St. Louis v. State

763 S.E.2d 126, 328 Ga. App. 837, 2014 WL 3973249, 2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 583
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedAugust 15, 2014
DocketA14A1079
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 763 S.E.2d 126 (St. Louis 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
St. Louis v. State, 763 S.E.2d 126, 328 Ga. App. 837, 2014 WL 3973249, 2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 583 (Ga. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

BARNES, Presiding Judge.

A jury found Richard Roy St. Louis guilty of the misdemeanor offense of loitering or prowling. On appeal from the denial of his motion for a new trial, St. Louis challenges the sufficiency of the evidence. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm.

On appeal from a criminal conviction, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, and [St. Louis] no longer enjoys the presumption of innocence. We neither weigh the evidence nor assess the credibility of witnesses, but merely ascertain that the evidence is sufficient to prove each element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Moreover, conflicts in the testimony of the witnesses are a matter of credibility for the jury to resolve. As long as [838]*838there is some competent evidence, even though contradicted, to support each fact necessary to make out the state’s case, the jury’s verdict will be upheld.

(Citation omitted.) Rollins v. State, 318 Ga. App. 311 (733 SE2d 841) (2012).

Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, the evidence showed that the female victim lived alone in an apartment in Douglas County. Around 6:45 a.m. on March 13, 2012, the victim was returning to her apartment after spending the night away from home. The victim had her dog with her and was walking up a cement walkway that led to her apartment door. The outdoor light near her apartment was not working and it was still dark outside. As the victim approached her apartment door, St. Louis suddenly jumped out of the darkness toward her dog. According to the victim, St. Louis appeared startled, was standing in a “low” stance, and “looked like he was not right.” The victim began to scream, and St. Louis apologized. Although the victim’s dog was on a leash, St. Louis tried to explain his conduct by telling the victim that he “thought it was a stray dog.” St. Louis then fled into the nearby woods. The victim at that point noticed that the latch to the screen door of her apartment was no longer fastened and that the door was slightly propped open against the door frame, even though she always latched the screen door before leaving home.

Frightened by the encounter, the victim went inside her apartment and called her boyfriend and then the police. The victim was close enough to St. Louis during their encounter to “see what his face looked like in the dark” and was able to provide a description of his appearance.

Around 6:55 a.m., a patrol officer saw St. Louis, who met the description provided by the victim, walking down a street near the apartment complex. The officer stopped St. Louis, explained why he was stopping him, and asked for his name and identification, which St. Louis provided. The officer asked St. Louis where he was coming from and where he was going, and St. Louis told the officer that he lived at the apartment complex, that he had just walked from his apartment to a convenience store to buy some cigarettes, and that he was in the process of returning to his apartment.

When the officer asked St. Louis if he had encountered anyone that morning after leaving his apartment, St. Louis initially denied having contact with anyone. However, when the officer later repeated the same question, St. Louis admitted that he had encountered a lady and her dog at the apartment complex that morning, that he thought he had startled her because she began to scream, and that he ran [839]*839away when she screamed at him. Later, when the officer searched St. Louis, he discovered a flashlight and thick wool gloves in his coat pocket. According to the officer, it was around 70 degrees outside that morning. The officer asked St. Louis about the flashlight and wool gloves, but St. Louis gave no explanation for why he had them.

Another patrol officer had been dispatched to the victim’s apartment. When the officer arrived at the apartment, the victim was holding her dog and was shaking and crying. After the officer calmed the victim down, the officer drove her to where St. Louis had been detained. When the victim saw St. Louis, she became distraught again, started to cry, and told the officer that St. Louis was the man she had encountered. St. Louis then was arrested for loitering or prowling outside the victim’s apartment. Following the arrest, the victim learned that St. Louis lived in the same apartment complex, and she subsequently moved out of her apartment out of fear for her safety.

At the ensuing jury trial, the victim and responding officers testified to the events as set out above. After the State’s case-in-chief, St. Louis elected to testify, denied unlatching the screen door to the victim’s apartment, and claimed that he had been walking from his apartment to a convenience store along a dirt path that ran through the complex when he encountered the victim. In contrast, the victim testified that she encountered St. Louis on the concrete walkway outside her apartment door, not on the dirt path. The victim also testified that the quickest route to reach the dirt path from where St. Louis’ apartment was located did not involve crossing over the cement walkway that led to her apartment door.

St. Louis further testified that his cat had suddenly darted out in front of him as he walked down the dirt path, and that he had then been startled by what he had thought was a stray dog chasing his cat. St. Louis testified that he then saw the victim, who began to scream, and that he apologized to her and continued walking down the path to the store. In contrast, the victim testified that she never saw a cat, that her dog did not look like a stray and had been on a leash only about “three strides ahead” of her, and that St. Louis had fled into the woods after their encounter.

Lastly, St. Louis claimed that he had the flashlight with him because he worked at a nearby restaurant and sometimes walked home in the dark and had the gloves in case it was cold outside. But St. Louis had not provided that explanation when he spoke with the police on the morning of the incident.

After hearing the conflicting evidence, the jury found St. Louis guilty of the charged offense. St. Louis filed a motion for new trial, [840]*840which the trial court denied, resulting in this appeal.

A person commits the offense of loitering or prowling when he is in a place at a time or in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals under circumstances that warrant a justifiable and reasonable alarm or immediate concern for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.

OCGA § 16-11-36 (a). Here, the evidence and all inferences drawn from it, when construed in favor of the prosecution, would support a finding by the jury that St. Louis was outside the victim’s apartment door at 6:45 a.m., in the dark, with items in his pocket that could be used for a burglary; had unlatched and propped open the screen door; was startled upon unexpectedly encountering the victim and her dog; and then fled from the scene into the woods when the victim screamed. Under these circumstances, the jury was authorized to find that St. Louis was at the victim’s door “at a time [and] in a manner not usual for law-abiding individuals” and that his actions would “warrant a justifiable and reasonable alarm or immediate concern for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.”

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
763 S.E.2d 126, 328 Ga. App. 837, 2014 WL 3973249, 2014 Ga. App. LEXIS 583, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/st-louis-v-state-gactapp-2014.