310 Ga. 224
FINAL COPY
S20A0939. JACKSON v. THE STATE.
BOGGS, Justice.
In this out-of-time appeal, Appellant Antwan Antonio “Rico”
Jackson challenges his 2010 convictions for felony murder and
attempted cocaine trafficking in connection with the shooting death
of Christopher L. Hoskin. Appellant contends that the evidence was
insufficient to support his convictions; that the trial court erred in
failing to quash the two counts of the indictment on which he was
convicted; that the court erred in allowing the State in closing
argument to denigrate defense counsel and to vouch for a
prosecution witness; and that the court committed plain error in
failing to instruct the jury that a sentence of life imprisonment was
mandatory if the jury found him guilty of either of two murder
charges.
As explained below, the evidence was legally sufficient to
support Appellant’s convictions, but the trial court erred in entering
a judgment of conviction and sentence on the guilty verdict for
attempted cocaine trafficking, which merged into the related felony
murder conviction. Appellant failed to preserve for appellate review
his claims relating to the indictment and the State’s closing
argument by not raising them at the appropriate time in the trial
court, and we have previously held that it is not plain error for a
trial court not to charge the jury that a sentence of life imprisonment
is mandatory if the jury finds the defendant guilty of either malice
murder or felony murder. Accordingly, we vacate Appellant’s
conviction and sentence for attempted cocaine trafficking, but we
otherwise affirm the trial court’s judgment.1
1 Hoskin was killed on February 19, 2007. On March 23, 2009, a
Chattahoochee County grand jury indicted Appellant and Dantrelle Prince for
malice murder, felony murder based on attempted cocaine trafficking,
aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and attempted cocaine trafficking
and indicted Tashcha Grant for felony murder based on attempted cocaine
trafficking and attempted cocaine trafficking. The State agreed to allow Prince
and Grant to plead guilty to attempted cocaine trafficking and to dismiss the
other charges against them in exchange for their truthful testimony against
Appellant, with the entry of their guilty pleas and sentencing deferred until
after Appellant’s trial. At a trial from April 26 to 29, 2010, the jury acquitted
Appellant of malice murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and
found him guilty of felony murder and attempted cocaine trafficking. The trial
court sentenced Appellant to serve life in prison for felony murder and a
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1. “It is incumbent upon the Court to question its
jurisdiction in all cases in which jurisdiction may be in doubt.”
Woods v. State, 279 Ga. 28, 28 (
608 SE2d 631) (2005). The State
contends that we lack jurisdiction to decide this appeal based on our
recent decision in Pounds v. State,
309 Ga. 376 (
846 SE2d 48) (2020),
where we held that an untimely motion for new trial that the trial
court improperly denied on the merits (rather than dismissing as
untimely) ripened on the grant of an out-of-time appeal, making any
appeal premature until the trial court disposed of the newly timely
motion for new trial. We explained:
[B]ecause a trial court order denying a late-filed and
untimely motion for new trial on the merits is, and
remains, invalid when an out-of-time appeal is granted,
the motion for new trial itself — which becomes ripe,
concurrent term of 15 years for attempted cocaine trafficking, both consecutive
to a life sentence that he already was serving for armed robbery. Appellant
obtained new counsel and, on June 10, 2010, filed an untimely motion for new
trial. Appellant again obtained new counsel and amended his new trial motion
on April 14, 2016, and May 26, 2016. On January 29, 2019, the trial court
“denied” the motion after finding that it was untimely; the court’s order did not
address the merits of the motion. Appellant obtained new counsel yet again
and, on October 10, 2019, filed a motion for out-of-time appeal, which the trial
court granted on January 7, 2020. On February 5, 2020, Appellant filed a notice
of appeal that was timely from the order granting him an out-of-time appeal.
The case was docketed in this Court to the April 2020 term and submitted for
a decision on the briefs.
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though it was initially late-filed — remains pending
because no court has issued a valid legal judgment
resolving it. And because the motion for new trial is
pending, any notice of appeal to an appellate court has not
yet ripened, . . . and absent an applicable exception such
as an interlocutory appeal as provided in OCGA § 5-6-34
(b), any appeal must be dismissed.
Pounds, 309 Ga. at 381-382 (citation, punctuation and emphasis
omitted). For present purposes, the key to our holding in Pounds is
the phrase “on the merits,” a term that the opinion repeated no less
than a dozen times.
Here, although the trial court said in its January 2019 order
that Appellant’s motion for new trial was “denied” rather than
“dismissed,” the order included an express finding that the motion
was untimely and did not address the merits of the new trial motion.
The court’s order was, in substance, an order dismissing Appellant’s
new trial motion as untimely, not an order denying the motion on
the merits. See Brooks v. State, 301 Ga. 748, 752 (
804 SE2d 1) (2017)
(“[A] trial court’s mere ‘denial’ of a motion it lacks jurisdiction to
decide without more cannot be assumed to be a decision on the
merits . . . .”). See also First Christ Holiness Church, Inc. v. Owens
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Temple First Christ Holiness Church, Inc., 282 Ga. 883, 885 (
655
SE2d 605) (2008) (“[T]he appealability of an order is determined, not
by its form or the name given to it by the trial court, but rather by
its substance and effect.”). The court’s January 2019 order, which
was issued prior to the grant of an out-of-time appeal in January
2020, validly disposed of Appellant’s new trial motion. See Pounds,
309 Ga. at 381 (“[D]ismissal of an untimely motion is the proper
disposition for a late-filed motion for new trial . . . .”). As a result,
there is no motion for new trial pending in the trial court.
Accordingly, we reject the State’s jurisdictional challenge.
2. (a) Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts,
the evidence at trial showed the following. Tashcha Grant knew
Hoskin from her time living in Phenix City, Alabama, where Hoskin
also lived, and Grant and her boyfriend Dantrelle Prince had
purchased crack cocaine and marijuana from Hoskin in the past.
Prince and Appellant had been friends for six or seven years, and on
February 18 and 19, 2007, Prince talked to Appellant about buying
drugs from Hoskin. Prince told Appellant that he got a “better deal”
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from Hoskin than Appellant had been getting from other drug
dealers. On the afternoon of February 19, Grant contacted Hoskin
for Prince and Appellant and allowed them to use her cell phone to
arrange to purchase a large amount of cocaine from Hoskin. Hoskin
asked Prince to come with Appellant and to bring Grant’s cell phone,
because Hoskin did not want too many people to have his number.
Later that night, Prince and Appellant left to meet Hoskin near
Cusseta, Georgia. Hoskin led them to a house off Highway 27, but
there were numerous cars there, so Appellant used Grant’s cell
phone to call Hoskin and arrange a new meeting place on Gatford
Road just off Highway 27. Prince passed Appellant a bag with $4,000
in cash to buy the cocaine and waited in the car while Appellant
approached Hoskin’s Ford Expedition. Prince heard conversation
between Appellant and Hoskin and then multiple gunshots.
Appellant ran back to the car, got in, and sped away, telling Prince
that he thought that Hoskin was reaching for a gun, so he “shot
[Hoskin] through the truck and started running, shooting back.”
Appellant said that he fired first and that Hoskin never got to his
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gun. Appellant asked “if he had to worry about [Prince] snitching on
him,” and Prince said no. Prince told Grant when he got home that
Appellant shot Hoskin.
At 10:17 p.m., officers responding to a report of an accident
found Hoskin lying across the front seat of his SUV with gunshot
wounds to his chest and left forearm and no pulse. There were bullet
marks on the hood and windshield. Inside the SUV, officers found
Hoskin’s wallet, two cell phones, and a small amount of crack
cocaine, but no firearms, shell casings, or bullets. Officers canvassed
the scene and found six shell casings and two clear plastic bags of
what appeared to be crack cocaine on Gatford Road. A GBI forensic
chemist later determined that the substance in the plastic bags
weighed 93.47 grams and was 46.4% pure cocaine.
The morning after the shooting, Prince and Grant went to
Prince’s father’s house. While they were there, Appellant drove up
to the house, threw up his hands, and stated, “I had to do it.”
Appellant said that he thought that Grant had set him up to be
robbed and that Grant was the only person “that could get him
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caught up on this charge.” Appellant then threatened to “burn”
Grant or “take [her] out if [she] would say anything or told,” and
Prince’s father assured him that Grant would not provide any
information against him. Appellant later told Tameika Tarver and
Christopher McClendon that he shot Hoskin. Three or four days
after the shooting, Appellant and Prince fled to Texas to avoid law
enforcement.
Appellant contends that the evidence was insufficient to
support his convictions under the federal due process standard. See
Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 319 (
99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560)
(1979). When properly viewed in the light most favorable to the
verdicts, however, the evidence presented at trial and summarized
above was sufficient as a matter of constitutional due process to
authorize a rational jury to find Appellant guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted. See
id.
See also Vega v. State,
285 Ga. 32, 33 (
673 SE2d 223) (2009) (“‘It was
for the jury to determine the credibility of the witnesses and to
resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence.’” (citation
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omitted)).
(b) Appellant also contends that the evidence was
insufficient to support his convictions under former OCGA § 24-4-6,
which said: “To warrant a conviction on circumstantial evidence, the
proved facts shall not only be consistent with the hypothesis of guilt,
but shall exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the
guilt of the accused.”2 However, this doctrine applies only where the
State’s case against the defendant was “‘wholly circumstantial,’”
Hill v. State, 297 Ga. 675, 678 (
777 SE2d 460) (2015) (citation
omitted), and here, the State did not rely solely on circumstantial
evidence. There was substantial direct evidence in the form of not
only Prince’s and Grant’s testimony about Appellant’s arranging to
purchase a large amount of cocaine from Hoskin and going to meet
him to complete the transaction, but also Appellant’s admissions to
Prince, Grant, Tarver, and McClendon that he shot Hoskin.
Appellant disputes the credibility of their testimony, but direct
2 The old Evidence Code applied to Appellant’s 2010 trial. Former OCGA
§ 24-4-6 was carried forward into the new Evidence Code as OCGA § 24-14-6.
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evidence is not converted into circumstantial evidence by a witness’
lack of credibility. See id. Moreover, taken as a whole, the
circumstantial evidence the State presented was sufficient for the
jury to reject any other reasonable theory save that of Appellant’s
guilt for attempted cocaine trafficking and felony murder based on
attempted cocaine trafficking. Thus, Appellant’s statutory challenge
to the sufficiency of the evidence is meritless.
(c) Although the evidence was legally sufficient to support
Appellant’s convictions, we have noticed an obvious merger error
that harms Appellant and therefore should be corrected. See Dixon
v. State, 302 Ga. 691, 696-697 (
808 SE2d 696) (2017) (noting this
Court’s discretion to correct merger errors sua sponte and stating
that “[t]here are powerful reasons to exercise that discretion when a
merger error leads to an unauthorized conviction and sentence”). As
noted in footnote 1 above, the jury found Appellant guilty of both
attempted cocaine trafficking and felony murder based on attempted
cocaine trafficking, and the trial court entered judgments of
conviction on both guilty verdicts, sentencing Appellant to serve
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concurrent terms of life in prison for felony murder and 15 years for
attempted cocaine trafficking. However, “where, as here, the
defendant is found guilty of both felony murder and the underlying
felony, that underlying felony merges into the felony murder
conviction.” Higuera-Hernandez v. State, 289 Ga. 553, 554 (
714 SE2d
236) (2011) (citation and punctuation omitted). We therefore vacate
Appellant’s conviction and sentence for attempted cocaine
trafficking. See id.
3. Appellant contends that the trial court erred in failing to
quash the counts of the indictment charging him with attempted
cocaine trafficking and felony murder based on attempted cocaine
trafficking and in allowing the State in closing argument to
denigrate defense counsel and to vouch for a prosecution witness.
However, Appellant did not raise these claims in the trial court at
the appropriate time, and he therefore failed to preserve them for
appellate review.
The indictment charged Appellant with attempted cocaine
trafficking in violation of OCGA § 16-13-31 (a) (1) for
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knowingly and intentionally perform[ing] an act
constituting a substantial step toward the commission of
said crime [i.e., cocaine trafficking], to wit: used Tashcha
Grant’s telephone to contact . . . Hoskin . . . to arrange the
sale of a quantity of cocaine, agreed to meet, and did meet
. . . Hoskin, . . . to purchase a quantity of cocaine. . . .
The indictment also charged Appellant with felony murder for
causing Hoskin’s death “while in the commission of a felony, to wit:
criminal attempt[ed] trafficking in cocaine.” Appellant claims that
the trial court should have quashed the attempt count and the
related felony murder count, because the attempt count alleged that
he “arrange[d] the sale of a quantity of cocaine” but did not specify
who the sale was to or from or when or where the sale was to take
place. This claim is a challenge to the form of the indictment, which
Appellant waived by failing to raise it before trial in a timely filed
special demurrer. See Miller v. State, 305 Ga. 276, 280-281 (
824
SE2d 342) (2019) (“To the extent that Miller argues that the
indictment should have been more specific as to the timing in which
the offenses were committed, such an argument amounts to a special
demurrer. Such an argument must be brought before trial, or it is
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waived.” (citation omitted)).3 Thus, this claim is “not properly before
this Court” for review. Bennett v. State, 301 Ga. 874, 878 n.4 (
804
SE2d 360) (2017).
The same is true of Appellant’s complaints regarding the
State’s closing argument. The prosecutor argued to the jury,
“[T]hat’s the job of a criminal defense attorney[,] to take the truth
and to shape it,” and later said, referring to Tarver’s testimony, “It’s
not fabricated. She came in and she told you what she know[s].”
Appellant claims that the trial court erred in permitting these
arguments, which he argues improperly denigrated defense counsel
and expressed the prosecutor’s personal belief in Tarver’s
credibility. But because Appellant “did not object to the prosecutor’s
argument at trial, he has waived review of these arguments on
appeal, as the alleged errors here based on improper remarks during
closing argument are not subject to review on appeal for plain error.”
3 See also OCGA §§ 17-7-110 (“All pretrial motions, including demurrers
and special pleas, shall be filed within ten days after the date of arraignment,
unless the time for filing is extended by the court.”), 17-7-113 (“All exceptions
which go merely to the form of an indictment or accusation shall be made before
trial.”).
13
Gates v. State, 298 Ga. 324, 328 (
781 SE2d 772) (2016). See also
Corley v. State,
308 Ga. 321, 326 (
840 SE2d 391) (2020) (“Corley did
not object to these comments [i.e., the prosecutor’s allegedly
improper comments to the jury] at trial, so this enumeration of error
is not properly before our Court for review.”).
4. Finally, Appellant contends that the trial court
committed plain error in failing to instruct the jury that a sentence
of life imprisonment was mandatory if the jury found him guilty of
either murder charge. However, we have repeatedly held that it is
not plain error for a trial court not to charge the jury that a sentence
of life imprisonment is mandatory if the jury finds the defendant
guilty of either malice murder or felony murder. See, e.g., Willis v.
State, 304 Ga. 781, 785 (
822 SE2d 203) (2018). Accordingly, this
claim lacks merit.
Judgment affirmed in part and vacated in part. All the Justices
concur, except Warren, J., not participating.
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Decided October 19, 2020.
Murder. Chattahoochee Superior Court. Before Judge
Peters.
Wilbur J. Wilson, for appellant.
Julia F. Slater, District Attorney, Benjamin E. Gephardt,
Assistant District Attorney; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General,
Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K.
Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Elizabeth R.
Rosenwasser, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
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