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Final Copy 289 Ga. 429 S11A0536. BORING v. THE STATE.

HUNSTEIN, Chief Justice. Appellant Courtney Boring was convicted of murdering her mother, Debra Boring, and sentenced to life imprisonment plus a consecutive five-year term for firearm possession.1 Because the trial court allowed the State to introduce improper and prejudicial character evidence at trial, appellant's conviction must be reversed. Construed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence adduced at trial established as follows. On the evening of December 23, 2005, Rodney Boring, the victim's husband, placed a 911 call to report the shooting of his wife. Rodney told police that he had been at a catfish pond approximately one-

On June 27, 2006, appellant was indicted by a Gilmer County grand jury on one count of malice murder and one count of firearm possession in connection therewith. Following a jury trial held January 29 through February 8, 2007, appellant was convicted on both counts and sentenced to life imprisonment plus five years to be served consecutively. Appellant's timely motion for new trial, as amended, was heard on May 13, 2010 and June 21, 2010 and was denied on September 3, 2010. Appellant filed her notice of appeal on September 10, 2010, whereupon the case was docketed in this Court to the January 2011 term and thereafter submitted for decision on the briefs.

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quarter of a mile away from their home, where he typically went after work to drink liquor, when he heard what he recognized as a gunshot from a large caliber gun. He reported that, a few minutes later, he received a phone call from appellant, his 15-year-old daughter, who was in hysterics and mostly unintelligible but managed to communicate that "momma shot herself." Rodney immediately went to their home, where he found appellant sobbing and his wife lying dead in the doorway of the front door on top of her purse and some WalMart shopping bags, with a gaping gunshot wound to the back of the head and his .270 bolt-action rifle on the floor nearby. Appellant told police that late that afternoon she had been at home taking a shower while her mother went to Wal-Mart; that she was getting dressed after her shower when she heard her mother call out her name, which she ignored; and that, a short time later, she heard a loud noise and walked into the living room to find her mother lying in the doorway with the rifle beside her. Appellant stated that she did not attempt to render aid to her mother or call 911 but rather immediately grabbed the phone, ran outside, and called her father. She reported neither seeing nor hearing any other person in or around her house before, during, or after the shooting; a police search of the home found no one
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else present. The investigator who interviewed appellant at the scene described her demeanor as "very unusual" for one experiencing such a traumatic event, in that appellant was calm, seemed "agitated with me like it was a bother," and did not exhibit sadness. The State's firearms expert determined through testing that Rodney's rifle was in fact the murder weapon. Rodney told investigators that he had cleaned the rifle that morning in preparation for a hunting trip and had left it in the house on a love seat with live rounds of ammunition on an adjacent table. Though fingerprints were lifted from the rifle, they were of insufficient quality to use for identification. Gunshot residue was found on the victim's hands, which, according to one of the State's forensics experts, was consistent with the theory either that she had fired the weapon or that she was less than eight to ten feet from the weapon when it was fired. However, the State's forensic pathologist, who performed the autopsy, opined that the manner of death was homicide, not suicide. Two other expert witnesses agreed with the conclusion that the fatal wound was not self-inflicted: the State's crime scene specialist testified to his conclusion that the gun had been fired from a particular area inside the house near the front door; the State's firearms expert likewise opined that the shot had
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been fired from inside the house, by someone other than the victim, from a distance of four to nine feet away. The condition of the Borings' home, as observed by responding investigators and documented in photographs admitted at trial, was filthy and, according to the testimony of one investigator, not fit for a child to inhabit. A neighbor of the Borings testified that he had on previous occasions heard arguments coming from their home and had seen patrol cars at the house. There was also evidence that Rodney was an alcoholic who was verbally abusive to both his wife and daughter. The lead investigator in the case, GBI special agent Natalie Brunner, testified that appellant became the target of the investigation based on "mostly a matter of elimination, simply the fact that we could not put a third party there and both the rifle and ammunition came from inside the Boring residence, and to the best that we could establish, there were no other parties present." There was no evidence of forced entry into the house, and both the Borings' neighbor and Rodney's brother, Ricky, who had driven past the Boring home between 6:15 and 6:30 p.m. that day, told police they did not recall seeing any activity or vehicles at the Boring home around the time of the shooting. Though
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appellant told police she had the light on in her bedroom at the time of the shooting, Ricky reported having noticed that no lights were on in the residence when he drove by. There was evidence that appellant knew how to operate small caliber rifles but that she had had no instruction with respect to large caliber weapons such as the gun used in the shooting. The State adduced evidence that, seven to ten days before the shooting, appellant had had a dispute with her parents after having been caught sneaking out of the house to meet up with her boyfriend, 19-year-old Joel Linville. After this incident, appellant, with the victim's approval, arranged to live with her aunt, Anita Ingle, though within a few days of the move Ingle and the victim agreed that appellant would return home because Ingle had discovered the teenager had again left the house with Linville without permission. Appellant has at all times denied shooting her mother. In several

interviews with police during an approximately two-month period after the murder, she consistently denied any involvement, albeit with minor variances in certain details, and likened her conflicts with her parents to those of the typical teenager. Though police interviewed 20 to 30 people, including

appellant's friends as well as teachers and school officials, these efforts yielded
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no evidence implicating appellant in the shooting or any other act of violence. Police also enlisted Linville's assistance in questioning appellant about the shooting, but Linville conveyed nothing that incriminated her. Appellant did not testify at trial, but the jury viewed videotapes of two of her lengthy interviews with police, in which she resisted investigators' repeated efforts to elicit a confession. Linville was considered as a suspect by investigators and ruled out, as there was evidence corroborating his testimony that he had been at work at a nearby fast food restaurant at the time of the shooting. Cell phone records confirmed Rodney's testimony that a phone call was placed to his cell phone from the Borings' home phone around the time that the shooting occurred, followed a few minutes later by a call from Rodney's cell phone to 911. 1. We find that the evidence, while far from overwhelming, was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant was guilty of the crimes of which she was convicted. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (99 SC 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979). See also OCGA

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