Miller v. State

303 Ga. 1

• Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
• Decided: February 5, 2018
• Docket: S17A1578
• Status: Published

Opinion

303 Ga. 1 FINAL COPY

S17A1578. MILLER v. THE STATE.

BENHAM, Justice.

Appellant Tonya Miller appeals her convictions for malice murder and

concealing the death of another relating to the death of Cheryl Miranda.1

1. Appellant contends the evidence was too circumstantial to

sufficiently establish her guilt. Viewed in a light most favorable to upholding

the jury’s verdicts, the record shows appellant and Miranda were

romantically involved and lived together for a time in Tampa, Florida. The

couple experienced problems stemming from appellant’s jealousy. In May

2004, Miranda obtained a temporary protective order against appellant.

When the injunction was served on May 11, 2004, a law enforcement officer 1 The crimes occurred in 2005. Appellant was originally tried and convicted in 2008; however, this Court reversed her convictions in 2011. See Miller v. State, 289 Ga. 854 (2) (a) (717 SE2d 179) (2011). From February 4-8, 2013, appellant was retried on counts of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and concealing the death of another. The jury returned verdicts of guilty on all charges and, on February 13, 2013, the trial court sentenced appellant to life in prison for malice murder and ten years to serve consecutively for concealing the death of another. The felony murder count was vacated as a matter of law, and the aggravated assault count merged into the conviction for malice murder. Appellant moved for a new trial on March 6, 2013, and amended the motion on September 15, 2014. On September 30, 2014, the trial court held a hearing on the motion as amended and denied it the same day. Appellant filed a notice of appeal on October 20, 2014. Upon receipt of the record, the appeal was docketed to the August 2017 term of this Court and submitted for a decision to be made on the briefs. forced appellant to leave Miranda’s residence. On May 13, 2004, appellant

was arrested for violating the protective order and, on May 26, 2004,

Miranda caused a trespassing warning to be served against appellant. The

nature of the relationship appeared to be characterized by periods of

disagreement followed by periods of reconciliation or amity. Josette Skeens,

who had been a close friend of Miranda’s for 30 years and referred to

Miranda as her “aunt,” testified she drove Miranda home from a club in

January 2005 after Miranda called her for a ride. When Skeens picked

Miranda up at the club, she saw that Miranda had a busted lip, a missing

tooth, and broken eyeglasses. Miranda told Skeens she “had just got in a

fight with Tonya.” Skeens said she had never met appellant, but had seen her

in passing on one occasion and understood appellant to be Miranda’s

girlfriend.

In mid-to-late January 2005, appellant moved to Atlanta. Her relatives

testified appellant was moving to Atlanta to attend truck driving school and

to be close to family so that she could adopt a child. Miranda helped

facilitate the move by driving appellant to Valdosta where appellant met her

niece Erica Hammond, who drove appellant the rest of the way to Atlanta.

Appellant moved in with her sister, Montina Miller, and her niece, Nakita 2 Monfort. Sometime after February 19, 2005, appellant went back to Florida

and was not seen again by Monfort or Montina until March 1, 2005, when

appellant and her son Jabaris Miller2 showed up at their apartment.

Appellant told her relatives she, Jabaris, and a woman had traveled together

in a white truck, which was parked in front of the apartment building. The

truck stayed parked in front of the apartment for several days, but Monfort

noticed that Jabaris and the truck were gone in the early morning hours of

March 4, 2005.

Skeens testified she last heard from Miranda on February 27, 2005,

when Miranda called Skeens to say she would not be coming over to

Skeens’s house to watch an awards show as the two had previously planned.

Cell phone records showed Miranda’s cell phone traveling on February 28

from Tampa, Florida to Forsyth County, Georgia. The cell phone records, as

well as witness testimony, showed that Jabaris used Miranda’s cell phone to

make several phone calls to various family members that day. Erica

Hammond testified that she believed she heard appellant’s voice in the

background of a voicemail message Jabaris left for her while using Miranda’s

cell phone. 2 Jabaris was tried and convicted in the first trial, and his convictions have been affirmed. Miller v. State, supra, 289 Ga. at 858-861. 3 In the early morning hours of March 4, 2005, the police found

Miranda’s white truck engulfed in flames. Fire investigators determined the

fire was intentionally set with lighter fluid. The burn site was close to the

apartment building where appellant and Jabaris were staying with Montina

and Monfort. Upon extinguishing the fire, police found Miranda’s burned

body face down in the bed of the truck. Once Miranda’s body was identified

and Miranda was confirmed as the owner of the truck, the police were able to

cultivate leads in the case primarily through her cell phone records as

described above.

Miranda’s body was bound with a ligature around the wrists and had a

belt around the neck. The medical examiner testified Miranda suffered blunt

force injuries to her head, including the fracturing of her skull; four sharp

force injuries to the chin and neck, including the severing of her left jugular

vein; and injuries indicating she had been strangled with the belt found

around her neck. The autopsy revealed Miranda was alive when she received

these injuries, but was deceased at the time her body was burned. The

medical examiner determined the cause of death was blunt force and sharp

force injuries to the head and neck; but she testified that the sharp force

4 injury to the left jugular vein was sufficient in itself to cause Miranda’s

death.

Montina saw news of the truck fire, as well as the discovery of a body,

on television and recognized the white truck. She confronted appellant about

it, and appellant told her, in so many words, to mind her own business. At

that point, Montina told appellant and Jabaris to leave the apartment. The

pair then went to stay with appellant’s other sister, Tamala Givan. On March

22, 2005, the police executed a search warrant at Givan’s house. In

appellant’s bags of belongings, they found Miranda’s pawn shop receipts

from February 17, 19 and 21, 2005; personal documents belonging to

Miranda; and Miranda’s credit cards. They also found other property

belonging to Miranda, including a decorative knife/letter opener and a set of

nunchaku, which could have been used to inflict the fatal stab wounds and

blunt force head wounds, respectively, on Miranda.

“To warrant a conviction on circumstantial evidence, the proved facts

shall not only be consistent with the hypothesis of guilt, but shall exclude

every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused.”

OCGA § 24-14-6. In this case, the circumstantial evidence was sufficient to

show that appellant either directly committed the crimes or was a party to the 5 crimes for which the jury returned verdicts of guilty. There was evidence of

prior difficulties between appellant and the victim, including evidence that

appellant had acted violently against Miranda a few months before her body

was found; evidence that days before Miranda’s body was found, appellant’s

son used Miranda’s cell phone to call their relatives; evidence that one of

these relatives, who received a voice message from Jabaris while he was

using Miranda’s cell phone, heard appellant’s voice in the background;

evidence that appellant and Jabaris used Miranda’s truck to travel from

Tampa to Atlanta; evidence that Miranda’s truck was parked outside the

apartment complex where appellant and Jabaris were staying with relatives;

evidence that the relatives recognized the truck when the fire was reported on

the news; and evidence that the police found Miranda’s personal items,

including items which could have been used to inflict the fatal injuries to her

body, inside appellant’s bags. The jury was authorized to find that this

evidence, though circumstantial, was sufficient to exclude every other

reasonable hypothesis save that of guilt. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S.

307 (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979); Neely v. State, 302 Ga. 121 (1) (805

SE2d 18) (2017).

6 2. Appellant complains the trial court erred when it admitted Skeens’s

testimony that Miranda told her she had a fight with “Tonya” in a club on the

ground the statement is hearsay that is not admissible under the residual

hearsay exception set forth in OCGA § 24-8-807.3 At the trial at issue in this

appeal, the prosecutor asked Skeens as follows: “Did you ever have any

conversations with Ms. Miranda regarding whether she and Tonya ever got

into a fight?” Before Skeens responded, defense counsel objected on the

ground that the State had failed to establish the proper foundation for an

exception to the hearsay rule. The trial court overruled this objection without

giving any indication of its reasoning. The prosecutor then asked Skeens to

tell the jury what she knew about appellant and Miranda getting into a fight.

In her response to this question, Skeens testified that Miranda told her she

had been in a fight with “Tonya.” Defense counsel did not object to this

response, or the question that elicited the response, and did not object to any

other portion of the prosecutor’s direct examination of Skeens.

3 We upheld the admission of this same evidence at appellant’s prior trial on the ground that it was non-testimonial hearsay properly admitted into evidence under the necessity exception to the hearsay rule under Georgia’s old Evidence Code. See Miller v. State, supra, 289 Ga. at 859. Since the instant trial occurred after January 1, 2013, the admission of the evidence must be examined under the new Evidence Code.

7 It is a close call as to whether appellant postured a specific objection

based on OCGA § 24-8-807; however, for the purposes of the appeal, we will

presume that defense counsel’s general foundation/hearsay objection

preserved the matter for our direct review.4 To that end, we will disturb the

lower court’s ruling only if there is an abuse of discretion. See Tanner v.

State, 301 Ga. 852 (1) (804 SE2d 377) (2017).

OCGA § 24-8-807 provides in pertinent part:

A statement not specifically covered by any law but having equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness shall not be excluded by the hearsay rule, if the court determines that: (1) The statement is offered as evidence of a material fact; (2) The statement is more probative on the point for which it is offered than any other evidence which the proponent can procure through reasonable efforts; and (3) The general purposes of the rules of evidence and the interests of justice will best be served by admission of the statement into evidence. ...

The residual exception to hearsay is “to be used very rarely and only in

exceptional circumstances, and only when there exists certain exceptional

guarantees of trustworthiness and high degrees of probativeness and

necessity.” Tanner v. State, supra, 301 Ga. at 855. See also Smart v. State,

299 Ga. 414 (3) (788 SE2d 442) (2016). Whether there are exceptional 4 Therefore, we are not invoking plain error review as provided in OCGA § 24-1-104 (d). 8 guarantees of trustworthiness is a determination that focuses on the declarant

and the circumstances under which the declarant made the statement to the

witness. See Rivers v. United States, 777 F3d 1306 (II) (A) (11th Cir. 2015)

(“The fundamental question . . . is not the trustworthiness of the witness

reciting the statements in court, but of the declarant who originally made the

statements.”).5 In this case, Skeens testified that when she went to pick

Miranda up from the club, she saw that Miranda had a busted lip, a missing

tooth, and broken eyeglasses. Miranda explained her condition to Skeens,

whom she had known for three decades and with whom she had maintained a

close relationship, by stating she was in a fight with “Tonya.” We cannot say

that such a statement made to a close personal friend in these circumstances,

in particular as it relates to incidents of domestic violence, “do[es] not, in

fact, bear an increased level of trustworthiness.” Smart v. State, supra, 299

Ga. at 422. In addition, the statement at issue lends itself to being highly

probative of motive for the crimes at bar. Indeed, the evidence was more

probative of the relationship troubles between appellant and Miranda than

5 Thus, appellant’s arguments that the statement lacked guarantees of trustworthiness because Skeens had never met appellant, Skeens had not seen appellant on the date of the incident, and Skeens had only spoken briefly to Miranda about the incident on the night in question, fall outside the required focus on the declarant. Id. at 1314 (“[T]he language of Rule 807 itself makes clear that when it comes to trustworthiness, its primary concern is that of the declarant.”).

9 other evidence in the case because Skeens could describe for the jury the

injuries she saw on Miranda at the time the statement was made. The

admission of the statement otherwise was not contrary to the rules of

evidence or interests of justice. Accordingly, we cannot say the trial court

abused its discretion when it allowed the statement into evidence.

Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.

10 Decided February 5, 2018.

Murder. Fulton Superior Court. Before Judge Adams.

Eric J. Taylor, for appellant.

Paul L. Howard, Jr., District Attorney, Lyndsey H. Rudder, Kevin C.

Armstrong, Marc A. Mallon, Assistant District Attorneys; Christopher M.

Carr, Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney

General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.