Pitchford v. State

751 S.E.2d 785, 294 Ga. 230, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 3691, 2013 WL 6157312, 2013 Ga. LEXIS 1000
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
DecidedNovember 25, 2013
DocketS13A0884
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 751 S.E.2d 785 (Pitchford v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pitchford v. State, 751 S.E.2d 785, 294 Ga. 230, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 3691, 2013 WL 6157312, 2013 Ga. LEXIS 1000 (Ga. 2013).

Opinion

HUNSTEIN, Justice.

Appellant Shabuoy Pitchford was convicted of murder, burglary, armed robbery, and related offenses in connection with the September 2006 shooting death of Rickey Greene. Pitchford appeals the denial of his motion for new trial, contending certain evidence should have been suppressed, other evidence was improperly admitted, the evidence on the armed robbery count was insufficient, and the jury instructions were erroneous in certain respects. Finding no error, we affirm.1

Construed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence adduced at trial established as follows. On September 2, 2006, Pitchford, then 17 years old, was playing basketball in front of the home of a neighbor, Rickey Greene. Pitchford had left a cell phone belonging to his mother nearby on the pavement, and when Greene pulled into his driveway, he accidentally ran over the phone. Pitch-ford, angry, yelled and cursed at Greene. In apology, Greene invited Pitchford into his home, and Greene conducted online research regarding a replacement phone on his Apple laptop computer. Greene then gave Pitchford a ride to his nearby home, where he spoke to Pitchford’s mother about the phone, and then drove to the mall to look for a new phone. When Greene returned to his home, he discovered that one of his windows was broken, and his Apple laptop was missing from the desk near that window. He reported the burglary to police.

Eleven days later, on September 13, 2006, Greene was found dead in the living room of his home, with gunshots to the head and neck. He had last been seen alive two days prior, on September 11, and the autopsy confirmed that he had been shot within the preceding 24 to 48 hours, from a distance of two to three feet away. One of the shots had been fired through a pillow that had apparently been placed over the side of Greene’s head, and forensic evidence indicated that Greene had been lying face down or kneeling on all fours at the [231]*231time he was shot. At the scene, investigators discovered two .380 caliber bullet casings near the victim’s body. The home’s master bedroom had been ransacked. An empty Dell laptop case was recovered, and there were unconnected computer wires pulled out over a table in the living room. While there was no evidence of forced entry, a detective testified that the front door lock was easily capable of being “picked” with a credit card or other thin, hard plastic item. A latent fingerprint, later determined to be Pitchford’s, was lifted from the front doorjamb. Greene’s car was also missing.

While investigators were processing the scene, Pitchford and his friend and co-defendant, Ricky Oliver, approached. Pitchford, bypassing patrol cars blocking the street, walked up to F.J. Renaud, a uniformed officer with the DeKalb County Police Department, to ask what had happened. Officer Renaud asked Pitchford his name and where he lived, and when Pitchford pointed to his home up the street, Renaud asked Pitchford whether he knew Greene. At that point, Officer Renaud testified, Pitchford’s demeanor changed, and Pitch-ford told him that he and Greene had recently “had some words” in connection with an incident with a cell phone. His suspicions aroused, Officer Renaud told Pitchford he needed to move away from the scene and then notified detectives of his conversation with Pitchford. Pitchford walked back up the street to rejoin Oliver.

After speaking with a detective, Officer Renaud, accompanied by another patrol officer, approached the two friends, and Oliver asked whether someone had been shot. Officer Renaud asked Oliver for his name and address, and then relayed this information to another detective, who noted that Oliver was a suspect in the earlier burglary at Greene’s home. Officer Renaud again approached and began asking Oliver about recent burglaries in the area, at which point Oliver became visibly nervous and volunteered that he was in possession of a laptop stolen from Greene’s home, but that he had not stolen it. Officer Renaud continued questioning Oliver until Detective Charles Franklin, the lead detective on the September 2 burglary, approached and directed that Pitchford and Oliver be arrested in connection with that crime.

In a post-arrest interrogation, Pitchford admitted that he was in possession of the missing Dell laptop. A subsequent search of Pitch-ford’s home turned up the Dell laptop, as well as a watch and a gold ring, both later determined to have belonged to Greene. Also seized from Pitchford’s home were a pair of latex gloves, a brown stocking mask, and a box containing writings riddled with expletives and references to guns, killing, and violence. Police also searched Oliver’s home, where they found Greene’s Apple laptop.

[232]*232A later search of the home of two of Pitchford and Oliver’s friends, Michael Martin and Keelyn Lockhart, turned up a .380 caliber handgun, a camcorder, a digital camera, and three videocassettes with Greene’s name on them. On one of the videocassettes was footage of Pitchford, Martin, and Lockhart, as well as news coverage of Greene’s murder. Expert testimony established that the fatal bullets had been fired from the .380 handgun. Martin testified that, on September 12, Pitchford had come to their house, given Lockhart the camcorder as a birthday present, and phoned an associate named “Mo” to try to sell him a gun.

Witness Archie Watkins, a close friend of Greene, testified that Greene had told him about the September 2 burglary. According to Watkins, after the burglary, Greene approached Pitchford about his missing laptop; Pitchford indicated that he might know who had it; and Greene told Pitchford to make it known that he was willing to pay $400 to buy it back. Pitchford’s goddaughter likewise testified that, the weekend before he was murdered, Greene told her that he believed one of Pitchford’s friends had his laptop and that he was in the process of arranging to get it back on the following Tuesday, September 12.

Oliver made a series of post-arrest statements, which evolved from a denial of any knowledge of or involvement in the crimes, to an admission that he had acted as a lookout for Pitchford during the second burglary. In his final statement, Oliver told police he stood outside Greene’s home on the evening of September 11 for approximately ten minutes while Pitchford went inside; that he heard “loud sounds like drawers being pulled out” and then “two muffled shots”; and that two to three minutes later Pitchford emerged from the home with a gun in one hand and what looked like a laptop under his other arm, and ran away. At trial, Oliver testified that this statement had been coerced and denied any involvement beyond receiving the Apple laptop from Pitchford.

The State also presented evidence that Pitchford had previously admitted to burglarizing a neighbor’s home by entering through an unlocked window and stealing a video game console, DVD player, and related items.

1. The evidence as summarized above was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Pitchford was guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979). Pitchford specifically challenges the sufficiency of the evidence only as to the armed robbery count, and we therefore undertake a more detailed discussion of the evidence as to that crime. The crime of armed robbery is committed when a person “with intent to commit theft... [233]

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Bluebook (online)
751 S.E.2d 785, 294 Ga. 230, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 3691, 2013 WL 6157312, 2013 Ga. LEXIS 1000, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pitchford-v-state-ga-2013.