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 04, 2025
S24A1121. CLEMENTS v. THE STATE.
COLVIN, Justice.
Appellant James Damon Clements appeals his conviction for
felony murder related to the beating death of Shannon Goetz and
his sentence for the aggravated assault of Gregg Olson. 1 On appeal,
1 The crimes occurred on December 22, 2017. On August 12, 2019, a
Cherokee County grand jury returned a six-count indictment, charging
Appellant with malice murder (Count 1), felony murder (Count 2), which was
predicated on a charge of aggravated battery, family violence of Goetz
(Count 3), aggravated assault of John Crawford (Count 4), aggravated assault
of Olson (Count 5), and battery of Olson (Count 6). Following a jury trial from
February 7 to 10, 2022, the jury returned a verdict finding Appellant not guilty
of malice murder (Count 1) but guilty on all remaining counts except for Count
4, where the jury found Appellant guilty of the lesser-included charge of simple
assault.
On March 1, 2022, the trial court sentenced Appellant to life in prison
for felony murder (Count 2). The court also sentenced Appellant to 12 months
in prison for the simple assault of John Crawford (Count 4), 25 years to serve
for the aggravated assault of Olson (Count 5), and 12 months to serve for the
battery of Olson (Count 6), with each sentence to run concurrently with
Appellant’s life sentence for felony murder (Count 2). Lastly, the Court merged
Appellant’s conviction for aggravated battery, family violence of Goetz (Count
3) into his conviction for felony murder (Count 2).
Appellant filed a timely motion for new trial on March 7, 2022, which he
Appellant argues that the evidence presented at trial was
insufficient to sustain his conviction under OCGA § 24-14-6 because
the State failed to exclude the reasonable hypothesis that Goetz’s
death was caused by her voluntary methamphetamine use rather
than her injuries. Appellant further argues that his initial sentence
of 25 years in prison for his aggravated assault of Olson exceeded
the statutory maximum of 20 years set forth in OCGA § 16-5-21 (b).
Appellant acknowledges that the trial court subsequently reduced
his sentence to 20 years but argues that it failed to take certain
additional steps necessary to ensure that his sentence is enforced as
modified. For the reasons explained below, Appellant’s arguments
fail. We accordingly affirm Appellant’s conviction for felony murder
and his 20-year sentence for aggravated assault.
1. (a) The evidence at trial showed the following. 2 Goetz,
amended through new counsel on January 11, 2023. Following a hearing on
March 9, 2023, the trial court issued an order on Appellant’s amended motion
on March 30, 2023, in which it modified Appellant’s sentence for Count 5 by
reducing it from a term of 25 years in prison to a term of 20 years. The trial
court denied Appellant’s motion in all other respects.
2 Appellant appeals only his conviction for felony murder of Goetz, and
2
Appellant, and several others lived together in a single-family home
owned by Olson. Olson testified that “everybody” in the household
used drugs and that he had smoked methamphetamine with Goetz.
Allyson Dietrich, who lived in the house at the time of Goetz’s death,
testified that Goetz invited Dietrich to smoke with her and told
Dietrich that she smoked methamphetamine “twice a day.”
According to Olson, Appellant started a romantic relationship
with Goetz after he moved in. Though Appellant initially slept in a
bedroom on the first floor, he later moved into Goetz’s bedroom in
the basement. According to Olson, Goetz told him a day or two before
her death that she and Appellant “were fighting a lot,” and that
Appellant had hit her. Olson noted that Goetz had a split lip and
“looked like she had been hit in the mouth.” Olson later confronted
Appellant about his violence towards Goetz, and, according to Olson,
“we both agreed that he had to go.”
Text messages from Goetz’s phone to Appellant’s phone
he does so only by arguing that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of
statutory law. We therefore do not address the facts related to Appellant’s
convictions for his crimes against Crawford and Olson.
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corroborated Olson’s testimony. These messages contain express
references to Appellant striking Goetz on multiple occasions in the
days and weeks prior to her death and suggest that Appellant had
accused Goetz of infidelity. Further messages and testimony
revealed that Goetz was planning to leave Appellant around the
time she was killed.
Events came to a head on December 22, 2017. At 6:57 p.m. that
evening, Appellant called 911 because Goetz was not breathing.
Appellant identified himself on the call as Olson, before handing the
phone to Dietrich and fleeing the scene. When first responders
arrived, they found Goetz deceased in the basement, lying face-up
and covered only by a bra. Appellant was gone.
Dietrich, who was present for at least part of the 911 call,
testified that Goetz’s “whole body was black and blue[,] and she was
about twice the size that she normally was.” Though first responders
arrived shortly after the call was made, they did not attempt any
life-saving measures. A crime scene technician who observed Goetz’s
body testified that she had been dead for at least two hours.
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Appellant was arrested two days later. At the time of his arrest,
Appellant was wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants that were later
determined to have Goetz’s blood on them.
(b) Three experts testified at trial regarding the cause and
manner of Goetz’s death: Dr. Stacey Desamours and Dr. James
Upshaw Downs testified for the State, and Dr. Brian Frist testified
for the defense. Their testimony was as follows.
(i) Dr. Desamours’s Testimony
Dr. Desamours performed Goetz’s autopsy as an associate
medical examiner for the GBI. Dr. Desamours’s report, which she
read from at trial, noted that Goetz had more than 35 separate
injuries in total. The injuries to Goetz’s body included abrasions or
contusions on both of her arms, her legs, her left buttock, her right
shoulder, her right hand and her torso. Goetz also had “significant”
injuries to her head and face, including contusions on her lips, cheek,
and ear, as well as two separate subscapular hemorrhages on either
side of her head. According to Dr. Desamours, Goetz’s injuries
appeared to have been “inflicted” rather than accidental, and Goetz
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appeared to have been “beaten.”
Despite the extent of these injuries, however, Dr. Desamours
opined that they were not what caused Goetz’s death. Instead, Dr.
Desamours explained that Goetz had two subdural brain bleeds on
the right side of her head: one which was one- to two-weeks-old at
the time of Goetz’s death and a separate recent bleed that was
sometimes described at trial as a “re-bleed.” Dr. Desamours
determined that Goetz’s cause of death was the more recent
subdural bleed.
Notwithstanding Dr. Desamours’s determination of the cause
of death, she reported the manner of death as “undetermined.” Dr.
Desamours explained that Goetz had methamphetamine in her
blood at the time of death and that Dr. Desamours could not
determine whether Goetz’s fatal brain bleed was the result of her
inflicted injuries or was instead the result of her drug use. Dr.
Desamours explained her decision at length:
So, we know that the cause of death in this case is a
subdural hematoma, but what were the circumstances?
Well, we know that Ms. Goetz has blunt force injuries,
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inflicted blunt force injuries. And if that were her only
injuries . . . then . . . that would support the manner of
death as homicide.
However, she also has methamphetamine intoxication
and methamphetamine has been shown to cause a
spontaneous subdural hematoma. And in this case it’s
actually even more complicated by the fact that Ms. Goetz
had evidence of a prior subdural hematoma or a subdural
hemorrhage, and that area was beginning to heal just in
the . . . earliest stages of healing like one to [two] weeks
old. And the body’s healing process is to create a sort of a
new brain out of that old blood. And with that new brain
you have collagen . . . fibers, early scar tissues and very
tiny immature capillaries, very small weak blood vessels.
And those blood vessels . . . are very easily ruptured.
Methamphetamine is known to increase the blood
pressure, increase the heart rate, and increase the risk of
those small blood vessels potentially bleeding causing a
subdural hematoma. If that had been her only injury
onboard, the methamphetamine intoxication, that would
support a manner of death as accident since it’s a
methamphetamine intoxication. So, since I had these two
competing circumstances of death the most reasonable
thing to do is to call the manner of death undetermined.
On redirect examination, Dr. Desamours clarified that Goetz’s two
subdural hematomas occurred in the “same area” of her brain, that
it was possible that both bleeds were caused by Goetz being struck
on the head at different times, and that it was further possible that
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Goetz died from the cumulative effects of such blunt force trauma.
(ii) Dr. Downs’s Testimony
The State also presented the testimony of Dr. Downs, who was
formerly the director and chief medical examiner for the State of
Alabama before working for the GBI in Savannah as its senior
coastal regional medical examiner for more than a decade. Dr.
Downs testified that he reviewed Dr. Desamours’s report together
with other materials from the case file. Based on his review, Dr.
Downs opined that Goetz’s manner of death was homicide.
Dr. Downs testified that Goetz had .73 milligrams of
methamphetamine per liter of blood in her system and that the
lethal range is from .09 milligrams to 64 milligrams. Dr. Downs
explained that while Goetz’s levels were within the lethal range, the
lethal range of a drug is the concentration at which 50 percent of
people die and 50 percent of people survive. “So,” he explained, “you
have to interpret that value in the context not only of the number
but also the patient and what their experience is with that
particular drug.” And, in his view, a proper evaluation of Goetz’s
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methamphetamine levels would incorporate the fact that she was a
chronic user of methamphetamine. Dr. Downs noted that Goetz’s
methamphetamine levels were at the lower end of the lethal
concentration spectrum and that the high end “is a hundred times
higher” than the concentration found in Goetz’s blood. Dr. Downs
further explained that methamphetamine is stored in a person’s
tissues, and, after death, it can be released from those tissues back
into the bloodstream, causing post-mortem measurements of the
amount of methamphetamine in a person’s blood to be “artificially
elevated.”
Dr. Downs testified that a subdural hemorrhage caused by
methamphetamine alone was “pretty rare” and “the frequency of
that is so low that it’s really outside the bell curve[.]” He estimated
that the chance of such an event was “three to five percent,” which
he described as “not a reasonable consideration.”
Like Dr. Desamours, Dr. Downs explained that Goetz had two
different subdural brain bleeds one that occurred one- to two-weeks
before her death, and a second, fatal bleed “around the time she
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died.” Dr. Downs also noted the extent and timing of Goetz’s injuries,
which included a recent injury to her right posterior scalp above the
area of the fatal bleed. Taking all of these factors into consideration,
Dr. Downs opined that Goetz’s second bleed was not the
“spontaneous[ ]” result of her methamphetamine use and that this
fatal bleed “didn’t happen from the methamphetamine.” The
manner of death, in his view, was “homicide.”
(iii) Dr. Frist’s testimony
Dr. Frist testified for the defense. In his opinion, Dr.
Desamours was correct to leave the manner of death undetermined.
Dr. Frist agreed with the State’s experts that Goetz had both a prior
and a recent brain bleed, and that the recent bleed, which he
described as a re-bleed of the prior subdural bleed, was the cause of
her death. But Dr. Frist further stated that there were two possible
causes of Goetz’s fatal bleed — drugs and a “blow to the head” — and
that “[no]body could make that distinction[.]”
2. Appellant argues that the evidence was insufficient as a
matter of Georgia statutory law to support his conviction for felony
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murder because it was wholly circumstantial and because the State
failed to exclude the reasonable hypothesis that Goetz died from her
voluntary use of methamphetamine. Even assuming the evidence
presented was entirely circumstantial, as Appellant claims, his
argument fails, as explained below.
“When a conviction is based [solely] on circumstantial
evidence, the State must present sufficient evidence to ‘exclude
every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the
accused.’” Hooks v. State, 318 Ga. 850, 853 (2) (b) (901 SE2d 166)
(2024) (quoting OCGA § 24-14-6)). We have explained, however, that
“[n]ot every hypothesis is reasonable, and the evidence does not have
to exclude every conceivable inference or hypothesis; it need rule out
only those that are reasonable.” Hounkpatin v. State, 313 Ga. 789,
792 (1) (873 SE2d 201) (2022). Whether an alternative hypothesis is
reasonable and whether it has been excluded by the evidence are
questions for the jury. See Weston v. State, 320 Ga. 472, 474 (1) (910
SE2d 155) (2024). And “we will not disturb the jury’s findings on
those questions unless they are insupportable as a matter of law.”
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Id.
Appellant contends that there were two reasonable theories
consistent with Goetz’s death being accidental, rather than
homicide: (1) Goetz’s fatal second bleed was the “spontaneous” result
of her drug use, and (2) Goetz’s fatal second bleed was a re-bleed of
her prior hemorrhage caused by her drug use. Appellant claims that
Dr. Downs failed to address — and therefore failed to exclude — the
second possibility. As such, Appellant claims, the State failed to
exclude every reasonable alternative to Appellant’s guilt, and the
evidence supporting his conviction was insufficient under OCGA
§ 24-14-6.
Appellant’s argument fails, however, because Dr. Downs
concluded that the second, fatal bleed “didn’t happen from the
methamphetamine.” His conclusion is equally contrary to the two
alternative theories raised by Appellant, including the theory he
claims Dr. Downs failed to address. Because Dr. Downs addressed
both theories, what remained was a dispute between experts that
the jury decided in the State’s favor, and we will not disturb the
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jury’s findings on this issue unless they are unsupportable as a
matter of law. See Remler v. State, 318 Ga. 61, 65-66 (1) (897 SE2d
376) (2024) (holding that the jury was authorized to reject as
unreasonable theories offered by a defense expert and to instead
credit the theory of the State’s expert that the child-victim died of
injuries inflicted during the time it was in the defendant’s sole care).
Appellant further argues, however, that the jury’s findings in
this matter were unsupportable as a matter of law. Specifically,
Appellant argues that Dr. Downs merely concluded it was unlikely
that Goetz’s death was caused by methamphetamine, rather than
ruling it out entirely. And because, in Appellant’s view, the evidence
presented by the State showed at best that it was unlikely that
Goetz’s death was caused by methamphetamine, there was
insufficient evidence to support Appellant’s conviction for felony
murder.
But a close reading of the record shows that Dr. Downs was
unequivocal in his opinion that Goetz’s death was a homicide.
Although Dr. Downs did testify that the odds of a spontaneous
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hematoma were three to five percent, he testified conclusively that
he did not “believe that [the] subdural was spontaneously
traumatic” and that the fatal bleed “didn’t happen from the
methamphetamine.” In other words, he opined that Goetz’s death
was not among the three to five percent of cases involving
spontaneous subdural brain bleeds.
Dr. Downs, Dr. Desamours, and Dr. Frist all agreed that
Goetz’s death could have been caused by blunt-force injuries. But
while Dr. Desamours and Dr. Frist testified that they could not
determine whether Goetz’s death was caused by those injuries or her
drug use, Dr. Downs testified that such a determination could be
made and that Goetz’s death was not solely caused by
methamphetamine. The jury was therefore authorized to credit Dr.
Down’s testimony over that of Dr. Desamours and Dr. Frist, and to
exclude as unreasonable the hypothesis that Goetz died solely from
her use of methamphetamine. See Remler, 318 Ga. at 65-66 (1)
(holding that the evidence was sufficient to support the appellant’s
conviction under OCGA § 24-14-6 notwithstanding conflicting
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expert testimony); Hounkpatin, 313 Ga. at 793-794 (1) (deferring to
the jury’s resolution of conflicting expert testimony regarding
whether the child-victim died as the result of an accident rather
than inflicted injuries, and concluding that the evidence was
sufficient to support the appellant’s conviction under OCGA
§ 24-14-6); Guzman-Perez v. State, 310 Ga. 573, 576-577 (1) (853
SE2d 76) (2020) (holding that the jury was authorized to reject as
unreasonable the hypothesis that the victim’s fatal injuries were
caused by an accidental fall down the stairs rather than by inflicted
injuries, even though the State’s expert could not determine the
cause of death). Because the jury was authorized to exclude, and did
exclude, each alternative hypothesis to Appellant’s guilt, the State
presented evidence sufficient under OCGA § 24-14-6 to support
Appellant’s conviction for felony murder.
3. Appellant also appeals his sentence for aggravated assault.
As noted in footnote 1 above, the trial court initially sentenced
Appellant to 25 years in prison for the aggravated assault of Olson
(Count 5). In his amended motion for new trial, Appellant correctly
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argued that his 25-year sentence exceeded the 20-year maximum
prison term set forth in OCGA § 16-5-21 (b) and that it was therefore
void. See OCGA § 16-5-21 (b) (“Except [under circumstances not
applicable here] a person convicted of the offense of aggravated
assault shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor
more than 20 years.”). At the motion for new trial hearing, the State
conceded this point and “consent[ed]” to a modification of
Appellant’s sentence. Following the hearing, the trial court issued a
written order “modif[ying]” Appellant’s sentence for aggravated
assault from 25 years in prison to 20 years and stating that “both
parties hav[e] acknowledged and agreed to the same.”
Notwithstanding this modification, Appellant argues on appeal
that the trial court “never filed an amended sentence and never
vacated the existing sentence on Count 5,” and therefore that
Appellant’s sentence remains void. But Appellant cites no authority
for the proposition that the trial court’s modification order was
insufficient to amend his sentence and that an additional order
vacating his prior sentence was required. Because the trial court
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amended Appellant’s sentence for aggravated assault to 20 years,
and Appellant’s sentence is now within the statutory range provided
by OCGA § 16-5-21 (b), his sentence is not void. See Jones v. State,
278 Ga. 669, 670 (604 SE2d 483) (2004) (“When the sentence
imposed falls within the statutory range of punishment, the
sentence is not void[.]”). We accordingly affirm Appellant’s sentence
of 20 years for the aggravated assault of Olson. 3
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur, except Pinson, J.,
not participating.
3 Nothing in this opinion shall prohibit the trial court on remittitur from
taking any additional steps to convey the corrected sentence to the Department
of Corrections.
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