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289 Ga. 383

S11A0603. MANUEL v. THE STATE.

CARLEY, Presiding Justice.

A jury returned verdicts finding Ron Manuel guilty of malice murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. The trial court entered judgments of conviction and sentenced Manuel to life imprisonment for the malice murder charge and a consecutive five-year term for the weapons charge. Manuel appeals after the denial of a motion for new trial and a motion for reconsideration.*

The crimes occurred on December 17, 2005, and the grand jury returned the indictment on March 17, 2006. The jury found Manuel guilty on April 26, 2007, and the trial court entered the judgments of conviction and sentences on May 8, 2007. The initial motion for new trial was filed on May 15, 2007, amended on April 12, 2010, and denied on July 22, 2010. On July 27, 2010, Manuel filed a motion for reconsideration, which was denied on September 1, 2010. Manuel filed a notice of appeal on September 7, 2010, and the trial court granted an out-of-time appeal. The case was docketed in this Court for the April 2011 term, and oral argument was heard on May 16, 2011.
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1. Construed most strongly in support of the verdicts, the evidence shows that, on the evening of December 17, 2005, police officer Taisha Rozier, as she was sitting in her squad car, heard four gunshots from the pathway between Old National Highway and Old National Parkway. She and Officer Hines called in a report at 7:31 p.m. and then headed toward the pathway, which is known as a high crime area due to frequent occurrences of drug sales and drug trafficking. At the Motel Six adjacent to the pathway, someone informed the officers that a body was lying farther down the path. At 8:02 p.m., the officers found the body of victim Kenneth Black about 75 feet up the pathway. The victim had been shot once in the face and three times in the chest. The officers did not find a wallet or any cash on the victim, and his right rear pocket was turned inside out. The two bullets recovered from the victim's body were determined by firearms experts to be .38 caliber hollow-point bullets that had been fired from the same gun. A prostitute, Melissa Stephens, had been with the victim in his room at the Quality Inn, also adjacent to the pathway, from around 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. when she left the victim still alive. During this hour, the victim had left to get $700 from the ATM in order to pay Ms. Stephens.
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Rahsean McIntosh, who was 16 years old at trial, and Emmanuel Adkins, who was 17 years old at trial and 15 years old at the time of the incident, were playing basketball in the parking lot of Ashton Chase Apartments, also adjacent to the pathway, when they heard the gunshots. Less than a minute later, they saw a man come out of the pathway with a silver gun in his hand. As the man was leaving the woods, he stepped beneath a light, at which time both boys could see the man's face. Both boys identified Manuel from a photographic lineup as well as in court as the man they saw that night. Manuel was arrested the day after the murder. During a search of his apartment, the police found a .38 caliber hollow-point bullet, the same type of bullet as was found in the victim. "When evaluating the sufficiency of evidence, the proper standard for review is whether a rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We review the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, giving deference to the jury's determination on the proper weight and credibility to be given the evidence." [Cits.] Hamrick v. State, 304 Ga. App. 378 (1) (696 SE2d 403) (2010). In the present case, two eyewitnesses, who were familiar with Manuel, positively identified him as the man they saw running out of the pathway with a gun shortly after

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shots were heard. Manuel argues that the jury should have rejected the eyewitnesses' testimony because their testimony was internally inconsistent and they lacked credibility. However, [t]hat some evidence offered by a witness seems contradictory to his own or to some other's, or incomplete or uncertain, does not automatically discredit the evidence given by that witness, or others, for it is the function of the triers of fact to determine to what evidence it gives credence. Simmons v. State, 285 Ga. App. 129, 130-131 (645 SE2d 622) (2007). Manuel also argues that a lack of physical evidence shows that the evidence was insufficient to support the guilty verdict. Nevertheless, [u]nder OCGA

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