Roberts v. State

745 S.E.2d 850, 322 Ga. App. 659, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 2351, 2013 WL 3336699, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 586
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedJuly 3, 2013
DocketA13A0500
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 745 S.E.2d 850 (Roberts 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
Roberts v. State, 745 S.E.2d 850, 322 Ga. App. 659, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 2351, 2013 WL 3336699, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 586 (Ga. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

DOYLE, Presiding Judge.

An Effingham County jury found Christopher Bernard Roberts guilty of two counts of aggravated assault,1 armed robbery,2 burglary,3 theft by taking (an automobile),4 theft by receiving stolen property (a shotgun),5 and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.6 Following the denial of his motion for new trial, Roberts appeals, arguing that (1) the trial court erred by denying his motion for a continuance and motión for a directed verdict of acquittal; (2) the evidence was insufficient to sustain his convictions; and (3) he was denied the effective assistance of trial counsel. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

Construed in favor of the verdict,7 the evidence shows that on December 9, 2008, at approximately 11:00 p.m., Casaundra Brown was at home with her two children, when she heard an automobile honking its horn in her front yard. She came to the front door and saw a young man with “twists in his hair” sitting in a blue truck, and the man pointed toward her father’s pickup truck that was parked in her driveway, asking her about ownership of that truck. Shortly thereafter, she saw three other men, one with dark skin, wearing bandanas over their lower faces and skull caps on their heads, coming toward [660]*660her from the side of the property, and she quickly closed and locked the door. The men kicked in the door and threatened her with a shotgun. One of the three intruders beat her in the face and threatened her with a weapon, demanding to know the whereabouts of her purse, to which she responded that she kept her valuables in her Lowe’s racing jacket. The individuals also took her father’s red and black pickup truck. After the men left, Brown grabbed her children and ran to a neighbor’s home to call the police.

Responding to her 911 call, officers observed a gray Pontiac Firebird traveling with no lights in the area where the robbery took place. The vehicle failed to stop when a patrol unit activated its lights, and after a high speed pursuit, the vehicle wrecked in a ditch. The occupants fled on foot and were soon apprehended; a shotgun, identified by Brown as the one used in the robbery, was discovered at the scene of the wreck. The men were identified as Roberts, Clifford Stephens, and Henry Williams. The vehicle belonged to Roberts, and after obtaining a search warrant for the vehicle, police discovered Brown’s stolen property and her driver’s license. Brown’s father’s truck was recovered within a short time frame of the incident about a mile-and-a-half away.

The jury found Roberts guilty, and he filed a motion for new trial. After a hearing, the trial court denied the motion, giving rise to this appeal.

1. Roberts contends that the trial court erred by denying his motion for a continuance because trial counsel was forced to proceed while unprepared. We disagree.

A motion for a continuance predicated on the basis of counsel’s lack of preparation for trial addresses itself to the sound discretion of the trial court and a ruling denying such a motion will not be interfered with unless the court has abused its discretion in denying the motion. Mere shortness of time does not by itself show a denial of the rights of the accused, and mere shortness of time will not reflect an abuse of the trial court’s discretion in denying a continuance, where the case is not convoluted and is without a large number of intricate defenses. Additionally, when there is no showing that a continuance would have benefitted the defendant, he has not established harm in the denial of the continuance.8

[661]*661Here, Roberts has not established that he exercised due diligence to retain trial counsel. Between Roberts’s March 16, 2009 indictment and his September 9, 2012 trial, Roberts discharged three attorneys before making the decision to retain trial counsel the afternoon before trial. Roberts has failed to offer any explanation for his numerous discharges of attorneys or last-minute change of counsel beyond lacking funds to secure his retainer.9 Indeed, Roberts’s attorney of record immediately prior to trial counsel reported that Roberts was “extremely uncooperative and antagonistic” toward the case and that he had been prepared to go forward with the trial had Roberts cooperated with him. If trial counsel was unprepared to proceed, any lack of preparedness was directly a result of Roberts’s lack of diligence.10 And although Roberts contends that the continuance was necessary for trial counsel to subpoena co-defendant Stephens to testify on his behalf at trial, “[w]e are satisfied that in this instance the trial court did not breach its discretion in refusing to grant the requested continuance. [Roberts] had ample opportunity to... obtain his requested witness prior to trial.”11

Moreover, [Roberts] did not call [Stephens] to testify at the hearing on his motion for new trial, so he failed to present any probative evidence that [Stephens] would have testified for him or that, if so, [Stephens’s] testimony would have been exculpatory. Without the testimony of the particular witness, it is impossible for [Roberts] to show there is a reasonable probability the results of the proceedings would have been different if the trial court had granted a continuance and permitted him to obtain [Stephens].12

Accordingly, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying the motion to continue.

[662]*6622. Roberts contends the evidence was insufficient to support the guilty verdict because there was no scientific evidence, eyewitness identification, or fingerprints connecting him to the crime scene. We disagree.

(a) When reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence,

the relevant question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. This familiar standard gives full play to the responsibility of the trier of fact fairly to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts. Once a defendant has been found guilty of the crime [s] charged, the factfinder’s role as weigher of the evidence is preserved through a legal conclusion that upon judicial review all the evidence is to be considered in the light most favorable to the prosecution.13

Here, the evidence was sufficient to support Roberts’s conviction. Although Brown provided little information about the description of the four suspects because three of the men had their faces and hair covered during the incident, Roberts did fit the general description of the assailant. Moreover, he was apprehended by police after his car, which was being driven in a suspicious manner without its headlights illuminated, was spotted by officers in the vicinity of Brown’s home shortly after the incident, and he failed to stop for officers, instead leading them on a high-speed car chase followed by a footchase.14 Brown’s stolen property, the shotgun used in the robbery, and various bandanas and skull caps were discovered in Roberts’s car.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Kenneth Hall v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2026
Shaquille Rucker v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2026
Edward Charles Tritt v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2026
Jerico Williams v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2025
Christopher Tallington v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2025
Drevoisier Brown v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2025
Lionel Dely v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2025
Jose Antonio Ramirez v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2025
WILSON v. the STATE.
810 S.E.2d 303 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2018)
Blackmon v. the State
785 S.E.2d 59 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2016)
Jones v. the State
765 S.E.2d 639 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2014)
Johnson v. the State
760 S.E.2d 682 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2014)
Dexter Otis Armstrong v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2013
Armstrong v. State
752 S.E.2d 120 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2013)
Marquis Brown v. State
Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2013
Brown v. State
751 S.E.2d 517 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 2013)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
745 S.E.2d 850, 322 Ga. App. 659, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 2351, 2013 WL 3336699, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 586, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/roberts-v-state-gactapp-2013.