Court Opinion

ID: 9850677
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:01:21.212486+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:41.498898
License: Public Domain

GOOLSBY, J., dissents in a separate opinion.
GOOLSBY, Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent and would hold the evidence, albeit entirely circumstantial, is sufficient to withstand a motion for directed verdict.9
The defendant and the victim had engaged in sexual relations. The victim, a child psychologist, lived and worked in Savannah, Georgia. On June 18, 1997, he borrowed an almost new BMW Z 3 from another doctor to keep a dental appointment; however, he never arrived at the dentist’s office. The last time his office heard from him was at 1:20 that afternoon. Two days later, on June 20, 1997, the BMW was found abandoned in a parking lot in Johnson City, Tennessee. The next day, June 21, 1997, the victim’s body was discovered by the side of a dirt road in a wooded area near State Highway 61 and Interstate 95 in Colleton County, South Carolina. He had been shot twice, having apparently died sometime on June 18, 1997. His wallet was missing. Just a few hours before, the victim had withdrawn $300.00 from an ATM.
*310Subsequently, an examination of the BMW uncovered a coffee cup lid that bore the defendant’s fingerprints. There was neither any evidence that the defendant ever had access to the automobile before the victim borrowed it nor any explanation regarding how an article with the defendant’s fingerprint on it wound up inside the car. Further examination of the BMW revealed scratches on its exterior that suggested, according to the lead investigator, it had been driven down “something rough.”
Investigators also learned that the defendant’s father lived in Gray, Tennessee, not far from Johnson City where the BMW was found. On June 19, 1997, Bobby Ray Ware spoke to the defendant from Chicago and learned the defendant “was back in Tennessee.” Ware, a long-distance truck driver, had days before the victim’s murder introduced the victim to the defendant. Ware knew the defendant to carry a gun and had last seen him in Savannah on June 17,1997.
From this evidence, the jury could have found, as it obviously did, that the victim and the defendant had a sexual relationship, that they met in Savannah sometime after 1:20 p.m. on June 18, 1997, that they drove to Colleton County, where the defendant killed the victim, stole his wallet, the money, and the BMW, and that the defendant then drove the BMW to Tennessee, where he abandoned the vehicle, went to his father’s house, and spoke by telephone to Ware the following day. Because no other plausible explanation was offered for how the car could have ended up some distance from where the victim’s body was found, the jury could have reasonably concluded that the defendant had absconded with the car, which in turn would have led to the inference that he killed the victim in order to take possession of it.10
*311I view it as more than a mere coincidence that the defendant’s fingerprints were found on a coffee cup lid inside an automobile that the victim had borrowed on the day he was murdered and that the automobile was found abandoned not far from where the defendant’s father lived. Indeed, the defendant concedes in his brief that these facts could lead to the reasonable inference that he had “had contact with” the BMW at some point prior to its discovery.
The majority relies on State v. Schrock11 and State v. Martin12 to support its decision to reverse the defendant’s conviction.
But this is not a case, as was Schrock, where the only evidence linking the defendant to the crime was footprints at the scene of a murder that were similar to known footprints of the defendant. There, the experts could not definitely testify that the footprints at the scene were made by the defendant’s shoes.
Neither is this a case, as was Martin, where the defendant’s car was not definitely identified as the car seen at the victim’s apartment complex the night she was murdered. There, the State could show only that the latter car resembled the defendant’s car.
Here, there is no question but that the fingerprint on the coffee cup lid belonged to the defendant.13 Moreover, in addition to the unexplained presence of the defendant’s fingerprint in the BMW, there was, as was mentioned above, evidence of a prior sexual relationship between the defendant and the victim, evidence that the defendant possessed a gun, and evidence from which the jury could infer that the defendant drove from Georgia or South Carolina to Tennessee in an automobile that he had no right to possess.
*312I do not overlook the cases cited by the defendant, State v. Mitchell, 341 S.C. 406, 535 S.E.2d 126 (2000), and State v. Jones, 241 S.C. 271, 128 S.E.2d 114 (1962). They, too, may be distinguished from the one here.
In Mitchell, the supreme court held the State’s proof that the defendant entered the house was insufficient where the only evidence the State offered was a fingerprint of the defendant lifted from a screen propped up against the house, a house that he had been in and around on at least three occasions prior to the burglary. Here, there is no evidence that the defendant was ever in or around the BMW before the victim disappeared.
In Jones, which the supreme court has cited only once — and that in a concurring and dissenting opinion — the supreme court held the State failed to prove that the defendants broke and entered an office building where the State did not connect the defendants to the evidence found at or near the scene, evidence that included a monogrammed towel from the hotel where the defendants were staying.14 Here, fingerprint evi*313denee together with the evidence that the defendant and the victim intimately knew each other and that the BMW was found near the home of the defendant’s father before the discovery of the victim’s body is sufficient in my mind to connect the defendant to the murder.
I would affirm the trial court’s denial of the defendant’s motion for a directed verdict of acquittal.

. Because the majority did not address the other issues that the defendant raises on appeal, I will not do so either.

. See 40A Am.Jur.2d Homicide § 252, at 91 (1999) (“Possession, soon after a murder, of articles apparently taken from the murder at the time of death, if not satisfactorily accounted for, may be the foundation of ... [an] inference of guilt.’’); 41 C.J.S. Homicide § 245, at 96 (1991) ("It is competent to introduce in evidence the fact that, after the killing, accused had possession of property belonging to deceased ....”); cf. 29A Am.Jur.2d Evidence § 1482, at 864 (1994) (“Evidence of fingerprint ... identification may be sufficient to support a conviction in a criminal prosecution [and] is sufficient to establish identity if the prints are found at the scene of the crime under such circumstances that they could only have been made at the time of commission of the crime.”).

. 283 S.C. 129, 322 S.E.2d 450 (1984).

. 340 S.C. 597, 533 S.E.2d 572 (2000).

. The majority misapprehends the point made in this dissent, i.e., that the failure in Schrock and Martin was in connecting the evidence at the scene of the crime to the particular defendant on trial. In the current appeal, that connection was made — no one disputed the accuracy of the fingerprint evidence.

. This is the way the supreme court characterized the evidence in Jones:
The presence of the hand towel of the St. John Hotel at the scene of the crime is strongly relied upon by the State. The defendants, with Joe Roughton, had registered at the St. John Hotel on the day before the commission of the crime. An employee of the hotel testified that it was customary to place in rooms, such as rented by the defendants, two hand towels but could not testify as to whether two had been placed in the room of the defendants. The officers testified that there was only one hand towel in their room when they were arrested. There was testimony that quite a number of hand towels are taken from the rooms of the hotel by guests without the knowledge of the management. The record shows that the hand towel came from the St. John Hotel, but fails to sufficiently connect its appearance at the scene of the crime with these defendants to form the basis of a conviction. The State did not show that the towel had ever been in the possession of the defendants, but only that it was a towel belonging to the hotel where the defendants were staying.
The tools found some distance from the Moody Oil Company were not connected with the defendants, nor does the testimony show their connection with the alleged crime. The tracks found in the vicinity of the scene of the crime were not compared with those of the defendants and the officers testified that they could not identify the tracks as having been made by any particular person. The fact that the defendants were seen, approximately six miles from the scene of the crime, walking along the railroad toward Charleston, and the conflicting *313statements as to their whereabouts on the night of the crime affords basis for disbelief of their statements as to where they were at the time and their activities during the night, but does not prove their presence at the scene in the absence of some substantial testimony connecting them with the crime. Likewise, the presence of the automobile of Roughton near the scene of the crime and the admissions by these defendants to the officers that they were with Roughton earlier in the night affordfi no sufficient basis for the presumption that they continued together until the crime was committed, in the absence of other connecting circumstances.
Jones, 241 S.C. at 277-78, 128 S.E.2d at 117-18.