to the crime or leads to the inference of
guilt.’” Id. at 323 (quoting Parks v. State, 302 Ga. 345, 348 (806 SE2d 529)
(2017)). “[E]vidence of the defendant’s conduct before and after the crime
was committed may give rise to an inference that he participated in the
6 crime.” Cisneros v. State, 299 Ga. 841, 845 (792 SE2d 326) (2016) (citation
and punctuation omitted). Once the State has introduced independent
evidence implicating the defendant, it is for the jury to decide whether the
accomplice’s testimony has been sufficiently corroborated. Id.
Here, White’s testimony was corroborated by the testimony of the 911
caller who heard gunshots and saw someone matching Mangram’s
description get into a silver sedan at the location where White said the
murder took place. The jury also saw surveillance video showing that
Mangram, Lang, and White arrived together at a car wash in Brunswick
about 31 minutes after the 911 call, and they heard testimony from a law
enforcement officer that her own drive from the site near the murder location
where the body was found to the car wash took just over 25 minutes. And
the jury watched car wash surveillance video of Mangram removing clothing
and other items from the back seat of Lang’s car and helping Lang and White
thoroughly hose down, scrub, and vacuum the interior of Lang’s car, where
investigators later found bullet holes and blood containing Gillard’s DNA.
This evidence was sufficient to corroborate White’s testimony under OCGA
§ 24-14-8.
When reviewing the denial of a motion for directed verdict of acquittal,
7 we apply the same standard used to evaluate the sufficiency of the evidence
supporting a guilty verdict under Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (99 SCt
2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979). Blackmon v. State, 300 Ga. 35, 38 (793 SE2d
69) (2016). Under that standard, we view the evidence in a light most
favorable to the verdicts and ask whether any rational trier of fact could have
found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which
he was convicted. Jackson, 443 U. S. at 318-319. Our review leaves to the
jury any questions concerning witness credibility, conflicts in the evidence,
and the weight of the evidence. See State v. Cash, 302 Ga. 587, 592 (807
SE2d 405) (2017). We conclude that the evidence introduced at trial and
summarized above was legally sufficient to enable the jury to find Mangram
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted,
and so the trial court did not err in denying Mangram’s motion for a directed
verdict of acquittal. See Pittman v. State, 300 Ga. 894, 897-898 (799 SE2d
215) (2017).
III.
Mangram also contends that the trial court erred when it denied his
motion for a mistrial after the State elicited testimony from Gillard’s
grandmother that she had heard that there was a bounty on Gillard’s head.
8 Mangram objected to this statement as hearsay and not relevant to show
motive without evidence that the defendants were aware of the rumor. The
trial court sustained Mangram’s objection and instructed the jury to disregard
the witness’s statement, but denied Mangram’s motion for mistrial.
Mangram argues that this denial was error warranting a reversal of his
convictions. Again, we disagree.
“Whether to grant a motion for mistrial is within the trial court’s sound
discretion, and the trial court’s exercise of that discretion will not be
disturbed on appeal unless a mistrial is essential to preserve the defendant’s
right to a fair trial.” Johnson v. State, 302 Ga. 774, 782 (809 SE2d 769)
(2018) (citation and punctuation omitted). Here, even assuming that the
testimony was inadmissible, a mistrial was not necessary to preserve
Mangram’s right to a fair trial. The trial court sustained Mangram’s
objection and instructed the jury to disregard the objectionable testimony and
allow it to take no part in deliberations. Absent proof to the contrary, we
presume that the jury followed this curative instruction. See Cannon v. State,
302 Ga. 327, 329 (806 SE2d 584) (2017).
There is no indication that the jury in this case ignored the court’s
instruction and considered the excluded testimony in arriving at its verdict.
9 Contrary to Mangram’s assertion, the grandmother’s statement about a rumor
of a bounty on Gillard’s head was not the only evidence of malice supporting
the guilty verdict on the malice murder charge.3 “The malice necessary to
establish malice murder may be formed in an instant, as long as it is present
at the time of the killing.” Moran v. State, 302 Ga. 162, 164 (805 SE2d 856)
(2017). Malice may be shown either by proof of the defendant’s deliberate
intention to kill unlawfully or by evidence that he “acted where no
considerable provocation appears and where all the circumstances of the
killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.” Id. (citation and
punctuation omitted).
The evidence introduced at trial showed that Gillard was shot at least
once through his left hand and arm, twice in the left side of the head, and
once in the back of the neck. When asked why he shot Gillard, Mangram
would only say that Gillard had “played with [Mangram’s] people.” This
was sufficient to meet the State’s burden of proving malice, and along with
other evidence presented by the State at trial, made a strong case against
3 In his brief, Mangram appears to equate motive with the essential element of malice. But while evidence of motive is certainly relevant in a murder case, it is not an essential element of the crime of murder, and the State need not introduce evidence of motive in order to support a guilty verdict on the charge of malice murder. See Romer v. State, 293 Ga. 339, 341 (745 SE2d 637) (2013). 10 Mangram. Under the circumstances, the trial court’s curative instruction was
sufficient to preserve Mangram’s right to a fair trial, and the court did not
abuse its discretion in denying his motion for a mistrial. See Coleman v.
State, 301 Ga. 720, 722-723 (804 SE2d 24) (2017).
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
11 Decided August 2, 2018.
Murder. Brantley Superior Court. Before Judge Gillis.
J. Clayton Culp, for appellant.
George E. Barnhill, District Attorney, Michelle C. McIntire,
Assistant District Attorney; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Patricia
B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior
Assistant Attorney General, Scott O. Teague, Assistant Attorney General, for
appellee.