Court Opinion

ID: 9781145
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:15:06.113604+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:16.590739
License: Public Domain

*850HUNSTEIN, Chief Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While I concur in the affirmance of appellant’s convictions for murder, concealing the death of another and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, I respectfully dissent to the majority’s affirmance of the convictions on two counts of cruelty to children because the evidence failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt an essential element of the crime, namely, that the children suffered cruel or excessive mental pain.
1. The sole basis for the two cruelty to children charges is the allegation that appellant’s seven-year-old daughter and three-year-old son suffered “excessive mental pain” by appellant’s act of “allowing the corpse of Johnny Clint Walden, the child[ren’s stepfather and father, respectively], to remain in the child[ren]’s residence, in the presence of the childjren] for an excessive period of time.” The majority upholds the convictions for these charges on the basis that the children were subjected to “excessive . . . mental pain” under OCGA § 16-5-70 due to the foul odor emanating from the victim’s decomposing body.
The evidence, construed in support of the jury’s verdict, establishes the following. The murder was committed after appellant and the victim returned home from attending Sunday school and church services on August 22, 2004. Law enforcement officers entered the home for the first time around midnight on August 24, at which time the corpse had been decomposing for two and one-half days. The experienced officers who entered the living room where the victim’s body was located testified that they were greatly distressed by their encounter with the smell. However, unlike the officers, the children had been in the house since the murder occurred; hence, they would have been exposed to the smell gradually over the 60-hour period. There was no evidence that either child ever entered the living room where the smell would have been the most concentrated, and no witness testified that the living room smell was just as strong in the other parts of the house where the children frequented. The children themselves did not testify, and the transcript is devoid of any evidence of complaints expressed by the children to any witness about the smell, even though the older child attended school and both children at one time or another spent several hours visiting the victim’s parents during the relevant period. While the State called the victim’s father to testify about these visits, the witness did not testify that the children behaved any differently than in past visits; he did not testify that the children made any complaints or even any comments about the smell; and he did not testify that either child had any reluctance about returning home for any reason, smell or otherwise. The evidence reflects nothing unusual about the chil*851dren’s behavior when they and appellant were escorted out of the home by law enforcement officers around midnight on Tuesday, August 24, even though the children would then have been escaping the smell at its worst. To the contrary, the victim’s sister testified that she specifically asked the older child at that time if the child “knew what was going on and [the child] said no.” And even though both children were immediately handed over to family members upon their exit from the house, with the seven-year-old going to the victim’s sister and the three-year-old going to the victim’s father, neither the sister nor the father, who both testified, indicated that they could smell the odor on either child.
The transcript contains no evidence that shows that either the three-year-old child or the seven-year-old child understood the nature of the smell in the house, i.e., that it emanated from a dead body. Likewise, there was no evidence that either child was aware that the source of the smell was the victim’s decomposing body. Finally, there was no expert testimony to explain how these young children, despite the absence of any overt manifestations of trauma, suffered excessive mental pain as a result of their exposure to the odor.
2. As revealed by a review of our case law, cruelty to children cases based exclusively on cruel or excessive mental pain typically fall within two fact scenarios. The first scenario involves a child who has witnessed the defendant killing or attacking the victim, who is usually a parent or close family relative of the child. See, e.g., Hall v. State, 261 Ga. 778 (7) (415 SE2d 158) (1991) (father shot son in front of son’s two sisters); Sims v. State, 234 Ga. App. 678 (1) (507 SE2d 845) (1998) (father stabbed mother in presence of children). The second situation is the one on which the majority relies, namely, the exposure of a child to unsanitary conditions. Hence, the majority cites to Brewton v. State, 266 Ga. 160 (465 SE2d 668) (1996), in which this Court addressed the issue of whether the act of raising a child in unsanitary conditions can ever constitute the offense of cruelty to children. While we held that the offense “may be committed by raising a child in such unsanitary conditions that the child suffers cruel or excessive physical or mental pain” (emphasis supplied), id. at 160 (1), we also held that
the basic elements of the offense must be shown by evidence. That is, there must be evidence establishing the age of the child, that the child suffered physical or mental pain, that the pain was cruel or excessive, that the defendant caused the pain, and that the defendant acted maliciously in so doing.
*852Id. In Brewton, we reversed the conviction upheld by the Court of Appeals on the basis that the State had failed to show the requisite malice merely by proof of the unsanitary conditions in which the defendant’s two children were raised. Id. at 162. As reflected in the Court of Appeals’ opinion, the “extremely unsanitary conditions” at issue in that case included but were “ ‘not limited to: piles of trash on the floor, rotting food and dirty dishes in the kitchen, an uncaged parrot with bird droppings everywhere, two live ducks in hall bathroom, roaches crawling on floor and the smell of trash and rotten food throughout the house.’ ” Brewton v. State, 216 Ga. App. 346, 348 (3) (454 SE2d 558) (1995).
Consistent with the holding in Brewton regarding unsanitary conditions creating excessive mental pain to support a cruelty to child conviction, the Court of Appeals in Staib v. State, 309 Ga. App. 785 (711 SE2d 362) (2011), upheld the defendant’s conviction for that offense where an officer testified that “the entire house smelled strongly of urine, feces and ammonia, stated that the odor was ‘pretty horrible,’ and compared the odor of the house to a ‘landfill’ and ‘cat litter box.’ ” Id. at 790 (2). However, that was not the only evidence in the case. The State also adduced evidence that every floor in the house was covered with garbage; that one child was found unclothed in a feces-stained crib where she was standing in her own urine; the other child was found wearing only shorts in a locked room smelling of the child’s own urine and so filled with garbage that the officers were unable to open the door more than two feet; and that both children, rather than displaying the typical behavior of screaming and crying when removed from their home, instead smiled and seemed happy to leave and were thereafter “ ‘super excited to be in the bath tub.’ ” Id. at 791 (2).
In contrast to those cases, the crime scene investigator in this case testified that the kitchen in appellant’s house, while cluttered, was clean, without dirt, soiled dishes or the like; that the only food left out looked like recently consumed meals; and that the remaining areas of the house, including the bedrooms, were “not remarkable.” The photos taken by the crime scene investigator and introduced into evidence show a reasonably clean, tidy house. Even the living room photos reflect a tidy room with the victim’s body on the floor by the sofa covered by a “tremendous” amount of sheets, pillows and other material that minimized any view of the body. As noted above, there was no evidence that the children were ever directly exposed in any manner to the body itself. Thus, unlike Brewton v. State and Staib v. State, supra, the sole “unsanitary” condition present in this case is the foul odor in the house emanating from the victim’s corpse.
3. The evidence in this case thus presents the situation where a very bad smell in an otherwise clean and tidy house is the sole source *853of the excessive mental pain appellant allegedly inflicted on the victims. The problem, however, is that there is no direct evidence whatsoever that the victims were distressed by the smell. Nor was expert testimony adduced to establish that the victims experienced excessive mental pain due to the smell notwithstanding the complete lack of any overt manifestations of trauma resulting from the children’s exposure to the smell. The majority holds that the State rectified this utter absence of evidence by adducing testimony regarding the extreme distress felt by experienced law enforcement personnel upon entering the home. But I cannot agree with the majority that the jury could reasonably infer solely from the distress felt by the adults that the children must likewise have experienced that distress. That is because the adults did not occupy a situation comparable to that of the children. The adults had not been in the home ever since the body began to decompose so as to grow accustomed to the smell over time. Unlike the adults, the children did not know and thus could not have been distressed by the fact that the bad smell in their house came from the decomposing corpse of their murdered father/stepfather. Unlike the adults, the children did not experience the smell in the living room where the corpse was located but instead stayed in the back of the house; although the smell was undoubtedly present there, given evidence that it could be detected outside the home, there was no evidence that the smell was as intense in the children’s area of the home as it was in the living room.
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a defendant in a criminal case against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which she is charged. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (99 SC 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979). For a conviction under OCGA § 16-5-70, that meant the State had to prove that appellant’s children suffered mental pain because of the smell and that the mental pain they suffered was cruel or excessive. Brewton v. State, supra, 266 Ga. at 160 (1). Because there was no direct evidence that the children here suffered excessive mental pain because of the smell, because there was no expert evidence to explain why they so suffered despite the lack of overt manifestations of trauma and because there were crucial differences between the children and the adult witnesses that rendered the experience of the adults inapplicable to the children, I respectfully disagree with the majority that the State carried its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant was guilty of two counts of cruelty to children.
I am authorized to state that Justice Benham joins in this partial concurrence and partial dissent.
*854Decided October 17, 2011.
Barbara B. Claridge, for appellant.
Ashley Wright, District Attorney, Charles R. Sheppard, Assistant District Attorney, Samuel S. Olens, Attorney General, Mary Beth Westmoreland, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Sara K. Sahni, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.