310 Ga. 428
FINAL COPY
S20A1173. WILCOX v. THE STATE.
BOGGS, Justice.
Appellant Namon Wilcox challenges his 2016 convictions for
rape, malice murder, and other crimes in connection with the rape
and subsequent stabbing death of Suzanne Stilwell.1 Appellant
1 Stilwell was killed on March 22, 2015. On August 13, 2015, a Ware
County grand jury indicted Appellant and Christopher Ryan Raulerson for
burglary in the first degree (Count 1), rape (Count 2), aggravated assault for
attempted suffocation with a pillow (Count 3), aggravated assault with the butt
of a rifle (Count 4), malice murder (Count 5), felony murder (Count 6), theft by
taking a car (Count 7), criminal trespass for damaging the car (Count 8), and
armed robbery (Count 9). Raulerson was also indicted for possession of a
firearm by a convicted felon (Count 10). Raulerson pled guilty to the charges
and received three life sentences. At a trial from May 17 to 19, 2016, where
Raulerson testified as a State witness and Appellant testified on his own
behalf, the jury found Appellant guilty of all charges. The trial court sentenced
Appellant to concurrent terms of twenty years in prison each for burglary
(Count 1) and aggravated assault (Count 3), five years for theft by taking
(Count 7), twelve months for criminal trespass (Count 8); life for rape (Count
2) to run consecutively to Count 1; twenty years for aggravated assault (Count
4) to run consecutively to Count 3; life without parole for malice murder (Count
5) and for felony murder (Count 6) to run consecutively to Counts 3 and 4; and
life for armed robbery (Count 9) to run consecutively to Counts 5 and 6. The
trial court later ordered the felony murder count vacated by operation of law.
On June 16, 2016, Appellant filed a motion for new trial, which he amended
through new counsel on July 26, 2019. After a hearing on December 11, 2019,
the trial court denied the motion for new trial as amended in an order filed on
December 17, 2019. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal, and the case was
contends that the evidence was legally insufficient to support his
convictions and asks this Court to grant a new trial on the general
grounds. We affirm.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence
at trial showed the following. In March 2015, Ryan Raulerson lived
with Appellant. Raulerson had previously rented a room from
Stilwell but was kicked out due to a dispute over money. Stilwell
filed suit against Raulerson to recover the allegedly stolen funds.
On the night of March 22, 2015, in need of money, Raulerson
and Appellant walked to Raulerson’s grandmother’s house to obtain
a .22-caliber rifle, which they intended to use to commit armed
robbery. They first attempted to rob a home that had a U-Haul truck
parked out front, believing it meant the homeowner had money.
Raulerson knocked on the door and sought to lure the homeowner
outside, while Appellant stood out of view holding the rifle. They
abandoned the plan when they became concerned that the
docketed in this Court to the August 2020 term and submitted for a decision
on the briefs.
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homeowner may have been armed.
At Appellant’s suggestion, the two men headed toward
Stilwell’s home. Appellant expressed his desire to rob, rape, and
then kill Stilwell. Upon arriving at her home, they tried the same
tactic as before: Appellant stood holding the rifle out of view while
Raulerson went to knock on the front door. They once more got cold
feet when the porch light turned on, the dogs began barking, and
Raulerson saw Stilwell in the window. Appellant and Raulerson
then ran and hid out of sight while Stilwell answered the door. They
waited to leave until she went back inside.
After they left Stilwell’s house, Raulerson told Appellant that
he needed to rest his back. They eventually found a place to rest,
being careful to avoid any area surveyed by cameras. Raulerson
checked the rifle and realized it was loaded with only one bullet. He
took it out, showed Appellant, and put the round back in the rifle.
Appellant again expressed his intent to rape Stilwell, and the two
men left to go back to her house.
As they got closer to the house, Raulerson gave Appellant the
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rifle. They approached Stilwell’s house from the back yard, either
hopping the back fence or going through the back gate, and they both
walked up to the back porch. Raulerson threw open the screen door
and kicked open the back door. At that point, Appellant rushed in
with the gun, shot one of Stilwell’s dogs, pointed the gun at Stilwell
and said, “Let me see your hands.” Stilwell, standing in her
nightshirt and underwear, either asked, “Well, how did you get in
here?” or “Who let you in my house?” Appellant again demanded to
see her hands and asked where she kept the phones. Stilwell
pleaded with Appellant not to shoot her and said, “Here’s a dollar
and quarter. That’s all I got. You can have it.”
Appellant then started grabbing at Stilwell’s underwear, and
she began to fight him. At this point Raulerson joined the fray. The
two men got Stilwell to her bed, and Raulerson held her shoulders
down with his knees while Appellant held her legs. Appellant pulled
his pants down to his knees and had sex with Stilwell against her
will. Stilwell cried for help and fought both men. She bit Raulerson’s
finger and got a leg loose, kicking Appellant. Appellant punched
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Stilwell in the stomach to get her to stop resisting. Out of concern
for leaving any DNA behind, Appellant ejaculated in Stilwell’s
mouth. When he finished, Appellant told Raulerson to smother
Stilwell with a pillow.
Despite Raulerson’s efforts, even pressing his knee into her
neck, Stilwell was too strong, and Raulerson was unable to smother
her. Appellant, who was getting dressed, saw Raulerson and Stilwell
fighting, picked up the gun from where he had left it, and hit Stilwell
in the face with the butt of the rifle as many as seven times. While
holding the gun on the dazed Stilwell, Appellant told Raulerson to
get something to kill her with. Raulerson returned with a large
kitchen knife and handed it to Appellant. Appellant hesitated for a
minute or two and then handed the knife back to Raulerson and
said, “No, you do it.” Raulerson stabbed Stilwell in the neck two
times, handed the knife to Appellant, and left the room to wash up
and change. Appellant then stabbed Stilwell once in the neck,
causing the third and final stab wound. Raulerson then came back
and poured bleach in Stilwell’s mouth and on her genitals in an
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attempt to destroy DNA evidence.
Afterwards, Appellant grabbed Stilwell’s keys from her
dresser, and the two men left in Stilwell’s car, bringing the knife and
gun with them. Appellant drove the vehicle to Blackshear. They
stopped at a convenience store where Raulerson got a cup of water
and then continued to drive around. At some point they disposed of
the murder weapon and gun and later got lost, returned to
Waycross, and planned to dump the car. However, the car got stuck
in the mud. While Raulerson attempted to wipe the vehicle down to
remove prints, Appellant tried to set the car on fire using a map and
toilet paper. Although he succeeded in starting a fire in the car, he
failed to set it ablaze. The two men then left on foot, returned to
their home just before daybreak, and slept.
The next day, Appellant called the police and asked to speak
with them. During the discussion, he repeatedly changed his story
and admitted lying to the police. Each change in the story revealed
his greater involvement in the crime. He knew intimate details of
the crime that had yet to be released to the public, including that
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Stilwell had been stabbed and where the knife was hidden. During
his changing account of events, Appellant told the police that
Raulerson threatened his life and family, coercing him into
committing the crimes, including holding a knife to his throat,
forcing him to have intercourse with Stilwell against her will. At
trial, while Appellant maintained that Raulerson committed the
crimes and that Appellant’s presence was due to a combination of
duress and shock, he admitted that Raulerson never held a knife to
his throat.
At trial, the State elicited testimony that Stilwell’s vehicle was
worth more than a few thousand dollars and that a dollar and 12
cents was found with Stilwell’s body, wrapped in her bedding.
1. Appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to
support his convictions. Appellant challenges each conviction
individually, arguing that he either was not a party to the crimes or
was coerced into committing them. Separately, he also claims that
he could not be guilty of burglary as he did not enter Stilwell’s home
“without authority” because Raulerson had permission to be there.
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We disagree.
We must view the facts in the light most favorable to the
verdicts. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 319 (
99 SCt 2781, 61
LE2d 560) (1979). Viewed in this manner, the evidence shows that
Appellant desired to rob, rape, and murder Stilwell and — with the
help of Raulerson — broke into Stilwell’s home, demanded her
possessions at gunpoint, raped her, tried to suffocate her with a
pillow, beat her with the butt of a rifle, stabbed her to death, poured
bleach on her body to hide DNA evidence, fled the crime scene in her
vehicle, hid the murder weapons, and then tried to set her car on
fire. In the same light, the evidence shows that neither Raulerson
nor Appellant had authority to enter Stilwell’s home. Raulerson was
afraid to enter the home from the front door the first time he went
to Stilwell’s home that night and had to break down the back door
to gain entry the second time. When Appellant entered the home,
Stilwell asked how he got in.
As to Appellant’s affirmative defense of coercion, his self-
serving testimony “at most created a conflict with other evidence
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that showed his participation in the crimes was voluntary,”
(punctuation omitted) Brooks v. State, 305 Ga. 600, 605 (
826 SE2d
45) (2019) (quoting Conaway v. State,
277 Ga. 422, 423 (
589 SE2d
108) (2003)), and “it is not for this Court to either weigh or resolve
conflicts in the evidence; those matters are left firmly within the
province of the jury.” Lowery v. State,
310 Ga. 360, 362 (1) (a) (
851
SE2d 538) (2020).
Regarding Appellant’s contention that he did not personally
perform any particular act of the crimes — be it holding the gun,
moving the dollar and change, delivering the killing blow, taking the
car keys, driving the car, or setting it on fire — Appellant’s
involvement is more than enough for the jury to conclude that he
was a party to the crimes and thus guilty as if he had committed
each crime himself. See OCGA § 16-2-20 (defining parties to a
crime); Butts v. State, 297 Ga. 766, 770 (
778 SE2d 205) (2015) (jury
may infer common criminal intent from defendant’s presence,
companionship, and conduct with another perpetrator before,
during, and after the crimes); Cargill v. State,
256 Ga. 252, 253 (347
9
SE2d 559) (1986) (as to the guilt of a party to a crime for co-
perpetrator’s acts, “[t]he act of one [perpetrator] was the act of the
other in the commission of [the crimes]”).
Thus, the evidence was sufficient to authorize a rational jury
to reject Appellant’s coercion defense and find him guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted.
2. Appellant also asks this Court to review the trial court’s
exercise of discretion in denying his motion for a new trial on the
general grounds. See OCGA §§ 5-5-20, 5-5-21. We decline to do so;
the trial court alone is the “arbiter of the general grounds.” Wilson
v. State, 302 Ga. 106, 109 (
805 SE2d 98) (2017). Having found the
evidence sufficient above, we have no basis to disturb the trial
court’s denial of Appellant’s motion for new trial on the general
grounds.
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur, except Warren, J.,
not participating.
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Decided November 16, 2020.
Murder. Ware Superior Court. Before Judge Gillis.
Bryan C. Smith, for appellant.
George E. Barnhill, District Attorney, Michelle C. McIntire,
Assistant District Attorney; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General,
Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K.
Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
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