NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and official text of the opinion.
In the Supreme Court of Georgia
Decided: December 20, 2024
S24A1083. EDWARDS-TUGGLE v. THE STATE.
ELLINGTON, Justice.
A Gwinnett County jury found Sean C. Edwards-Tuggle (“the
appellant”) guilty of felony murder and aggravated assault in
connection with the shooting death of his stepfather, Christopher
Grier.1 The appellant argues that his conviction should be reversed
because the trial court gave a coercive jury instruction, defense
counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the admission of
certain evidence or to move for a mistrial, and the cumulative effect
1 On July 11, 2018, a Gwinnett County grand jury indicted the appellant
for malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault in connection with
Grier’s death. Following a trial that ended on November 18, 2022, the jury
found the appellant guilty of felony murder and aggravated assault but
acquitted him of malice murder. The court sentenced the appellant to life in
prison for felony murder and merged the aggravated assault count into the
felony murder count. The appellant filed a motion for a new trial on December
9, 2022, and new counsel amended it on September 15, 2023. Following a
hearing held on September 21, 2023, the trial court denied the motion for a
new trial on February 5, 2024. The appellant filed a notice of appeal on March
3, 2024. The case was docketed in this Court to the August 2024 term and
submitted for a decision on the briefs.
of those two errors prejudiced his defense, warranting a new trial.
As explained below, the appellant has not carried his burden of
showing any error that requires reversal. Therefore, we affirm the
trial court’s order denying the appellant’s motion for a new trial.
The evidence admitted at trial shows the following. The
appellant shot and killed Grier on April 1, 2018, during an Easter
Sunday cook-out at the family’s Gwinnett County home. At the time
of the shooting, the appellant and his half-sister, Camryn Grier
(“Camryn”), as well as their mother, Charnique Edwards
(“Edwards”), lived in the same home with Grier. The appellant, who
was 27 years old at the time, had moved back into the family home
a few months prior to the shooting. Camryn, who described the
family dynamic as “dysfunctional,” testified that her parents argued
frequently and that Grier was verbally abusive to her mother and
the appellant.
Shortly before the shooting, Grier, Edwards, Camryn, the
appellant, and the appellant’s eight-year-old daughter, S. T., had
gathered at the family home. The appellant and Camryn were in
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their rooms. Edwards and S. T. were in the kitchen and Grier was
in the backyard, grilling chicken. While the food was cooking, Grier
and Edwards began arguing. Grier cursed at Edwards and started
calling her and the appellant vulgar names.
During the argument, the appellant emerged from his room
adjacent to the kitchen and went to the garage, where his car was
parked. When he came back into the kitchen, he had a pistol in his
hand. S. T., who was standing by a door that opened from the
kitchen into the back yard, testified that the appellant pointed his
gun at Grier as Grier returned from the grill. Edwards testified that,
as Grier walked across the patio toward the kitchen door, the
appellant pointed his gun at Grier and said: “Say something now,
mother f**ker.” Edwards testified that the appellant “had an evil
look in his eyes.” The appellant then shot Grier twice in the chest,
and Grier collapsed to the ground. Edwards and S. T. both testified
that Grier had nothing in his hands when the appellant shot him.
Camryn testified that, while she was upstairs in her room, she
heard her mother shout: “Don’t do that. Sean, don’t do that.” Then
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she heard two gunshots. Camryn ran downstairs to the kitchen. She
saw Grier lying on the ground just outside the kitchen door. The
appellant was nearby, holding a gun. When Camryn asked the
appellant why he had shot her father, he responded: “Get out of my
face.” The appellant left the house and did not return. S. T. called
911 while Camryn and Edwards tried to help Grier. Camryn
testified that she saw nothing in her father’s hands or on the ground
around him that could be used as a weapon.
The police who responded to the scene saw nothing that could
be used as a weapon on or near Grier’s body. The police recovered
two .40 caliber casings from the residence. The medical examiner
testified that two .40 caliber projectiles pierced Grier’s chest,
causing massive heart and lung injuries that were not survivable.
He ruled the manner of Grier’s death a homicide.
Two days after the shooting, the appellant, who had fled to New
York, approached a transit officer at a train station in Brooklyn. He
told the officer that he wanted to turn himself in because he had
done something “really, really bad.” The transit officer testified that
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the appellant told her that he had shot his stepfather during an
argument and wanted to turn himself in. After detaining the
appellant, the New York authorities searched his backpack and
found an unfired bullet but no gun.
The appellant testified in his defense at trial. He said that he
was awakened from a nap by the argument between his mother and
Grier. When he emerged from his bedroom, he had some of his
belongings, including his gun, in his hands. The appellant testified
that Grier approached him with a large grill fork in his hand,
verbally abused him, and then stabbed him in the chest with the
fork. He claimed that he shot Grier in self-defense. He testified that
he got treatment for his wound in New York, but the defense offered
no corroborating evidence of the claimed injury.
On behalf of the defense, a clinical social worker testified that
the appellant shot Grier while suffering from “battered person
syndrome.” The appellant also presented several lay witnesses,
including his mother, who testified that Grier had repeatedly
verbally and physically abused the appellant since 2003, shortly
5
after Grier had married his mother. In rebuttal, the State offered
the testimony of a psychiatrist who opined that the appellant – who
was an adult at the time of the crime and was physically and
financially capable of leaving the family home – had “an absence of
behavior or psychiatric illness that would be consistent with
battered person syndrome.” For example, the appellant showed no
signs of remorse or “learned helplessness;” moreover, he was
sometimes the aggressor in family disputes. The psychiatrist
testified that the appellant had “a great deal of dislike” for Grier and
that it was possible the shooting had been motivated by revenge.
1. The appellant contends that the trial court erred in giving
the jury an instruction concerning the time available for
deliberations, which he characterizes as “unduly coercive,” and that
the trial court should have granted a mistrial after defense counsel
objected to the instruction. For the following reasons, we disagree.
The trial transcript shows that, following the charge of the
court and just before the jury retired to deliberate, the judge told the
jurors the following:
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Folks, as I told you, submitting an important case to both
sides at 4:10 on a Friday afternoon before a holiday week
is not ideal, but it’s still an important case to both sides.
My experience is that jury deliberations take a while.
That’s why we have 12 people. They see it differently. So
the intent is to get it right, not go fast. Ordinarily, we
would keep you until you reach a verdict. That may or
may not be possible today. And then that creates another
problem because it’s my understanding that there’s at
least some jurors that may not be available on Monday.
See, most of the time I just have you come back the next
day. We can no longer open the courtroom on [the
weekend] – the building is so huge, there’s no way to get
the infrastructure in to make it work anymore. There may
come a time, if you deliberate into the evening, that you
want something to eat. In that regard there, the county
authorizes us – how is it we word it? They authorize us to
get food from Papa Johns in Lawrenceville.
My point in mentioning that to you is on a Friday, when I
have to order food for jurors, it really takes about an hour
to an hour and 15 minutes to get it here. So if you decide
you want me or you need me to order food for you, build
that into your request.
After the jury left the courtroom, defense counsel moved for a
mistrial, arguing that the court’s instruction suggested that the jury
should expedite their deliberations and reach a verdict that evening.
The judge responded that the jury could return on Monday, so long
as they had sufficient jurors available that day. Although one juror
might be out of town, the judge explained, they still had an
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alternate. The judge then told counsel: “So my intent is I want to
keep them [until] they get a verdict. I have never given a capital case
to a jury at 4:10 in the afternoon and had them reach a verdict that
night. It’s never happened.” The jury, however, returned its verdict
that night at 10:56 p.m.
The appellant argued that the court’s instructions coerced the
jurors into disregarding their obligations as jurors in favor of
reaching a verdict quickly. Relying in part on cases involving the
propriety of Allen 2 charges, the appellant argued that the court’s
instructions were a form of “verdict urging” involving a “time fuse”
charge, one that implied a deadline for returning a verdict. The
State, on the other hand, contended that the court’s instructions did
not urge the jury to reach a verdict quickly; rather, they were merely
administrative guidance concerning scheduling matters. As
2 See Allen v. United States, 164 U.S. 492 (17 SCt 154, 41 LE 528) (1896).
“The central inquiry in reviewing an Allen charge is whether the instruction is
coercive so as to cause a juror to abandon an honest conviction for reasons other
than those based upon the trial or the arguments of other jurors.” Scott v. State, 290 Ga. 883, 888 (6) (725 SE2d 305) (2012). In this case, the jury had not yet
begun to deliberate. The circumstances did not involve a dead-locked jury or
one that had been deliberating for an unusually long period of time.
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explained below, we agree with the State.3
Viewed in context, the trial judge’s remarks about scheduling
the jury’s deliberations were simply ordinary efforts to manage the
business of a trial. Over the course of the trial, the judge kept the
jury informed about various expected delays and breaks in the
proceedings due to unrelated court matters, Veterans Day, and
Thanksgiving. The judge told the jury at one point: “I’ll try to keep
things going, you know, keep us on track. . . . We’re not in the gofast business; we’re in the get-it-right business.” On the evening of
the day before the case went to the jury, the judge informed the jury
that deliberations might be continued into the following week. The
judge noted: “Sometimes juries deliberate for days. Sometimes they
deliberate [for] a short time. There’s no prediction. I just don’t want
there to be any exigency tied to your time. That’s all I try to avoid,
so that you can give things your undivided attention.”
3 Moreover, even if a claim that a trial judge encouraged a jury to move
deliberations along (outside the Allen-charge context and without anything
more) is the kind of jury-coercion claim that could in theory warrant a mistrial
(a point that we do not decide today), we conclude that the appellant has not
shown that any such claim prevails here.
9
With respect to such administrative or trial management
instructions, “a broad discretion is vested in the judge below, and
that that discretion will not be controlled by this court unless it is
manifestly abused.” Watkins v. State, 278 Ga. 414, 415 (603 SE2d
222) (2004) (citation and punctuation omitted). The judge’s
discretion in controlling the conduct of a trial necessarily includes
the power to determine the length of time the jury will be allowed to
deliberate on a given day. See also Emerson v. State, 315 Ga. App.
105, 112 (2) (726 SE2d 600) (2012) (The trial court did not abuse its
discretion in instructing the jurors that they would have to arrange
for childcare during the course of deliberations if the deliberations
extended past regular working hours. The charge merely set out the
trial court’s time schedule for conducting deliberations so that the
jury could plan ahead.); Simpkins v. State, 149 Ga. App. 763, 768 (4),
769 (256 SE2d 63) (1979) (The trial court did not abuse its discretion
in retaining the jury in deliberations from 6:30 p.m. until 4 a.m. the
following morning.). See also OCGA § 15-1-3 (4) (“Every court has
power . . . [t]o control, in the furtherance of justice, the conduct of its
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officers and all other persons connected with a judicial proceeding
before it, in every matter appertaining thereto[.]”).
Given the circumstances of this case, the trial court’s remarks
about submitting the case on a Friday afternoon, ordering dinner,
and possibly continuing into the following week cannot be
understood as urging the jury to reach a verdict quickly or setting a
deadline for returning a verdict. Rather, the court’s statements
constituted administrative guidance for the jury concerning how
long they would likely be deliberating that evening and in the
coming days, guidance that clearly fell within the wide discretion
afforded trial judges in managing their courtrooms. Consequently,
the appellant has shown no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s
ruling denying the appellant’s motion for a mistrial on this ground.
See, e.g., Watkins, 278 Ga. at 415; Emerson v. State, 315 Ga. App. at
112 (2); Simpkins v. State, 149 Ga. App. at768 (4).
2. The appellant asserts that he was denied constitutionally
effective assistance of counsel when his attorney failed to object to
questions posed by the prosecutor on cross-examination that elicited
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improper evidence of the appellant’s bad character, in violation of
OCGA § 24-4-404 (a) and (b). He argues that his convictions must be
reversed because trial counsel’s deficient performance resulted in
the admission of unfairly prejudicial evidence. In addition, the
appellant argues that trial counsel should have moved for a mistrial.
For the following reasons, we disagree.
To establish ineffective assistance of counsel, a defendant must
show that his counsel’s performance was professionally deficient
and that such deficient performance resulted in prejudice to the
defendant. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 695 (III) (B) (104
SCt 2052, 80 LE2d 674) (1984); Wesley v. State, 286 Ga. 355, 356 (3)
(689 SE2d 280) (2010). To prove deficient performance, the appellant
must show that his attorney “performed at trial in an objectively
unreasonable way considering all the circumstances and in the light
of prevailing professional norms.” Romer v. State, 293 Ga. 339, 344
(3) (745 SE2d 637) (2013); see also Strickland, 466 U. S. at 687-688
(III). To prove prejudice, the appellant must establish a reasonable
probability that, in the absence of counsel’s deficient performance,
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the result of the trial would have been different. Strickland, 466 U.S.
at 695 (III) (B). If the appellant fails to establish either the “deficient
performance” or the “prejudice” prong of the Strickland test, this
Court is not required to examine the other prong. See Green v. State,
291 Ga. 579, 580 (2) (731 SE2d 359) (2012).
The trial transcript shows that the prosecutor questioned the
appellant about his troubled relationship with S. T.’s mother,
Melissa Glasper, and that the appellant admitted that he and
Glasper had argued. When asked if he had ever struck Glasper, the
appellant denied that he had. When the prosecutor asked if he had
been arrested for striking her, the appellant replied: “No. I got
arrested for when she cheated on me. And we were cheating on each
other.” When asked again, the appellant admitted that he had been
arrested for family violence. At that point, the trial court stopped
the cross-examination and excused the jury from the courtroom.
Outside the presence of the jury, the court asked the prosecutor
why evidence of the appellant’s arrest was admissible. The
prosecutor explained that she was attempting to rebut the
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appellant’s portrait of himself “as the victim of violence by all of
these people.” The prosecutor acknowledged, however, that she had
not asked to admit the evidence under OCGA § 24-4-404 (b). When
the court questioned defense counsel about his lack of an objection
to this testimony, counsel explained that he assumed the prosecutor
was going to follow up as to why it was admissible. The trial court
asked the parties to contemplate whether a mistrial was in order
and took a five-minute recess. After the recess, the court concluded
that the State had elicited improper character evidence and asked
defense counsel what remedy he preferred. Defense counsel
responded,
I ask that you give a cautionary instruction to the jury to
disregard what they heard. This is inappropriate evidence
under the rules, whatever legal admonishment you want,
but with all due respect, we’ve conferred, and my client
wants to proceed with this jury. We will not request, your
Honor, the mistrial.
With respect to his decision not to object, trial counsel added: “[W]e
knew what we were doing, respectfully.”
Upon the jury’s return, the trial court gave the following
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curative instruction:
Ladies and gentlemen, there was an objection – actually,
I specifically asked you to step out. There was no
objection. It was on my own volition. I find that the State’s
inquiry concerning past arrest of the defendant to be
improper. Has absolutely nothing to do with this trial, not
in accordance with the evidence rules that we’re all bound
to follow. So I must instruct you to disregard it in its
entirety. It has no bearing in this case.
The trial court asked trial counsel if he desired any additional
instruction, and counsel responded that the court’s instruction was
satisfactory.
At the hearing on appellant’s motion for a new trial, trial
counsel explained that his decision not to object to evidence of the
appellant’s prior misdemeanor arrest for striking his girlfriend was
a strategic decision. Counsel explained that he believed the evidence
may have been admitted later pursuant to Rule 703 as something
the State’s expert had considered when evaluating the appellant’s
“battered person syndrome” defense. Moreover, counsel preferred
having this incident before the jury because it would show that “the
best they’ve got of him being aggressive is pushing a girlfriend.”
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Counsel said he was far more concerned about the serious matter of
the appellant perpetrating a home invasion and aggravated assault
with a firearm just twelve hours before the shooting, and counsel
had successfully kept that out of evidence. Additionally, when asked
why he wanted a curative instruction if he wanted the misdemeanor
arrest in evidence, trial counsel explained that if he chose not to
accept the court’s offer for a curative instruction, he would draw
attention to the matter and “educate the State” on his strategy. Trial
counsel added: “We wanted this jury. We picked a good jury.”
The appellant argues that trial counsel’s strategy was not
reasonable under the circumstances because evidence of the
misdemeanor family violence convictions would not have been
admissible under OCGA § 24-7-703.4 However, assuming without
deciding that trial counsel’s strategy was unreasonable and that
4 OCGA § 24-7-703 provides:
Such facts or data [reasonably relied upon by an expert] that are
otherwise inadmissible shall not be disclosed to the jury by the
proponent of the opinion or inference unless the court determines
that their probative value in assisting the jury to evaluate the
expert’s opinion substantially outweighs their prejudicial effect.
16
counsel was deficient for failing to object to the evidence or to move
for a mistrial, the admission of the evidence did not prejudice the
appellant’s defense. First, “the trial court’s prompt curative
instruction negated any prejudice by telling the jury to disregard the
reference, an instruction that we presume the jury followed.” Lynn
v. State, 310 Ga. 608, 612 (3) (852 SE2d 843) (2020). Additionally,
the challenged testimony was fleeting, with the jury only hearing
that the appellant had been arrested – not convicted – for family
violence and that the appellant had denied striking his girlfriend.
See Rashad v. State, 318 Ga. 199, 210 (3) (b) (897 SE2d 760) (2024)
(pretermitting whether a witness’s reference to the defendant’s prior
time in jail violated Rule 404 (b), testimony was fleeting and
undetailed and “likely had little prejudicial effect on the jury”).
Moreover, no prejudice from the admission of this evidence has been
shown given the other, compelling evidence of the appellant’s guilt.
In this case, the appellant’s family members testified that the
appellant shot Grier, who was unarmed, after hearing Grier verbally
abuse the appellant and the appellant’s mother. Other than the
17
appellant’s own self-serving testimony, there was no evidence of a
weapon or an injury to the appellant’s body that would substantiate
his claim of self-defense. Further, the appellant’s “battered person
syndrome” defense had been undermined by testimony from the
State’s expert, who opined that the appellant did not display
behaviors consistent with the defense. The appellant also fled to
New York where he admitted to a transit officer that he had “done
something really, really bad” when he shot his stepfather. The
appellant’s own mother testified that the appellant looked “evil”
during the shooting, and that Grier did not deserve to die over a
mere argument. Given the overwhelming evidence of the appellant’s
guilt, there is no reasonable probability that the trial’s outcome
would have been different absent the admission of appellant’s
testimony. See Clements v. State, 317 Ga. 772, 798 (7) (c) (896 SE2d
549) (2023) (“Even if [the witness’s] testimony was improper
character evidence that should have been excluded under OCGA §
24-4-404 (a), the admission of this testimony did not prejudice [the]
defense given the other compelling evidence detailed above[.]”).
18
Further, because there was little if any prejudice from the admission
of the evidence, particularly in light of the trial court’s instructions,
the appellant cannot show that the trial court would have abused its
discretion in denying a motion for a mistrial under these
circumstances, had the appellant made such a motion. See Thrift v.
State, 310 Ga. 499, 503 (4) (852 SE2d 560) (2020) (The trial court did
not abuse its discretion in denying a motion for a mistrial based on
the admission of allegedly improper character evidence where the
evidence had negligible impact on the outcome of the trial.).
Because the requisite prejudice has not been shown, the trial
court properly found that the appellant failed to carry his burden
under Strickland and, therefore, properly denied the motion for a
new trial on ineffective assistance of counsel grounds. See Green,
291 Ga. at 580 (2).
3. The appellant argues that he is entitled to a new trial due
to the cumulative prejudicial impact of the trial court’s errors. A
cumulative error analysis, however, requires an appellant to show
that “at least two errors were committed in the course of the trial[.]”
19
Flood v. State, 311 Ga. 800, 808 (2) (d) (860 SE2d 731) (2021)
(citation and punctuation omitted). Here, there is no basis for
evaluating the cumulative effect of alleged errors because the
appellant has not shown that at least two errors occurred. See id. at
808-809 (2) (d).
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
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