Steen v. State

Dustin Steen was convicted of malice murder after stabbing Edward Newhouse to death during a fight outside a bar in Burke County. At trial Steen argued he acted in self-defense after being attacked by a group of men, but the jury rejected that account and convicted him. He appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia, arguing among other things that the evidence was not enough to convict him and that he had been improperly kept away from private bench conferences with the judge and lawyers during jury selection, a stage where he has a state constitutional right to be present. The court found the evidence of guilt was sufficient, since witnesses described Steen stabbing Newhouse repeatedly and the jury was entitled to disbelieve his self-defense story. But on the right-to-be-present issue, the trial court had never actually decided whether Steen knowingly gave up that right, even though the testimony on that point conflicted. The Supreme Court of Georgia sent that specific issue back to the trial court to resolve.

The evidence was sufficient to support the malice murder conviction because the jury was entitled to reject Steen's self-defense claim. However, because the trial court never made findings on whether Steen knowingly waived his right to be present at bench conferences during jury selection, and the evidence on that question conflicted, the case must be sent back for the trial court to resolve that issue first.

The ruling reinforces that Georgia trial judges must actually decide disputed factual questions about whether a defendant gave up his right to attend key parts of his own trial, rather than leaving the issue unresolved, which affects how future new-trial motions raising this claim must be handled.

Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded with direction

1. Under the sufficiency-of-the-evidence standard from Jackson v. Virginia, the court asks only whether a rational jury could have found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict rather than reweighing it.
2. Applying that standard, witness testimony that Steen repeatedly stabbed Newhouse and the jury's right to reject his self-defense account were enough to support the malice murder conviction.
3. The Georgia Constitution gives criminal defendants a right to be present at critical stages of trial, including proceedings where jury composition is decided, but a defendant can give up that right if he personally waives it or later acquiesces to his lawyer's waiver with enough knowledge of what happened to make his silence count as consent.
4. The hearing testimony conflicted: trial counsel said she discussed jury selection decisions with Steen, while Steen said he had no idea what was discussed at the bench conference, and the trial court's order addressed five other claims of error but made no findings on this one.
5. Because deciding whether Steen knowingly waived his right to be present requires credibility determinations that only the trial court can make in the first instance, the appellate court vacated that part of the ruling and sent the issue back for the trial court to resolve directly.

• malice murder conviction
• right to be present
• jury selection
• self-defense claim
• bench conferences