On June 6, 1997, Frederick Keith Hope was fatally shot while driving a car near the country-regioncountry-regionAtlantahotel where he was a registered guest. Appellant Courtney Smith was convicted of malice murder in connection with the death of Hope, and appeals the judgment of conviction entered against him.1 The chief medical examiner for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation GBI testified the victim died from massive internal bleeding caused by a gunshot that entered and exited his right arm and then entered his chest and damaged his aorta. The vehicle the victim was driving when he suffered the fatal wound side-swiped a parked vehicle occupied by a police officer for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority MARTA, who identified appellant as one of two men who exited the victim’s vehicle and ran toward a nearby hotel. The MARTA officer described appellant as wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans. While police were gathered in the parking lot of the hotel at which the victim was a registered guest and to which the two occupants of the victim’s vehicle had run, they noticed a room whose occupants repeatedly opened the curtain to peer out at the activity and closed the curtain when they noticed a police officer looking at them. When the occupants opened the room door in response to a police officer’s knock, the police officer observed in plain view a blue hooded sweatshirt and a washcloth with blood on it. The two male occupants of the room, neither of whom was the registered hotel guest assigned to that room, consented to the officer’s request for permission to take the sweatshirt and washcloth and agreed to accompany police to a police station for further questioning. After the occupants left with police, hotel personnel de-activated the room’s key-card entry system to prevent anyone other than management from entering the room.
When the hotel’s general manager inspected the room the following day to ensure its safety before admitting housekeeping personnel and renting it to a new guest, he found a bloodstained sock behind the headboard of one of the beds; a gun clip behind a mirror; and a handgun in the air-conditioning vent. GBI forensic biologists testified that the DNA profiles of both the victim and appellant were found on the sock, and a GBI fingerprint examiner testified that a fingerprint removed from the room’s air-conditioning vent cover was that of appellant. The GBI’s firearms examiner testified that the bullet removed from the victim during the autopsy was fired from the Lorcin .380-caliber pistol found in the air-conditioning vent of the hotel room in which appellant was found. The man in the hotel room with appellant testified that appellant removed the vent cover and placed the pistol in the ductwork.
