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Byers v. State

The trial court properly charged the jury on voluntary intoxication based on evidence, including the defendant's own testimony, that he drank on the night before and the day of the incident.

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Ronald Everett Byers was indicted on three counts of child molestation involving the nine-year-old daughter of his employee. The trial court directed a verdict of acquittal on one count, and a jury acquitted him of another count and found him guilty of the remaining count. He appeals following the denial of his motion for new trial. Byers raises two enumerations of error, in which he contends that the trial court erred in giving a jury instruction on voluntary intoxication, that the prosecutor expressed personal opinions in closing argument, and that his counsel was ineffective because no objection was made to the State’s closing argument. The trial court addressed all these contentions in a well reasoned and detailed order denying Byers’s amended motion for new trial. For many of the reasons already stated by the trial court, we find no merit in any of Byers’s contentions on appeal, and we therefore affirm.

Construed to support the verdict, the evidence presented at trial showed that in early May 2002, after receiving an upsetting telephone call, Byers began drinking alcohol. He then called his longtime employee and friend and requested that she pick him up and bring him to her home because he neededto get away and did not feel capable of driving. The employee brought Byers and his young daughter to her home, where she, her husband, and Byers continued drinking. Byers spent the night in a spare bedroom at his employee’s home.

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