A jury acquitted Leon Phillips of malice murder, but found him guilty of the felony murder of Veronica Rucker and numerous other offenses. After treating certain felony murder verdicts as surplusage and merging other counts, the trial court entered judgments of conviction and imposed sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for felony murder during the commission of aggravated assault, a consecutive life sentence for kidnapping, and various terms of years for false imprisonment, cruelty to children in the first degree, possession of a weapon during the commission of a crime, driving without a license, and giving a false name. After a motion for new trial was denied, Phillips appealed to the Court of Appeals, which transferred the case to this Court. 1. Construed most strongly in support of the jury’s verdicts, the evidence shows that, at a road safety checkpoint, Phillips was stopped on a motorcycle belonging to the victim’s husband. Phillips was wearing a jacket, helmet, and hat taken from the Rucker home. He was unable to produce a driver’s license, and he gave a false name and date of birth. Without inquiry, Phillips told the officers that he was coming from the Rucker home and that he had recently purchased the motorcycle from Mr. Rucker. After being arrested, Phillips discarded a gun near the place where he was sitting. About two hours later, the victim’s son Rhyan returned home from school and found his mother dead on the floor and his three-year-old brother screaming in a closet which was blocked by a dresser. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head fired by the gun which Phillips discarded. At the jail, Phillips changed his story, claiming that he had not come from the Rucker home and that he had obtained the motorcycle, gun, and other items elsewhere. Without being told, Phillips knew that the victim was a female. Rhyan identified Phillips as having previously been at the Rucker home to repair an appliance.
Phillips specifically contends that the wholly circumstantial evidence did not exclude every reasonable hypothesis other than his guilt of the crimes committed at the Rucker home. He was found with only a few of numerous items stolen from that home, he testified that he obtained the items from two other individuals, and the exact time of death was not shown. However, Phillips made contradictory incriminating admissions, part of which placed him at the Rucker home within, at most, a very few hours of the death and of his arrest near the home. He possessed the murder weapon and knew information about the murder which the police did not provide. No evidence corroborated his testimony. ” ‘Questions as to reasonableness are generally to be decided by the jury which heard the evidence and where the jury is authorized to find that the evidence, though circumstantial, was sufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis save that of guilt, the appellate court will not disturb that finding, unless the verdict of guilty is unsupportable as a matter of law.’ Cit.” Cit. It is the role of the jury to resolve conflicts in the evidence and to determine the credibility of witnesses, and the resolution of such conflicts adversely to the defendant does not render the evidence insufficient. Cit. Brooks v. State , 281 Ga. 514, 515-516 1 640 SE2d 280 2007. Reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdicts, we conclude that it was sufficient to exclude every reasonable hypothesis save that of Phillips’ guilt and to enable a rational trier of fact to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes for which he was convicted, either as the perpetrator or as a party to the crimes. Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U. S. 307 99 SC 2781, 61 LE2d 560 1979; Chandler v. State , 281 Ga. 712-714 1 642 SE2d 646 2007; Brooks v. State , supra.
