Patterson v. State

A Houston County jury found Benjamin Patterson guilty of felony theft by shoplifting, OCGA § 16-8-14 a, b 2. Following the grant of an out-of-time appeal, Patterson appeals, contending the trial court erred in denying his motion for new trial. He challenges the sufficiency of the evidence and raises several claims of error, including ineffective assistance of trial counsel. For the following reasons, we affirm. Viewed in the light most favorable to support the jury’s verdict,1 the record reveals the following. On December 27, 1998, three employees of a J. C. Penney in Centerville, Georgia responded to a “shoplifting-in-progress” announcement and attempted to stop a woman from removing apparel from the men’s department. The employees chased the woman as she ran to a nearby car, a late-model, four-door, off-white Oldsmobile. The woman ignored the employees’ shouts to stop and entered the car on the passenger side. As soon as the woman got into the car, a man “came flying around” the employees, got in the driver’s seat, and “immediately reversed the car and took off.” One employee wrote down the car’s tag number. Another employee watched the driver as he “slammed” the car into reverse and sped away. The driver backed up so quickly, he forced the employee from behind the car to the driver’s side where she made eye contact with him. This employee positively identified Patterson as the get-away driver at trial.

Using the tag information obtained by the store employee, the police traced the car to its owner, a woman who loaned the car to Patterson on the day of the robbery. The woman testified that Patterson neither returned her car nor explained what happened to it. The police later found the car wrecked in Macon, Georgia. When the police first tried to locate Patterson, they learned he was in a “treatment center” but they were unable to “make contact with him due to patient confidentiality.” It is unclear from the record whether this was a hospital; nevertheless, the jury might infer that Patterson sought some kind of medical attention immediately after the wreck.