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: March 4, 2025
S25A0212. BERRY v. THE STATE.
COLVIN, Justice.
Appellant Christopher Berry appeals his convictions for malice
murder and other crimes related to the shooting death of
Cordeldrick Laquinn Brooks. 1 Appellant argues that the trial court
1 The crimes occurred on September 22, 2015. On December 15, 2015, a
Richmond County grand jury returned an eight-count indictment against
Appellant and Kameron Reese and a seven-count indictment against
Samantha Griffin. Appellant was charged with malice murder (Count 1),
felony murder (Count 2), kidnapping (Count 3), criminal attempt to commit
armed robbery (Count 4), hijacking of a motor vehicle (Count 5), arson in the
second degree (Count 6), possession of a firearm during the commission of a
crime (Count 7), and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon (Count 8).
Before trial, Reese pled guilty to some of the charges against him pursuant to
a negotiated plea deal and agreed to testify for the State. Griffin was set to be
tried separately from Appellant.
A jury trial was held from April 24 through 28, 2018. Count 4 was nol
prossed, and the jury found Appellant guilty on all the remaining counts. The
trial court sentenced Appellant to life in prison for malice murder (Count 1)
and for kidnapping (Count 3). The trial court also imposed ten-year concurrent
prison sentences for hijacking a motor vehicle (Count 5) and arson in the
second degree (Count 6) and five-year consecutive prison sentences for
possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime (Count 7) and
erred in denying his motion for directed verdict and that trial
counsel was ineffective for failing to object to hearsay. As explained
below, however, Appellant has not shown that the trial court erred
in denying his motion for directed verdict, and his ineffectiveassistance-of-counsel claim is waived. Accordingly, we affirm his
convictions.
1. The trial evidence showed the following. Toni Murray, the
mother of Brooks’s child, testified that Brooks left their home
driving a white GMC Envoy on the night of September 21, 2015. Cell
phone records and mapping data showed that Brooks’s cell phone
was in “the North Augusta area” between 3:18 a.m. and 3:41 a.m. on
September 22, 2015. Brooks’s phone number then interacted with
co-defendant Kameron Reese’s phone number a total of six times
possession of a firearm by a convicted felon (Count 8). Appellant’s felonymurder count (Count 2) was vacated by operation of law.
Appellant moved for a new trial on April 30, 2018, and amended the
motion through new counsel on March 19, 2019. The trial court entered an
order denying Appellant’s motion for new trial on July 30, 2019, and Appellant
timely filed a notice of appeal directed to this Court on August 20, 2019. The
appeal was docketed to this Court’s term beginning in December 2024 and
submitted for a decision on the briefs.
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between 4:00 a.m. and 4:08 a.m. By 4:08 a.m., Brooks’s cell phone
had traveled to downtown Augusta where Brooks’s and Reese’s cell
phones were “hitting off the same tower” and where Samantha
Griffin lived.
At trial, Reese testified that he had pled guilty to some of the
charges and that he was required to testify pursuant to his plea
agreement. Reese was nevertheless a hostile witness for the State,
and the State admitted and played for the jury portions of Reese’s
police interview. In his police interview, Reese made the following
statements. On the night of September 21, 2015, Brooks came to
Griffin’s home, where Reese, Appellant, and Griffin were present.
When Brooks entered Griffin’s home, Appellant “rushed” up to
Brooks at the door with a gun, hit Brooks in the face with the gun,
told him to move, and began “talking s**t.” Reese told Appellant to
put his gun away, and, when Brooks asked Reese to tell Appellant
not to hurt him, Reese reassured Brooks, saying, “ain’t nothing
[go]nna happen.” Brooks then told Appellant that he knew where
some “weed” was, and that he could take Appellant to a hotel to
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purchase some. Brooks asked Reese to ride along with him and
Appellant because Brooks was afraid to travel with Appellant alone.
And at some point, Appellant made Brooks strip before making him
put his clothes back on without his boxers, shoes, or socks.
Reese said that Reese, Brooks, and Appellant got into the
Envoy, and that Brooks drove them some way before reaching the
intersection of Lumpkin and Old McDuffie Roads. Cellular location
data confirmed that Reese’s cellular device was present in the area
of that intersection around 5:16 a.m. And Reese told police that, once
Brooks got to the intersection, Brooks jerked the car to the right and
hit a pole. Reese said he opened his door to get out of the vehicle and
began to run away before hearing three gun shots. And he claimed
throughout his police interview that “I didn’t take [Brooks] for a
ride,” “I didn’t know [Appellant] was gonna do that,” “I never had a
gun,” and “I didn’t go along with it.”
Reese gave different versions of how he fled the scene during
the police interview. At one point, he claimed that a Toyota Camry
picked him up as he was running away. But he later claimed that
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Appellant drove the wrecked Envoy to pick him up; that during the
car ride from the scene, Appellant said that he shot Brooks; and that
Reese and Appellant set the Envoy on fire. Cell phone records
showed that Reese’s and Appellant’s phone numbers interacted
seven times between 5:16 a.m. and 5:23 a.m. that day.
A witness who was traveling through the area that morning
testified that he found Brooks lying injured and without shoes at the
intersection of Lumpkin and Old McDuffie Roads. When officers
arrived at the scene, they found Brooks, a damaged telephone pole,
and a vehicle bumper and grill lying nearby.
Brooks died shortly after the incident. A medical examiner
testified that Brooks sustained two gunshot wounds — one to the
back and one to the left hip — and that he died from “gunshot
wounds of [the] torso.”
2. Appellant argues that the trial court erred in denying his
motion for a directed verdict because there was no evidence
corroborating co-defendant Reese’s statement inculpating
Appellant. This claim fails.
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“The standard of review for the denial of a motion for a directed
verdict of acquittal is the same as for determining the sufficiency of
the evidence to support a conviction.” Clements v. State, 317 Ga. 772,
783 (1) (896 SE2d 549) (2023) (citation and punctuation omitted). To
assess the sufficiency of the evidence,
we view all of the evidence presented at trial in the light
most favorable to the verdicts and ask whether any
rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was
convicted.
Id. at 789 (4) (citation and punctuation omitted).
Georgia law provides that in “‘felony cases where the only
witness is an accomplice, the testimony of a single witness shall not
be sufficient’ to support a defendant’s convictions” absent
corroboration. Caldwell v. State, 313 Ga. 640, 643 (1) (872 SE2d 712)
(2022) (quoting OCGA § 24-14-8). However, “when the issue of
whether a witness was an accomplice was submitted to the jury and
there was evidence allowing the jury to find that the witness was
not an accomplice, corroborating evidence is not required to sustain
a guilty verdict on appeal.” Id. at 644 (1) (emphasis in original). And
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we have held that a jury can find that a witness was not an
accomplice even if, as here, the witness pled guilty to charges. See
id. (noting that “even [the] joint indictment and guilty plea of [a]
witness do[ ] not eliminate the jury question as to whether the
witness was an accomplice”).
Here, the jury was properly instructed on the requirement for
corroboration of an accomplice’s testimony and was authorized,
based on the evidence presented at trial, to find that Reese was not
an accomplice, making corroboration unnecessary as a matter of
Georgia statutory law. See id. at 645 (1). Specifically, the jury heard
evidence that Reese tried to get Appellant to put his gun away after
pointing it at Brooks; that Reese only rode with Brooks and
Appellant because Brooks asked him out of fear of Appellant; that
only Appellant had a gun; that Reese did not know Appellant would
shoot Brooks; and that, by the time the shots were fired, Reese was
running away from the crash. Based on this evidence, the jury could
have reasonably concluded that Reese was not an accomplice. And
as a result, the trial court did not err in denying Appellant’s motion
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for directed verdict. See id. (holding that the properly-instructed
jury could have found that “[the State’s sole witness implicating the
appellant in the crimes] was not an accomplice” because the jury was
“instructed on the pertinent legal principles, the general verdict did
not specify whether the jury found that [the witness] was an
accomplice, and the jury could have inferred from [the witness’s]
testimony that she had no prior knowledge of [the appellant’s] intent
to shoot [the victim] or do anything other than buy marijuana”);
Fisher v. State, 309 Ga. 814, 819 (2) (a) (848 SE2d 434) (2020)
(holding that “[t]he jury could . . . determine that [the witness] was
not an accomplice,” and thus that corroboration was not necessary,
where the jury was “properly charged” and was “authorized to credit
[the witness’s] testimony that he had no prior knowledge that [the
appellant] would shoot or kill [the victim] and that [the witness]
drove [the appellant] away from the shooting out of fear that [the
appellant] might shoot him too”); State v. Grier, 309 Ga. 452, 454-456 (1) (2) (847 SE2d 313) (2020) (holding that the “evidence
authorized the jury to find that [a witness] was not an accomplice at
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all” where he testified that he wanted “nothing to do with” holding
the victims at gunpoint, despite the fact that he testified to being
present when the armed robbery was planned and carried out,
fleeing with the coconspirators, and receiving money to “stay quiet”).
3. Appellant also claims that trial counsel was ineffective for
failing to object on hearsay grounds to Investigator Ken Rogers’s
testimony identifying Appellant’s phone number. This claim,
however, is waived. In Appellant’s amended motion for new trial,
which he filed through new counsel, Appellant asserted only that
trial counsel was ineffective for “fail[ing] to counsel [Appellant] on
the importance of the cell-phone records.”2 He did not assert that
trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to Investigator
Rogers’s testimony identifying Appellant’s phone number. Thus,
this claim is not properly before us on appeal. See Jones v. State, 294
Ga. 501, 503 (2) (755 SE2d 131) (2014) (concluding that the
appellant’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim was not properly
before us because the appellant did not specifically raise the issue
2 Appellant later withdrew this claim, and he does not pursue it here.
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asserted on appeal “in his motion . . . or at the hearing” in the trial
court).
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.
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