Shydarius Williams a/k/a Shydarius Daveon Williams v. State of Mississippi

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI NO. 2024-KA-01155-COA

SHYDARIUS WILLIAMS A/K/A SHYDARIUS APPELLANT DAVEON WILLIAMS

v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI APPELLEE

DATE OF JUDGMENT: 08/30/2024 TRIAL JUDGE: HON. DEBRA H. GIBBS COURT FROM WHICH APPEALED: HINDS COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT, FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT

ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT: OFFICE OF STATE PUBLIC DEFENDER BY: MOLLIE MARIE McMILLIN ATTORNEY FOR APPELLEE: OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL BY: JULIANNE KAY BAILEY

DISTRICT ATTORNEY: JODY EDWARD OWENS II NATURE OF THE CASE: CRIMINAL - FELONY DISPOSITION: AFFIRMED - 08/18/2026 MOTION FOR REHEARING FILED:

BEFORE WILSON, P.J., EMFINGER AND LASSITTER ST. PÉ, JJ.

WILSON, P.J., FOR THE COURT:

¶1. Following a jury trial, Shydarius Williams was convicted of first-degree murder. On appeal, Williams argues that the trial court erred by refusing a jury instruction on the lesser- included offense of heat-of-passion manslaughter. We find no error and affirm.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

¶2. In June 2022, seventeen-year-old Shydarius Williams had been living with Lashundra Bass for about a month because, according to Bass, Williams’s “mama . . . had kicked him out.” Williams stated that Bass was his brother’s mother or “godmother”; but he only knew

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her as “Red,” and he did not know her full name or the name or address of her apartment complex. On the morning of June 4, 2022, Bass and Williams drove to the Super 7 gas station on Bullard Street in Jackson to meet Marcus Moore because Moore was supposed to give Bass some “gas money.”

¶3. Surveillance footage showed Bass parked her SUV on the opposite side of a gas pump from Moore’s car. Bass and Moore exited their respective vehicles and exchanged words. Bass then walked toward Williams, who had exited the SUV. Bass took a handgun from Williams and walked back toward Moore, brandishing the gun. Bass testified that Moore was “high” and “mugging,” and customers at the gas station were “clutching” “because of the stuff [Moore] was doing.” Bass testified that she pointed her gun at Moore and warned him to “get . . . away” from the gas station because he was bothering or angering other customers.

¶4. Moore returned to the driver’s seat of his car, and Bass returned her gun to Williams. Bass then talked to Moore through the passenger-side window of his car. Bass and Williams eventually returned to Bass’s SUV, and Moore and Bass drove their respective vehicles to the Fuel Time gas station just across the street.

¶5. Surveillance footage from the Fuel Time showed both vehicles arrive at the same time and stop at different gas pumps with a parked pickup truck and another fuel island between Bass’s SUV and Moore’s car. Williams and Bass both exited the SUV. Bass walked to Moore’s car and then around the front of Moore’s car, opened the front passenger-side door, and sat down in the passenger seat. Following behind Bass, Williams walked behind

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Moore’s car, opened the rear passenger-side door, and sat down in the back seat of the car. About thirty seconds later, Bass and Williams both emerged from Moore’s car, returned to Bass’s SUV, and drove away. Williams was openly carrying a short-barreled rifle as he hurried back to Bass’s SUV. Customers looked in Moore’s car and saw that he had been shot. Officers with the Jackson Police Department (JPD) were called to the scene and found Moore deceased, having suffered a single gunshot wound to the chest.

¶6. On June 8, 2022, Williams sat for two interviews with JPD detectives. The recorded interviews were admitted in evidence and played for the jury at trial. Williams admitted that he shot Moore. Williams stated that while he was sitting in Bass’s SUV at the Fuel Time, he saw Bass and Moore “tussling” in Moore’s car, so he “put together” a “broke down” assault rifle he was carrying in his backpack, approached the back passenger-side door of Moore’s car, sat down in the back seat, and repeatedly told Moore to let Bass go.1 Williams stated that Moore grabbed Bass’s arm with his right hand and began to reach under the driver’s seat with his left hand. Williams stated that he “panicked” and shot Moore because he feared that Moore was reaching for a gun. Williams stated that Moore was not “in his right state of mind” and was “overly aggressive.” Williams stated that he later tossed the gun in a garbage can. The gun was not recovered.

1 The surveillance footage contradicts Williams’s statement. Williams exited the SUV before Bass, he was already standing at the rear bumper of Moore’s car when Bass entered Moore’s car, and he sat down in the back seat of Moore’s car only about five seconds after Bass sat down in the front seat. Thus, Williams was never in Bass’s SUV while Bass was in Moore’s car. Moreover, Williams could not have seen into Moore’s car from Bass’s SUV because a fuel island and a pickup truck parked between the two vehicles would have blocked his view.

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¶7. At trial, Bass testified that she and Williams went to the Super 7 gas station to meet Moore because he was supposed to give her some “gas money.” She stated that when she arrived at the Super 7, Moore was “high” and “mugging,” and as customers exited the store, they were “clutching . . . because of the stuff [Moore] was doing.” She stated that she got her handgun from Williams, “pointed [the gun] at [Moore],” and she warned Moore that he needed to “get . . . away” from the store because others at the store were “clutched” and had guns. Bass testified that she and Moore agreed to meet at the Fuel Time gas station across the street so that Moore could give her gas money. Bass testified that Moore did not say anything threatening to her at the Super 7 and that Moore never spoke to Williams at either the Super 7 or the Fuel Time.

¶8. Bass testified that Williams was not supposed to get out of her SUV or get in Moore’s car at the Fuel Time and that she did not see Williams walking behind her toward Moore’s car at any point.2 Bass stated that she and Moore were talking in the front seat of his car when she suddenly “grabbed [Moore’s] steering wheel,” and, in response, Moore “grabbed [her] hand.” Bass did not explain why she grabbed Moore’s steering wheel. Bass testified, “When [Moore] grabbed my hand, [Williams] told [Moore] to let my arm go. [Moore] only looked back and didn’t say nothing, and that’s when the pow. It was over with.” Williams had shot Moore once in his chest with an assault rifle, killing him.

¶9. Bass and Williams returned to Bass’s SUV and fled the scene. Bass testified that she

2 The surveillance footage contradicts Bass’s testimony on this point. Williams exited the SUV before Bass, and he was standing at the rear bumper of Moore’s car only a few feet from Bass when Bass entered Moore’s car. In addition, Bass was facing Williams just before she entered Moore’s car.

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was angry with Williams for shooting Moore and asked him why he had shot Moore. Bass testified that Moore never hit her, that she never feared Moore, and that she never told Williams that she was afraid of Moore.

¶10. The trial court instructed the jury on the elements of first-degree murder and the lesser-included offenses of second-degree murder and imperfect self-defense manslaughter. The court also instructed the jury on the justification of self-defense and defense of others. The court refused Williams’s request for an instruction on the lesser-included offense of heat-of-passion manslaughter. The jury found Williams guilty of first-degree murder, and the court sentenced him to forty years in custody of the Department of Corrections, with ten years suspended and thirty years to serve.3 Williams filed a motion for a new trial or a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, which the trial court denied, and a notice of appeal.

ANALYSIS

¶11. On appeal, Williams argues that the trial court erred by refusing to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offense of heat-of-passion manslaughter. Williams argues that there was evidence to support the instruction and that its refusal denied him the opportunity to present his theory of the case. Specifically, Williams argues that the evidence supported an instruction on heat-of-passion manslaughter because “Moore and Bass [were] arguing at the first gas station,” “Moore was behaving in a way that Bass thought warranted the display of a gun,” and “Bass testified that Moore grabbed her arm while they were in the car” at the

3 Williams was sentenced pursuant to Mississippi Code Annotated section 97-3-

21(2)(b) (Supp. 2024) because he was seventeen years old at the time of the murder. The State did not seek a life sentence.

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second gas station.

¶12. We review de novo the refusal of a lesser-included-offense instruction. Downs v. State, 962 So. 2d 1255, 1258 (¶10) (Miss. 2007). A defendant is entitled to a lesser-included- offense instruction if there is some evidence from which a reasonable juror could find him both not guilty of the indicted offense and guilty of the lesser-included offense. Gilmore v. State, 119 So. 3d 278, 286 (¶13) (Miss. 2013). However, “the jury should not be presented with a lesser-included-offense instruction unless the record provides an evidentiary basis for the instruction.” Franklin v. State, 136 So. 3d 1021, 1026 (¶11) (Miss. 2014) (quotation marks omitted). Therefore, “lesser-included-offense instructions should not be granted on mere speculation.” Id.

¶13. A killing is manslaughter if it is committed “without malice, in the heat of passion, but in a cruel or unusual manner, or by the use of a dangerous weapon, without authority of law, and not in necessary self-defense.” Miss. Code Ann. § 97-3-35 (Rev. 2020). The Mississippi Supreme Court has defined “heat of passion” as

[a] state of violent and uncontrollable rage engendered by a blow or certain other provocation given, which will reduce a homicide from a grade of murder to that of manslaughter. Passion or anger suddenly aroused at the time by some immediate and reasonable provocation, by words or acts of one at the time. The term includes an emotional state of mind characterized by anger, rage, hatred, furious resentment or terror.

Jones v. State, 39 So. 3d 860, 866 (¶36) (Miss. 2010) (quoting Mullins v. State, 493 So. 2d 971, 974 (Miss. 1986)). In addition, the Supreme Court has held that

[o]ne of the primary elements of a heat-of-passion crime is immediate and reasonable provocation, by words or acts of one at the time. . . . [I]t is essential that the excited and angry condition of the party committing the act which

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would entitle him to the milder consideration of the law, should be superinduced by some insult, provocation, or injury, which would naturally and instantly produce, in the minds of ordinarily constituted men, the highest degree of exasperation. . . . [T]here must not only be passion and anger to reduce a crime to manslaughter, but there must be such circumstances as would indicate that a normal mind would be roused to the extent that the reason is overthrown and that passion usurps the mind destroying judgment.

Id. at 866-67 (¶36) (citations and quotation marks omitted).

¶14. The State argues that the trial court properly refused Williams’s request for a heat-of- passion manslaughter instruction because there was no evidentiary basis for it. The State argues that the Fuel Time surveillance footage clearly and directly refutes Williams’s claim that he saw Bass and Moore “tussling” and then went to Moore’s car in response. Indeed, the surveillance video footage shows that Williams walked calmly to Moore’s car at the same time as Bass while already armed with an assault rifle. The State further argues that there is no evidence that Williams was so overcome by passion or emotion that his judgment was destroyed. Finally, the State argues that the only possible provocation—that Moore grabbed Bass’s arm after she first grabbed his steering wheel—“does not come close to the level of provocation needed to justify a heat-of-passion manslaughter instruction.”

¶15. We agree that there was no evidence that Williams killed Moore while in a “state of violent and uncontrollable rage.” Id. Nor was there evidence that Moore committed any “provocation” sufficient to overthrow and destroy reason and judgment “in the minds of ordinarily constituted men.” Id. Therefore, the trial court did not err by refusing Williams’s request for a jury instruction on heat-of-passion manslaughter, and Williams’s conviction and sentence are AFFIRMED.

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BARNES, C.J., CARLTON, P.J., WESTBROOKS, McDONALD, LAWRENCE, McCARTY, EMFINGER, WEDDLE AND LASSITTER ST. PÉ, JJ., CONCUR.