Pressley v. State

744 S.E.2d 439, 322 Ga. App. 243, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 1920, 2013 WL 2631623, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 489
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedJune 13, 2013
DocketA13A0450
StatusPublished

This text of 744 S.E.2d 439 (Pressley 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
Pressley v. State, 744 S.E.2d 439, 322 Ga. App. 243, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 1920, 2013 WL 2631623, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 489 (Ga. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

Branch, Judge.

On appeal from his conviction for second-degree child cruelty, Adrian Pressley argues that the trial court erred when it admitted into evidence his videotaped statement and a picture showing the extent of the victim’s permanent injuries. Pressley also argues that the court should have charged the jury on criminal negligence. We find no error and affirm.

“On appeal from a criminal conviction, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, with the defendant no longer enjoying a presumption of innocence.” (Citation omitted.) Reese v. State, 270 Ga. App. 522, 523 (607 SE2d 165) (2004). We neither weigh the evidence nor judge the credibility of witnesses, but determine only whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, a “rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” (Citation omitted.) Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 319 (III) (B) (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979).

So viewed, the record shows that in early November 2009, a mother noticed large and dark bruises on her ten-month-old daughter’s face, buttocks, and arms. Pressley’s sister, who was also present, noticed bruises and bite marks on the child’s face. The child, who had no significant health problems before this time, had also become [244]*244lethargic. The mother took the child to a pediatrician, who referred her to a hospital, where she was admitted, diagnosed with retinal bleeding, and remained for a week. A few days after her release, the child vomited twice at a follow-up appointment with the pediatrician. When the mother asked Pressley, her boyfriend at the time, whether he had caused the child’s injuries, he denied having done so.

On November 22, the mother, child and Pressley went to Pressley’s mother’s house. The mother fed her daughter there and then showered. Less than five minutes after the mother left her daughter in the living room with Pressley, he carried the child to her mother in the bathroom. The child was limp and not visibly breathing, with her eyes rolled into the back of her head, such that the mother thought at first that the child was dead. The mother took the child from Pressley, who called 911. The mother performed CPR according to the 911 operator’s instructions, but the child began having seizures in the ambulance taking her back to the hospital, where she spent more than three weeks in intensive care. On the basis of multiple retinal hemorrhages, a doctor diagnosed the child as having been shaken. After her release, she required a feeding tube, physical and speech therapy, and leg and hand splints. As a result of the brain damage she suffered, the child cannot walk and speaks only a few words.

A police investigator interviewed Pressley twice: first at his house, where he denied having harmed the child, and then at the Columbia County sheriff’s office, where he appeared to take a polygraph test. In the course of an hour-long unrecorded conversation with the polygraph examiner, who was a retired police officer and did not wear a badge or carry a gun, Pressley incriminated himself. The examiner then escorted Pressley into an interview room and left him there for an unspecified period of time.

A videotape commencing while Pressley was in the interview room and lasting through and after his interview by the police investigator shows Pressley sitting in a chair with the door open and texting on his cell phone. The examiner reentered the room with the investigator, introduced Pressley to the investigator, and closed the door. The examiner said that he wanted to be sure that he (the examiner) had told the investigator what Pressley had already told the examiner: that Pressley had bitten and shaken the child “a little harder than [he] meant to,” causing her injuries. When Pressley agreed to the examiner’s brief account, the examiner thanked him for “telling the truth” and left the room. Pressley immediately told the investigator that Pressley had not “done the right thing.” The investigator then left the room briefly, returned, and read Pressley his Miranda warnings from a preprinted form. Pressley initialed and signed the form. In the interview that followed, Pressley again [245]*245confessed to harming the child on two different occasions. After the investigator again left Pressley alone, Pressley called his mother on his cell phone, repeated his confession, and told her that he was “going to plead guilty.”

Pressley was charged with two counts of first-degree child cruelty arising from biting the victim on the first occasion and shaking the child on the second. Before trial, Pressley moved to suppress his videotaped statement on the ground that it had been coerced. After a Jackson-Denno hearing,1 the trial court found that Pressley had given the statement freely and voluntarily and after a knowing and intelligent waiver of his rights. The videotape was played for the jury. Neither the State nor Pressley called the polygraph examiner to testify at trial.2 A jury found Pressley guilty of two counts of child cruelty in the second degree. His motion for new trial was denied.

1. Citing the investigator’s testimony that once Pressley was brought into the interview room, the investigator considered Pressley to be in custody, Pressley argues that his videotaped confirmation of his previous and unrecorded confession to the examiner should have been suppressed because the police obtained it before giving Miranda warnings. We disagree.

“Miranda warnings are required when a person is (1) formally arrested or (2) restrained to the degree associated with a formal arrest.” (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Sewell v. State, 283 Ga. 558, 560-561 (2) (662 SE2d 537) (2008).

The determination of whether one is in custody depends upon the objective circumstances attending the particular interrogation at issue, and not upon the subjective views of either the person being interrogated or the interrogating officer. The relevant inquiry in determining whether one is in custody is how a reasonable person in the suspect’s position would perceive his or her situation.

(Citation and punctuation omitted; emphasis supplied.) Crawford v. State, 288 Ga. 425, 426 (2) (a) (704 SE2d 772) (2011); see also Hardin v. State, 269 Ga. 1, 3 (2) (494 SE2d 647) (1998) (whether investigators “have already decided that they will take the person into custody and charge them with an offense” is “not relevant” on the question whether Miranda warnings should be given so long as the person is [246]*246not in custody) (footnote omitted). We will defer to a trial court’s findings as to whether a defendant was in custody unless they are clearly erroneous. Sewell, supra at 562 (2). It is undisputed that Pressley appeared at the sheriff’s office for the purpose of taking a polygraph test, that he made incriminating statements to the polygraph examiner, and that he was escorted into an interview room and remained there, unrestrained and with the door open, for some time. Pressley has not argued or shown that his original statement to the examiner was coerced, and the videotape shows that Pressley agreed without reservation to the examiner’s brief account of their previous and unrecorded conversation, at which point the police investigator read Pressley his Miranda

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Related

Jackson v. Denno
378 U.S. 368 (Supreme Court, 1964)
Jackson v. Virginia
443 U.S. 307 (Supreme Court, 1979)
Owen v. State
467 S.E.2d 325 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1996)
Sewell v. State
662 S.E.2d 537 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 2008)
Stokes v. State
420 S.E.2d 84 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1992)
Hardin v. State
494 S.E.2d 647 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1998)
Sims v. State
507 S.E.2d 845 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1998)
Reese v. State
607 S.E.2d 165 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2004)
Crawford v. State
704 S.E.2d 772 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 2011)
State v. Kendrick
711 S.E.2d 420 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2011)
State v. Kelly
718 S.E.2d 232 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 2011)
Terry v. State
731 S.E.2d 669 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 2012)

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Bluebook (online)
744 S.E.2d 439, 322 Ga. App. 243, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 1920, 2013 WL 2631623, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 489, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pressley-v-state-gactapp-2013.