Appellant Gerard George Baptiste was convicted in 2003 of the felony murder of Marcos Herrera, whose body was found alongside the body of Jose Perez Garcia in a Douglas County field on November 17, 2002.1 On appeal, Baptiste questions the denial of his motion to suppress evidence gathered from his pickup truck and from a wiretap on his telephone; the admission of a hearsay statement; and the inclusion in the jury charge of an instruction on party to a crime. 1. The medical examiner testified that Herrera died as a result of a gunshot fired into his head behind the left ear and an “immediately debilitating” gunshot wound to the back. The GBI firearms examiner testified that the bullets recovered from the heads of the two shooting victims were likely fired from a Davis derringer. Near the victims were tire tracks and a sales receipt from a store in Perry, Georgia, memorializing a transaction that had taken place about eleven hours before the bodies were discovered in Douglas County. Videotape of the store’s parking lot showed the two victims exiting a red, extended-cab Chevrolet pickup truck with an unidentified black male who was wearing a striped toboggan hat, and the trio exiting the store and entering the pickup truck. Close in time to the store transactions, the girlfriend of victim Herrera received a telephone call from Herrera that was made from a cellular phone registered to appellant. Appellant was found to be the owner of a red, extended-cab Chevrolet pickup truck who, while wearing a striped toboggan hat, had visited businesses two days after the bodies were found in order to replace the truckbed liner and the truck’s tires. The tire tracks found near the bodies matched tire tracks made by the tires on appellant’s truck, and the seller of the new tires on the truck testified the new tires were the same tire brand and model as were the tires removed from the truck two days after the victims were found. Employees at the shop where the bedliner was replaced testified the old bedliner had an odor as if an animal had died and that they had scrubbed away a softball-sized stain on the truck’s body underneath the bedliner. Blood found on wire covers near the tailgate of appellant’s truck matched the DNA profile of Herrera. A pawn broker testified that, a month before the two men were killed, he had sold two Davis derringers to a man identified in the pawn broker’s paperwork as appellant. A convicted felon testified that until his arrest in September 2002, he had purchased cocaine measured in kilograms several times from victim Herrera at appellant’s house, and another convicted felon awaiting sentencing testified he had purchased kilograms of cocaine from appellant. Cocaine kilogram wrappers were found in a search of appellant’s home. In an interview with police, appellant stated that he had been told that Herrera had stolen five kilograms of cocaine.
The evidence was sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the felony murder of Herrera. Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307 99 SC 2781, 61 LE2d 560 1979.
