Carroll v. State

A jury found Rick Carroll guilty on two counts of aggravated battery.1 At the sentencing hearing, the trial court granted Carroll’s earlier motion for a directed verdict as to one count of aggravated battery. Carroll now appeals the trial court’s denial of his motion for new trial on the remaining count of aggravated battery. For reasons that follow, we reverse. In this appeal from a criminal conviction, Carroll has lost the presumption of innocence, and we view the evidence in a light most favorable to the verdict.2 The record reflects that early in the morning on August 26, 2006, police were called to a house where Carroll lived with his girlfriend, Dana Peacock. Carroll and Peacock, who had both been drinking, had been in a physical altercation. Police found “blood everywhere: on the bed, walls, doors, and on clothes thrown on the floor.” The jury saw pictures of the scene.

Peacock was taken to the hospital; she had two black eyes, a laceration on her nose that required stitches, marks “consistent with choking” on her neck, swelling “consistent with blunt force trauma” on her scalp, and “a lot of blood on her face.” The jury saw pictures of Peacock after she received stitches for the laceration. Peacock testified that she received eight stitches, which were removed by a friend four or five days later. Peacock gave a written statement to police in which she alleged that, after they began arguing, Carroll repeatedly punched her in the face, choked her, and raped her. She eventually fled to her neighbors’ house, and they called 911. Peacock later recanted her statement, claiming that she was under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time of the altercation and that “the fighting was mutual.”