Date: 10-04-2015

Case Style: THORNTON V. THE STATE OF GEORGIA

Case Number: S15G1108

Judge: Robert Benham

Court: Supreme Court of Georgia

Plaintiff's Attorney: Sophia Butler

Defendant's Attorney: Jackie Johnson, Andrew Ekonomou

Description: According to the facts, Patti Thornton, who was married to Richard “Shell” Thornton, III, began having an affair with Walter Booth, who was also married. She and Booth worked together driving dump trucks for a father-son trucking business. Witnesses testified that at work, Booth made statements that Shell Thornton mistreated Patti and he, Booth, would kill anyone who “messed” with her. He once asked a co-worker to deliver a note to Booth that said, “I love you,” and she sent him numerous emails expressing her love for Booth. She wrote frequently of her hatred for her husband, his mistreatment of her, and her desperate desire to have him “gone for good,” so she could spend more time with Booth. She regularly begged Booth to help get her out of “this hell-hole,” said she could not take it anymore, and in November 2007, reminded Booth that he had “promised it would be done before Thanksgiving.” A few weeks later, on Dec. 14, 2007, a sheriff’s deputy was summoned to the Thornton house where he found Shell dead in the bedroom. Patti told investigators her daughter had called early that morning and asked Patti to bring her daughter’s driver’s license to her at work. Patti woke her two teenage sons so they could get ready for school and she also spoke to Shell, who asked her to make a bank deposit while she was out. Patti told investigators she then left the house to take her daughter’s license to her, make the deposit, and run some other errands. She told them she also stopped at her mother’s house nearby. When she eventually returned home, she told investigators she immediately noticed that a bowl of change had been knocked over and several guns were lying on the floor. The door to the bedroom she shared with Shell was open, yet it had been closed when she had left earlier that day. Fearing someone was in the house, Patti said she went back to her mother’s house and told her mother to call police. A sheriff’s deputy returned with Patti to the house, where he found Shell in the bedroom with several gunshot wounds to his head. A GBI crime scene specialist testified there were no signs of forced entry and other than the carport door, all the doors and windows were locked. Investigators did find a computer in the back of Shell’s truck the morning of the crime. Patti told them Shell had put the computer in his truck the night before to take it in for repair. The monitor was still on, and upon later analyzing the computer, investigators discovered Patti’s emails to Booth. Both Patti and Booth denied having a romantic relationship and Booth denied ever being at her house on Dec. 14. He told officers he’d decided not to go to work that day and instead went to a convenience store for coffee then went and played video poker. The explanation of his whereabouts, however, did not check out. As part of the investigation, Booth’s house was searched and police seized two bottles of Trazodone, which is sometimes used as a sleep aid. Shell’s blood was tested for a variety of substances and one test revealed he had Trazodone in his blood at the time of death. Shell’s physician testified he had never prescribed Trazodone for Shell. Patti Thornton was charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, making false statements and tampering with evidence; Booth was charged with the same crimes except for tampering with evidence. Following a joint trial in 2009, the jury found Patti not guilty of murder but guilty of the remaining charges. The same jury found Booth guilty only of making false statements. He was acquitted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Patti appealed, arguing that the trial court should have thrown out her conviction for conspiracy because the jury’s verdict of guilty was inconsistent with its verdict acquitting Booth. The Court of Appeals disagreed, and affirmed her conviction. She now appeals to the Georgia Supreme Court. ARGUMENTS: Patti Thornton’s attorney argues the Court of Appeals erred in upholding her conspiracy conviction. The trial court should have vacated the conviction because the verdict finding her guilty is inconsistent with the verdict acquitting Booth, her only alleged co-conspirator. With its decision, the appellate court has “ignored Georgia’s legal precedent, which recognized the offense of conspiracy as fundamentally different [from] other offenses because a necessary element of the crime is the culpability of the co-conspirator,” the attorney argues in briefs. Thornton’s case is even more unique as there was only one alleged coconspirator with which she was jointly tried. Under Georgia Code § 16-4-8, “A person commits the offense of conspiracy to commit a crime when he together with one or more persons conspires to commit any crime and any one or more of such persons does any overt act to effect the object of the conspiracy.” “The crime itself requires ‘two or more persons’ for the crime to exist at all,” the attorney argues. “The sanctity of the jury’s verdict need not be invaded to make appellant’s [i.e. Thornton’s] verdict reconcile rationally, because legally by acquitting Booth, there can be no crime of conspiracy. An agreement between both appellant and Booth was necessary for a crime to have occurred. Booth’s acquittal made a conviction of appellant a legal impossibility.” In its 1982 decision in Smith v. State, the Georgia Supreme Court concluded that, “in a joint trial of co-conspirators, a failure of proof as to one conspirator would amount to a failure as to both.” In 2005, the Court of Appeals ruled in Hubbard v. State that, “Coconspirators, alleged to be the only two parties to a conspiracy, may not receive different verdicts where they are tried together.” “Despite the Court of Appeals endorsement of the general rule for co-conspirators in 2005, the Court failed to follow the same rationale for appellant,” relying on the Georgia Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Milam v. State, which was based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in United States v. Powell. But neither case involved two coconspirators tried before the same jury, the attorney argues. If the Georgia Supreme Court “simply follows Georgia precedent and rationale with regard to the limited situation of jointly tried co-conspirators, the answer is simple,” the attorney contends. Follow Smith and “Uphold that ‘in a joint trial of co-conspirators, a failure of proof as to one conspirator would amount to a failure as to both.” The District Attorney argues for the State that the Court of Appeals did not err in upholding Thornton’s conviction for conspiracy to commit murder even though her sole coconspirator was acquitted of the same offense. Both the trial court and the Court of Appeals properly followed the decisions of the Georgia Supreme Court in concluding that “the acquittal of one of two jointly-tried co-conspirators does not preclude the conviction of the other coconspirator.” Under its 1982 decision in Smith, the state Supreme Court recognized that in a joint trial of two alleged conspirators, a verdict of acquittal for one and conviction of the other “are inconsistent because they reach different results regarding the existence of a conspiracy between these two parties based on exactly the same evidence.” But the inquiry doesn’t end there, the State argues. “Rather, the key question is whether this inconsistency in the verdicts required appellant to be acquitted of the conspiracy charge.” That question was answered in the Georgia Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Milam, which was decided four years after Smith. In Milam, this Court abolished the inconsistent verdict rule in criminal cases and held that a defendant may not attack a conviction because it is inconsistent with the jury’s verdict of acquittal on another charge. In doing so, the Court adopted the rational enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1984 Powell decision in which it ruled that inconsistent verdicts “need not be set aside but may instead be viewed as a demonstration of the jury’s leniency.” It went on to say that it was within the province of the jury to acquit or convict because it was possible that the jury, “through mistake, compromise, or lenity, arrived at an inconsistent conclusion.” Appellate courts have consistently applied Milam and adopted the federal court’s rationale, “explaining that appellate courts cannot know and should not speculate why a jury acquitted on one offense and convicted on another offense,” the State argues. “The reason could be an error by the jury in its consideration or it could be mistake, compromise or lenity.” But any individualized assessment of the reason for the inconsistency “would be based on either pure speculation, or would require inquiries into the jury’s deliberations that the courts generally will not undertake.”

Outcome: “Accordingly, the Court of Appeals did not err in affirming Thornton’s conviction for conspiracy to commit murder on the basis that such verdict was inconsistent or irreconcilable with the acquittal of her co-conspirator,” the State contends.

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Comments: A woman is appealing a Georgia Court of Appeals ruling that upheld her conviction in Wayne County for conspiracy to commit murder for her role in the shooting death of her husband.