Mattox v. State

699 S.E.2d 887, 305 Ga. App. 600, 2010 Fulton County D. Rep. 2789, 2010 Ga. App. LEXIS 759
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedAugust 18, 2010
DocketA10A1794
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 699 S.E.2d 887 (Mattox 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
Mattox v. State, 699 S.E.2d 887, 305 Ga. App. 600, 2010 Fulton County D. Rep. 2789, 2010 Ga. App. LEXIS 759 (Ga. Ct. App. 2010).

Opinion

699 S.E.2d 887 (2010)

MATTOX
v.
The STATE.

No. A10A1794.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

August 18, 2010.

*889 Donna A. Seagraves, for appellant.

Kenneth W. Mauldin, Dist. Atty., Leslie S. Jones, Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.

BLACKBURN, Senior Appellate Judge.

Following a jury trial Willie James Mattox was convicted on one count of armed robbery,[1] one count of aggravated sodomy,[2] one count of sexual battery,[3] two counts of burglary,[4] and two counts of aggravated assault.[5] He appeals his convictions and the denial of his motion for new trial, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction of aggravated assault with intent to rape, and arguing that the trial court erred by denying his plea in bar of former jeopardy and by failing to find that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

"On appeal from a criminal conviction, the evidence must be construed in a light most favorable to the verdict, and [Mattox] no longer enjoys a presumption of innocence." (Punctuation omitted.) Dennis v. State.[6] In evaluating the sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, we do not weigh the evidence or determine witness credibility, but only determine whether a rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty of the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Virginia.[7]

So viewed, the record shows that late in the afternoon on June 26, 2004, C.C. finished her work at a resort at Lake Oconee and drove to Atlanta to meet her boyfriend, who worked as a musician, at a nightclub. Shortly *890 after midnight, she left the nightclub to drive back to her rental house in Athens, which she shared with her boyfriend. As she walked to where her car was parked, her boyfriend accompanied her and gave her an older wallet with more than $500 for her to keep while he was out of town with his band. C.C. put the wallet in her car's glove compartment and began her drive back to Athens. She arrived home around 1:15 a.m., removed her contact lenses, and went to sleep after making sure that all the house's doors were locked.

At some point not long before daylight, C.C. woke up to find Mattox, whom she did not know, standing over her bed. Without her glasses or her contact lenses on, C.C. believed at first that Mattox was her boyfriend who had decided to come home before going out of town. Consequently, she sat up and called out her boyfriend's name, but Mattox responded "no," told her to get down, and made her lie on her stomach. As C.C. turned over and Mattox straddled her, she saw that he was holding a knife and that he had covered his face with one of her bath towels. Mattox then removed C.C.'s underwear, told her that he was going to pleasure her, and began licking her genital and anal areas. During the assault, C.C. pleaded with Mattox to stop and told him that she would give him the money that was in her car if he would leave. After a few minutes, Mattox demanded the money that C.C. had mentioned and told her that she could go to her car to get it. C.C. got up, put on her glasses, and began to put on a bathrobe, but Mattox ordered her outside without clothes and threatened to violently sodomize her if she was lying about having money. With her glasses now on, C.C. could see that Mattox was only a few inches taller than her and that he was wearing a red t-shirt. While still holding the knife, Mattox followed C.C. out to her car and took the money from her boyfriend's wallet. Mattox then quickly walked away from the house toward a path leading to some railroad tracks, while shouting threats to C.C. that he would return. Once Mattox was a safe distance away, C.C. ran back inside her house and called the police.

When the police arrived, C.C. gave them a general description of her attacker, but she admitted that she was unable to see his face clearly because he had used a towel to conceal it. In searching the area where C.C. said her attacker was heading when he left her house, the police found one of C.C.'s towels stuffed into a storm drain and also found a recently discarded red t-shirt near the railroad tracks. Both items were collected and analyzed for hair samples that could be used for DNA testing. Meanwhile, another officer took C.C. to the police station where she was interviewed further about the attack and later was examined by a sexual assault nurse examiner. During the examination, the nurse swabbed the areas of C.C.'s body that her attacker had licked in order to collect samples of her attacker's DNA.

Over the course of the next two months, the police's investigation of the case led them to focus on Mattox as a prime suspect. On August 4, 2004, police located Mattox and met with him to question him about the attack. Mattox spoke with the police voluntarily, denied knowing anything about the incident, and allowed the police to swab his mouth for saliva samples so that his DNA could be analyzed. Several months later, the police received the results of the DNA analysis on Mattox's saliva samples, which matched the DNA from the saliva found during the nurse's examination of C.C. Shortly thereafter, Mattox again voluntarily met with police and again denied any involvement in the attack. A few days later, the police met with C.C. to have her view a photographic lineup of possible suspects. Although C.C. again admitted that she could not be completely sure because she had only seen her attacker's eyes during the incident, she nevertheless picked out Mattox's photograph as that of her attacker.

Subsequently, Mattox was arrested and indicted on one count of armed robbery, one count of aggravated sodomy, one count of sexual battery, two counts of burglary, one count of aggravated assault with intent to rape, and one count of aggravated assault with intent to rob. He was initially tried in January 2007; however, that trial ended in a mistrial, over Mattox's objection, after the *891 trial court determined that the jury was hopelessly deadlocked and could not reach a verdict. Consequently, Mattox filed a plea in bar of former jeopardy, which the trial court denied.

The retrial of Mattox's case took place a few months later. During the retrial, C.C. testified regarding the details of the attack, several police officers testified regarding their investigation of the incident, and the State presented the DNA evidence, indicating that Mattox was C.C.'s attacker. The State also presented similar transaction evidence, which showed that twenty years prior to the attack on C.C., Mattox was convicted on two charges of rape. In both of those cases, Mattox had attacked the victims at night inside their own homes. At the conclusion of the retrial, the jury found Mattox guilty on all counts. Subsequently, Mattox obtained new counsel and filed a motion for new trial, which included a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. The trial court denied Mattox's motion after a hearing, and this appeal followed.

1. We first address Mattox's contention that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction of aggravated assault with intent to rape. Specifically, he argues that the State failed to present evidence of his intent to rape C.C. We disagree.

"The crime of aggravated assault with intent to rape is complete when there is a substantial step toward a battery of the victim, i.e., an assault, coupled with an intent to rape." (Punctuation omitted.) De'Mon v. State.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
699 S.E.2d 887, 305 Ga. App. 600, 2010 Fulton County D. Rep. 2789, 2010 Ga. App. LEXIS 759, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mattox-v-state-gactapp-2010.