Following a bench trial, the City Court of Atlanta convicted Eugene Marsengill of driving without a valid license and improper stopping in a roadway. He appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence. We affirm. On appeal from a criminal conviction, the evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict. We neither assess the credibility of the witnesses nor weigh the evidence, but instead determine only whether a rational trier of fact could have found each of the elements of the crime proven beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . Further, to sustain a judgment of conviction based upon circumstantial evidence, the evidence need not exclude every inference or hypothesis except the guilt of the accused, but only reasonable inferences and hypotheses, so as to justify the inference, beyond a reasonable doubt, of guilt. Citations and punctuation omitted; emphasis in original. Stephens v. State , 271 Ga. App. 634, 634-635 610 SE2d 613 2005. The determination of whether an alternative hypothesis raised by the evidence is reasonable is a job for the fact finder, who is authorized to reject a hypothesis that he considers implausible. Id. at 635; Frye v. State , 189 Ga. App. 181, 182 375 SE2d 101 1988. Moreover, the fact finder decides whether the evidence excluded every reasonable hypothesis except that of the defendant’s guilt. Phillips v. State , 185 Ga. App. 54, 55 1 363 SE2d 283 1987. 1. Marsengill contends the circumstantial evidence presented was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had been driving the car on the date of the offenses. He argues that the State failed to exclude the possibility that someone else drove the car to the place where it was parked.
The evidence presented, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, showed the following facts. At approximately 3:45 a.m. on March 4, 2003, two Atlanta police officers approached a car that was parked in such a way that it blocked the right lane of a city street. Marsengill was sitting in the driver’s seat of the car, and two other individuals were in the middle and passenger seats. The officers did not see anyone get into or out of the car before they approached it. The officers asked Marsengill for his driver’s license, but Marsengill said he did not have one. When the officers ran a GCIC check on Marsengill’s Georgia identification card, they discovered that Marsengill’s driver’s license had been suspended. They also found out that the car belonged to Marsengill’s son and that neither Marsengill nor his son lived in the area where the car was parked, indicating that someone had driven the car to that area. There was also evidence that, on March 4, 2003, Marsengill knew that his license had been suspended, because he had previously received two other citations for driving with a suspended license. Moreover, other than the mere presence of two passengers, no evidence was presented that raised the possibility that someone else had been driving the car before the officers approached.
