Morgan v. State

838 S.E.2d 878, 307 Ga. 889
Supreme Court of Georgia·Decided February 10, 2020·No. S19A1261·Published·Cited by 23 cases

Opinion

307 Ga. 889 FINAL COPY

S19A1261. MORGAN v. THE STATE.

ELLINGTON, Justice.

A Chatham County jury found Jokeera Morgan guilty but mentally ill of murdering her two infant daughters by drowning them.1 Morgan confessed to drowning her daughters, but she argued at trial that she was not guilty of murdering them because she was legally insane at the time. Morgan appeals from the order denying her motion for a new trial, contending that the trial court erred by (1) excluding expert opinion testimony concerning her ability to

1 The crimes occurred on October 6, 2015. On December 29, 2015, a Chatham County grand jury indicted Morgan for two counts of malice murder, two counts of felony murder (each predicated on an act of aggravated assault), and two counts of aggravated assault. Following a trial ending on October 6, 2017, the jury found Morgan guilty but mentally ill on all counts. She was sentenced to life in prison for each count of malice murder, with the sentences to run concurrently. The remaining counts were either vacated by operation of law or merged. Morgan filed a timely motion for a new trial on October 23, 2017, which she later amended on January 2, 2019. Following a hearing, the trial court denied the motion on March 29, 2019. The trial court filed an amended order denying the motion for a new trial on April 3, 2019. Morgan timely appealed from the amended order, and her case was docketed in this Court for the August 2019 term and orally argued on September 10, 2019.

discern right from wrong, (2) admitting police body-camera video- recordings of her children’s bodies, and (3) giving an incorrect charge on whether the jury could consider punishment during its deliberations on the issue of her guilt.2 For the following reasons, we affirm.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence presented at trial shows the following. On October 6, 2015, Morgan drowned her daughters in her Chatham County home. She immediately called 911 to report what she had done. The responding officers found the children’s bodies where Morgan had told the dispatcher they would be. Morgan confessed to the homicides in a police interview, telling the officers that “while she was [drowning her daughters], she was thinking that she couldn’t believe that she was doing it.” The medical examiner confirmed that the children had drowned and that their manner of death was consistent with Morgan’s description of how she had killed them.

2 In light of this Court’s recent opinion in Foster v. State, 306 Ga. 587,

590 (2) (832 SE2d 346) (2019), Morgan withdrew her third claim of error, conceding that Foster conclusively resolves that claim against Morgan.

In support of her special plea of insanity, Morgan introduced evidence of her history of mental illness, which included severe bipolar-I disorder, schizoaffective disorder, major depressive disorder, personality disorder, and polysubstance abuse. She also presented evidence of her strained relationship with the children’s father, the circumstances preceding the homicides that she argued negatively affected her mental health, her lack of proper psychiatric treatment and medication, and, through expert testimony, her mental disorders and their effect on her behavior and thought processes. Morgan’s experts, as well as the State’s expert, testified that Morgan was experiencing a depressive episode of her bipolar-I disorder at the time of the homicides. Morgan’s experts concluded that her symptoms were consistent with those of mothers who had committed “altruistic filicide,” a homicide that results from a belief that a child is better off dead.

The State presented expert testimony that Morgan’s bipolar disorder was “moderate,” instead of severe; that malingering could not be ruled out; and that mentally ill people are often capable of

having ordinary criminal motives for committing crimes. With respect to that motive, the State presented the following evidence: Morgan lived in squalid conditions with the children’s father, who was neglectful of the children and abusive and unfaithful to Morgan. Morgan once poured a pot of boiling oil on the children’s father after she caught him in bed in their home with another woman. Morgan also had fantasized about stabbing the children’s father with a hot knife and had expressed a desire that he feel the same “burning pain inside” that she did. Five days before the murders, the children’s father told Morgan that he had never been in love with her, which Morgan said had broken her heart.

1. Morgan does not challenge the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting her convictions. Nevertheless, in accordance with this Court’s practice in murder cases, we have reviewed the record and conclude that, when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial and summarized above was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find Morgan guilty but mentally ill beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of

which she was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 319 (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979). See also Vega v. State, 285 Ga. 32, 33 (1) (673 SE2d 223) (2009) (“It was for the jury to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence.” (citation and punctuation omitted)); Foster v. State, 283 Ga. 47, 48 (1) (656 SE2d 838) (2008) (“A defendant claiming insanity has the burden of proving this affirmative defense by a preponderance of the evidence; unless the evidence of insanity is overwhelming, a jury determination that the defendant was sane at the time of the crime will be upheld.”).

2. In support of her insanity defense, Morgan sought to introduce through one of her expert witnesses evidence that, two years prior to the murders, a psychologist had released her from a mental hospital after opining in a written discharge report that she “now appears to be competent and knows right from wrong.” Morgan argued that the jury could infer from the psychologist’s statement that, at some point before or during her hospitalization, her mental illness had rendered her legally incompetent and unable to

determine right from wrong. And, if Morgan’s mental illness had rendered her unable to determine right from wrong in the past, then the jury could reasonably infer that her mental illness rendered her unable to determine right from wrong when she drowned her children. Morgan argued that OCGA § 24-7-704 (b) (“Rule 704 (b)”), which prohibits certain opinion testimony concerning a criminal defendant’s mental state when that mental state constitutes “an element of the crime charged or of a defense thereto,” did not bar the admission of the opinion, asserting that Rule 704 (b) did not apply if an expert’s opinion testimony was about whether a defendant knew right from wrong at a time other than during the commission of the crimes charged. The trial court disagreed, finding that the psychologist’s statement of opinion “called for a legal conclusion” that was “for the jury to determine” and that admitting the statement would violate Rule 704 (b).3 Morgan asserts that the trial

3 During its lengthy colloquy with counsel, the trial court expressed doubt about whether the psychologist’s opinion that Morgan “knew right from wrong” at some point in the past was relevant to her mental state at the time of the crimes charged, especially since it was unclear whether Morgan had

court abused its discretion “by excluding expert opinion evidence that Morgan’s bipolar-I disorder had deprived her [of her] ability to distinguish right from wrong at a time other than that of the homicides.”

We need not decide, however, whether the exclusion of the psychologist’s statement of opinion was error because, even if it were, any error was harmless and would not warrant reversal.4 The psychologist’s statement was from two years prior to the commission of the crimes charged. It was also a statement of opinion that

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Morgan v. State, 838 S.E.2d 878, 307 Ga. 889 (Ga. 2020).

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