Wise v. State

752 S.E.2d 628, 325 Ga. App. 377, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 3993, 2013 WL 6439359, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 998
Court of Appeals of Georgia·Decided December 10, 2013·No. A13A2334·Published·Cited by 9 cases

Opinion

BARNES, Presiding Judge.

A jury found Mark Daniel Wise guilty of three counts of burglary, and the trial court denied his motion for new trial.1 On appeal, Wise contends that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions. Upon our review, we affirm.

Following a criminal conviction, the defendant is no longer presumed innocent, and we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict. Sidner v. State, 304 Ga. App. 373, 374 (696 SE2d 398) (2010). “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 and punctuation omitted.) Id. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 319 (III) (B) (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979). Guided by these principles, we turn to the record in this case.

This appeal centers on three residential burglaries that occurred in Effingham County over the course of a few days in February 2011. The three residences were a short distance from one another and from Wise’s house.

[378] The first residence was broken into on February 8,2011 while the husband and wife who lived there were at work. The wife returned home in the evening to find that the front door had been pried open. The master bedroom of the residence had been rummaged through, and several items of jewelry had been taken. The wife noticed tire tracks in a location outside the residence where neither she nor her husband parked their vehicles. After the wife contacted the police, a crime scene technician arrived and processed the crime scene. The technician photographed the tire tracks identified by the wife. He also located shoeprints outside the residence and photographed them.

The second residence was broken into on February 16,2011 while the homeowner was at work. When the owner returned home that evening, he noticed that the back door had been pried open. He also found that the safe in his bedroom had been broken open and the contents were strewn over the bed. The police responded to the scene, and while canvassing the area around the second residence, the same crime scene technician who processed the scene of the first burglary discovered and photographed tire tracks and shoeprints.

The third residence was broken into on February 17, 2011. That morning, the police were conducting a “concentrated patrol” in the subdivisions located near the previous burglaries. A patrol officer noticed a white car parked on the shoulder of the road that had not been there approximately ten minutes earlier when he had previously passed through the same neighborhood. The car was parked a short distance from the driveway that led up to the third residence located in the woods. Wise was in the driver’s seat and got out of the car when he saw the patrol car pull up behind him. The officer approached Wise, who told the officer that he was in the neighborhood looking for a house to buy but that his transmission had overheated. While Wise was speaking with the officer, Wise’s cell phone repeatedly rang with calls from his son. Wise told the officer that his son lived with him in a subdivision located a few miles away and that his son was at home.

The patrol officer observed that the tires on Wise’s vehicle appeared to have the same tread patterns as the tire tracks found in the previous burglaries.2 The officer contacted his superior, and an investigator was dispatched to the scene to speak with Wise. While speaking with the investigator, Wise changed his story, telling the [379] investigator that he had dropped his son off in the neighborhood earlier in the day to look for a friend’s house.

As the investigator continued to speak with Wise, he saw someone emerge from the wood line and begin walking in the opposite direction. Another officer approached the man who had come out of the woods and identified him as Wise’s son. A police canine unit then was called to the scene and tracked the path that Wise’s son had followed through the woods to the back door of the third residence. The door had been pried open. The police contacted the homeowner, who arrived shortly thereafter and discovered that a television and cash had been stolen. The police found the television and cash in the woods behind the residence.

Wise and his son were arrested, after which Wise told the investigator that he had dropped his son off “to look for some stuff.” The police impounded the car driven by Wise, which was registered in the name of his daughter who lived with him. The police also seized Wise’s shoes. The same crime scene technician involved in the prior investigations matched the tread pattern on the car driven by Wise to the tire tracks found outside the first and second residences that had been burglarized. The technician also determined that the tread pattern on Wise’s shoes matched the shoeprints found outside those same two residences.

Wise and his son were jointly indicted for the burglaries of the three residences but were tried separately. At Wise’s trial, the owners of the residences, the officers and detectives involved in the investigation and apprehension of Wise, and the crime scene technician who processed the three crime scenes testified to the events as set out above. Wise did not testify or call any witnesses on his behalf. After the close of evidence, the jury found Wise guilty of the three burglaries. Wise filed a motion for new trial, which the trial court denied, resulting in this appeal.

1. Wise argues that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction for the burglary of the third residence. According to Wise, the evidence presented by the State showed nothing more than his mere spatial proximity to the scene of the burglary. We are unpersuaded because there was sufficient evidence to convict Wise as a party to the crime of burglary.

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Wise v. State, 752 S.E.2d 628, 325 Ga. App. 377, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 3993, 2013 WL 6439359, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 998 (Ga. Ct. App. 2013).

752 S.E.2d 628 (Wise v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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