Kevin Alan Taylor was jointly tried with two co-defendants, Robert Nathaniel Hall, Jr. and Norval Patten, and found guilty by a jury of possession with intent to distribute marijuana and trafficking in cocaine. He appeals on various grounds from the judgment of conviction entered on the guilty verdicts, and for the following reasons, we affirm. 1. Taylor contends that the evidence was insufficient to support a guilty verdict on either of the charged offenses. Construed in favor of the guilty verdicts, evidence produced at the trial showed the following: After United Parcel Service UPS alerted police to the suspicious nature of a package shipped from “Helen White” in California to “Kate White” in Augusta, a police investigation at the UPS facility revealed an open package which contained suspected marijuana wrapped in red cellophane and surrounded by substances commonly used to mask the odor of marijuana. Posing as a UPS agent, a police officer called an Augusta phone number given to UPS and arranged with a person called “Dante White” for the package to be picked up at the UPS location. Prior to the pickup, the officer also went to the Augusta address listed on the package, 2814 Ridgecrest Drive, and observed two cars located at the address. On the day of the pickup, Taylor and Hall rented a car which they supplied to another co-indictee, Joseph Scurry, Jr., who used the car to pick up the UPS package. When Scurry arrived at UPS, he was followed by Taylor and Hall in a car previously seen by the officer at the 2814 Ridgecrest Drive address. Police arrested Scurry as he walked out of the UPS facility with the package, which evidence showed contained 40.1 pounds of marijuana with a street value of about $200,000. Officers stopped Taylor and Hall as they attempted to drive away immediately after Scurry was arrested. Observing two cell phones in the car occupied by Taylor and Hall, an officer used a police cell phone to call the phone number at which he had previously spoken to “Dante White,” and both cell phones in the car rang simultaneously. The officer answered the cell phone adjacent to Hall and discovered that he was speaking to himself on the police cell phone.
Police then took Taylor and Hall to an apartment at the 2814 Ridgecrest Drive address to accompany officers during execution of a search warrant. As the officers approached the door to the apartment, Hall broke away from the officers and ran, and Taylor collapsed to the floor screaming, “Lord, please save me. Don’t let them take me in here.” Although the apartment was rented in Patten’s name, officers gained entry through the locked apartment door with a key they found on Taylor’s person. In their search of the apartment, officers found 1000 grams of suspected powdered cocaine later tested and proved to be 73 percent pure cocaine wrapped in the same red cellophane used to wrap the marijuana found at the UPS facility, along with $98,864 in cash. The apartment search also produced documents showing that Taylor, Hall, and Patten occupied the apartment. In addition to various men’s clothing found in the apartment, police found a California birth certificate for Taylor’s child, a check showing Taylor’s payment of child support, and numerous other personal documents belonging to Hall and Patten. In a separate search of Taylor’s car, police found a digital scale under the driver’s seat like scales commonly used for weighing contraband, along with a piece of paper displaying the address from which the marijuana was shipped by UPS from California.
