Thompson v. State

757 S.E.2d 846, 295 Ga. 96, 2014 Fulton County D. Rep. 1175, 2014 WL 1588478, 2014 Ga. LEXIS 296
Supreme Court of Georgia·Decided April 22, 2014·No. S14A0235·Published·Cited by 23 cases

Opinions

NAHMIAS, Justice.

Appellant Rodney Thompson was convicted of the felony murder of his mother, Marjorie Lynch. On appeal, he contends that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support his conviction and that the trial court erred in excluding expert evidence regarding his low IQ and in admitting evidence of his prior difficulties with the victim and of certain statements he made while in police custody. As explained below, we find no merit to these contentions, and we therefore affirm.1

[97]*971. (a) Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence presented at trial showed the following. Appellant, who was then 39 years old, was living with Ms. Lynch and other family members in Barrow County. About a week before she was killed, Ms. Lynch told Appellant that if he did not start helping with the household bills, he would have to move out.

On the morning of June 5, 2008, Ms. Lynch called 911 and said that her son had just stabbed her in the back and run out of the house. Sheriffs deputies arrived at the house five minutes later, finding Appellant on the porch smoking a cigarette. When they asked who he was, Appellant said “I’m her son” and motioned toward the house. When the deputies asked if Appellant had stabbed his mother, he first said no, but when asked again, he said that he had; he was then handcuffed and put in a police car.

Inside the house, the deputies found Ms. Lynch lying on the floor of her bedroom with a crossbow bolt sticking out of her back. She was still alive, and she told one of the deputies that she had been asleep when she was shot. She also told a paramedic who arrived at the scene that “he shot me.” Ms. Lynch was taken to a hospital, where she died on the operating table. The cause of death was a crossbow bolt wound to the back. The bolt that killed Ms. Lynch had a “field tip,” which is fairly blunt and generally used for practice, rather than a “broad tip,” which is used for hunting.

When investigators searched Appellant’s bedroom, they found a crossbow and a bolt; the crossbow was in “fire” mode. A sales associate from the Bass Pro Shop testified at trial that Appellant had purchased the crossbow two weeks to two months before he killed his mother. The associate explained that he generally would explain to customers how to use the crossbow and that customers could also get demonstrations of how to use the crossbow at an in-store archery range. The associate had examined Appellant’s crossbow and found that it took 150 pounds of force to cock the bow. He explained that to make the crossbow fire, it had to be manually switched to fire mode, because it could not be cocked while in safe mode. Although the associate acknowledged that crossbows can malfunction, he tested the safety mechanism of Appellant’s crossbow and was unable to shoot the bow when it was in safe mode, even when he tried to make it malfunction.

[98] Appellant was taken from the house to the sheriff s office, where he was interviewed after waiving his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (86 SCt 1602, 16 LE2d 694) (1966). Appellant claimed that he had gone up to his mother’s room to show her his crossbow, even though she was asleep, and when he walked in, the crossbow, which was loaded, accidentally went off and the bolt hit her in the back. He said that this was the first time he had ever used the crossbow, which he bought to use for hunting (although he later admitted that he did not have a hunting license). Appellant admitted that his mother sometimes asked him to pay rent, which made him mad, but he claimed that he was not mad at her at the time of the incident. When asked why he did not help his mother after shooting her, Appellant said that he had heard her calling 911, so he went outside to smoke a cigarette.

After the interview ended, Appellant was moved to a conference room, where he was guarded by Investigator Matt Guthas. Although Guthas did not question him, Appellant began talking. Guthas testified at trial that Appellant said: “got into this thing with my mom this morning”; “gun”; “shot her in the back”; “good thing it wasn’t steel”; and “not bad.” At trial the State also presented evidence that in 1994, Appellant had pled guilty in New Jersey to threatening to kill his mother.

(b) Appellant contends that the evidence pointed to an accidental shooting and thus was legally insufficient to support his conviction. However, “ ‘[i]t was for the jury to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence.’ ” Vega v. State, 285 Ga. 32, 33 (673 SE2d 223) (2009) (citation omitted). When viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence presented at trial and summarized above was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to reject Appellant’s accident defense and find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of felony murder based on aggravated assault. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 319 (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979); Smith v. State, 292 Ga. 620, 621 (740 SE2d 158) (2013); Brown v. State, 292 Ga. 454, 456 (738 SE2d 591) (2013).

2. The trial court ruled that Appellant would not be permitted to introduce expert testimony that he has an IQ of 67, which, his counsel argued, was relevant to his defense that the shooting was accidental because his mental disability prevented him from understanding how to use the crossbow properly. Appellant enumerates error in this ruling, but the trial court decided the issue in accordance with settled Georgia law.

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Thompson v. State, 757 S.E.2d 846, 295 Ga. 96, 2014 Fulton County D. Rep. 1175, 2014 WL 1588478, 2014 Ga. LEXIS 296 (Ga. 2014).

757 S.E.2d 846 (Thompson v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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