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Final Copy 289 Ga. 845 S11A0722. WALDEN v. THE STATE.

CARLEY, Presiding Justice. After a jury trial, Appellant Amy Elizabeth Walden was found guilty of the malice and felony murder of her husband Johnny Clint Walden, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, concealing the death of another, and two counts of cruelty to children in the second degree. The felony murder verdict was vacated by operation of law, and the trial court entered judgments of conviction on the remaining guilty verdicts. Appellant was sentenced to life imprisonment for the malice murder, consecutive terms of ten years for concealing the death of another and five years for the weapons charge, and tenyear terms for each count of cruelty to children to run concurrent with each other but consecutive to the other sentences. A motion for new trial was denied, and Appellant appeals.*

The crimes occurred on August 22, 2004, and the grand jury returned an indictment on October 20, 2004. The jury found Appellant guilty on April 14, 2006, and the trial court entered the judgments of conviction and sentences on May 16, 2006. The motion for new trial was filed on June 12, 2006 and denied on November 17, 2010. Appellant filed the notice of appeal on December 10,
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1. Construed most strongly in support of the verdicts, the evidence shows that the victim had shown Appellant how to shoot a gun resembling the one which caused his death. Appellant lied to the victim about the extremely large debts which she had incurred. He threatened to divorce her, and she had once told a family member that she would kill him before going through another divorce. The victim was killed in his house by a single gunshot to his head. The State's pathologist testified that the autopsy showed the absence of any contact wound and that he determined that the manner of death was homicide. After the victim's death, Appellant, who was the only adult in the house, moved and covered up the victim's body, kept it in the house, and stayed there with her two young children for nearly three days, except for a few hours when they stayed with the victim's father while Appellant cleaned house. During those three days, Appellant repeatedly lied to the victim's relatives regarding his whereabouts and refused to let them enter the house. Eventually, the police were called, the stench from the decomposing body was overwhelming, and Appellant, appearing unconcerned, admitted that the victim was dead. Although

2010. The case was docketed in this Court for the April 2011 term and submitted for decision on the briefs.
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Appellant told police and testified at trial that the victim had committed suicide, she made inconsistent and incriminating statements to one cellmate that the victim was accidentally shot during a fight over finances and to another cellmate that she purposely shot him after having sex with him. Appellant contends that the evidence was insufficient to convict her of malice or felony murder. She particularly relies upon evidence that the victim's hands tested positive for gunshot residue and upon the pathologist's testimony that some suicides are not the result of contact wounds. However, although the pathologist could not conclusively state that the fatal wound was caused by someone other than the victim himself, the pathologist testified that it is very rare for a suicide by gunshot not to result in a contact wound, especially in men. Evans v. State, 271 Ga. 614, 615 (1) (523 SE2d 850) (1999). See also Garey v. State, 273 Ga. 133, 134-135 (539 SE2d 123) (2000). Furthermore, a gunshot residue analyst with the state crime lab testified that the presence of such residue can be caused by the hand being near the barrel of a gun when it is fired, instead of actually firing the gun. Montgomery v. State, 260 Ga. 43, 44-45 (389 SE2d 209) (1990). See also Jones v. State, 275 Ga. 156, 158 (563 SE2d 835) (2002).

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Whether suicide is a reasonable hypothesis was a question for the jury and where circumstantial evidence is sufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis save that of the homicide at the hands of the accused, this Court will not disturb the guilty verdict unless it is unsupportable as a matter of law. [Cit.] Evans v. State, supra. The circumstantial evidence in this case was substantial, including not only the nature of the gunshot wound, but also Appellant's motive to harm the victim, and her prolonged coverup and conflicting accounts of his death. See Hall v. State, 287 Ga. 755, 756 (1) (699 SE2d 321) (2010); Hannah v. State, 278 Ga. 195, 196 (599 SE2d 177) (2004); Wright v. State, 274 Ga. 730, 731 (559 SE2d 437) (2002). "The jury was free to reject [Appellant's] version of events, which it obviously did. [Cit.]" Garey v. State, supra at 137 (3). "The evidence, although circumstantial, was sufficient for a rational trier of fact to reject the defense theory that [the victim's] death was a suicide and to find [Appellant] guilty of [malice] murder beyond a reasonable doubt. [Cit.]" Wright v. State, supra at 731 (1). Because the trial court correctly entered a judgment of conviction on the malice murder verdict and not on the felony murder count, we need not consider the sufficiency of the evidence as to that alternative charge. Frezghi

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v. State, 273 Ga. 871-872 (1) (548 SE2d 296) (2001); Goforth v. State, 271 Ga. 700, 701 (2) (523 SE2d 868) (1999). Appellant also contends that the evidence was insufficient to convict her of cruelty to children in the second degree. Under OCGA

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