Court: Court of Appeals of Georgia; September 11, 2007; Georgia; State Appellate Court
D. D. was adjudicated delinquent by the Coweta County Juvenile Court for aggravated assault and obstruction of an officer. He appealed, claiming insufficient evidence for the felony obstruction charge and a failure to prove venue. The appellate court found sufficient evidence for the delinquency adjudications but reversed the judgment due to lack of proof of venue.
The court reviewed the record favorably towards the judgment, confirming that on December 6, 2006, D. D. threatened a victim at Sargent Baptist Church, brandishing a knife. Upon police arrival at his home, D. D. resisted arrest by fleeing, using obscenities, and assuming a fighting stance, which led to the use of pepper spray by deputies. The court established that D. D. committed felony obstruction by resisting law enforcement, as defined by Georgia law, without the need for actual violence or injury.
While evidence also supported the counts of aggravated assault and misdemeanor obstruction, the court emphasized that venue, as a jurisdictional fact, must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. This failure to establish venue resulted in the reversal of the juvenile court's adjudication.
Cases involving juveniles accused of delinquent acts can be filed in either the juvenile's county of residence or the county where the acts occurred, per OCGA § 15-11-29 (a). The standard of review for venue sufficiency on appeal aligns with general sufficiency standards, assessing whether any rational trier of fact could have found venue proved beyond a reasonable doubt, as established in Thompson v. State, 277 Ga. 102 (2003). In this case, tried in Coweta County, the state failed to present evidence regarding the juvenile's residence, necessitating proof that the aggravated assault and obstruction acts occurred in Coweta County.
Witness testimony indicated that the aggravated assault took place at Sargent Baptist Church, but there was no evidence proving that the church or the City of Sargent is located within Coweta County. Following legal precedents, merely demonstrating a crime occurred in a city does not suffice to establish venue within a county. Consequently, the evidence was deemed insufficient to uphold the aggravated assault charge, leading to a reversal of the conviction.
Similarly, the state did not adequately prove the obstruction charges occurred in Coweta County. Testimony indicated the offenses happened at a house near the juvenile's residence, yet no evidence clarified the location of either residence. The "slight evidence exception" to venue no longer applies when a defendant pleads not guilty, which challenges the venue. The employment of responding officers by the Coweta County Sheriff's Department alone does not satisfy the burden of proof for establishing venue.
The court noted the possibility of retrial without violating the Double Jeopardy Clause due to sufficient evidence supporting the delinquency adjudication for the charged crimes. The judgment was reversed, with the concurrence of Blackburn, P. J., and Ruffin, J. The trial court was also reminded that while it could have taken judicial notice of Sargent's geographical boundaries, it failed to follow the proper procedural requirements for such action.
