NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court
Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the
opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any
prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and
official text of the opinion.

       In the Supreme Court of Georgia




                                                  Decided: September 17, 2024


                     S24A0913. GONZALEZ v. THE STATE.


       BETHEL, Justice.

       Jesus Olvera Gonzalez was convicted of malice murder in

connection with the stabbing death of Jesus Arizaga. 1 On appeal,

Gonzalez contends that the trial court erred by denying his motion

to suppress a statement that he made to police before he was given

the warnings required by Miranda 2 and that the trial court erred by

failing to suppress certain DNA evidence and photographs. For the



       1 The crimes occurred on September 8, 2019. On February 10, 2020, a

Forsyth County grand jury indicted Gonzalez for malice murder (Count 1),
felony murder predicated on aggravated assault (Count 2), and aggravated
assault (Count 3). At a May 2022 trial, a jury found Gonzalez guilty of all
counts. The trial court sentenced Gonzalez to serve life in prison on Count 1,
and the remaining counts merged or were vacated by operation of law.
      Gonzalez filed a timely motion for new trial, which was later amended
through new counsel. Gonzalez waived an evidentiary hearing on the motion,
and the trial court denied the amended motion on March 15, 2024. Gonzalez
then filed a timely notice of appeal, and his case was docketed to the August
2024 term of this Court and submitted for a decision on the briefs.
      2 Miranda v. Arizona, 

 (

, 16 LE2d 694) (1966).
reasons that follow, we affirm.

      1. On September 8, 2019, at 5:10 a.m., Forsyth County 911

received a call reporting a stabbing at a residence.3 The caller, B.

O., 4 requested an ambulance, saying that his cousin’s friend, who

was later identified as Arizaga, had been stabbed and was bleeding.

B. O. further reported that his cousin, later identified as Gonzalez,

and Arizaga had been drinking and began arguing, that Gonzalez

had stabbed Arizaga, and that Gonzalez was crying outside the

residence with B. O.’s parents.

      Several officers arrived at the home approximately six minutes

later. As the officers approached the residence, B. O. notified them

that Arizaga was inside and that Gonzalez was still outside talking

to B. O.’s parents. Sergeant White, one of the responding officers,

located Gonzalez standing with two other individuals outside the

residence. Gonzalez had blood on his hands and shirt. Sergeant

White immediately handcuffed Gonzalez and asked him, “Where’s


      3 The recording of the 911 call was admitted into evidence at trial and

played for the jury.
      4 B. O. was a minor at the time of the crimes and subsequent trial.

                                      2
the knife?” Gonzalez pointed towards the house and then verbally

confirmed that the knife was inside the house.

     Meanwhile, other responding officers had proceeded inside the

residence to locate the victim and clear the scene. The officers

discovered Arizaga lying on the floor of a bedroom with several stab

wounds. Officers performed CPR, but Arizaga died from his injuries.

The knife was found on the floor near Arizaga.

     Gonzalez was arrested and transported to the police station.

Later that day at the police station, a crime-scene specialist took

pictures of Gonzalez’s blood-stained clothing and body and collected

swabs from his hands, which had dried blood on them. The pictures

were admitted into evidence at trial. The swabs were tested, and the

blood collected from Gonzalez’s hands was determined to be

Arizaga’s.

     Juan Olvera, another of Gonzalez’s cousins, testified at trial

that he shared a room with Gonzalez and was awakened that

morning by Gonzalez and Arizaga when the two came into the

bedroom. Gonzalez and Arizaga began fighting, and Olvera testified

                                 3
that he saw Gonzalez strike Arizaga repeatedly (though he did not

see anything in Gonzalez’s hand and testified that he “couldn’t see

the details”), saw Arizaga bleeding, and then observed Gonzalez

abruptly leave the room to go outside. Olvera attempted to staunch

Arizaga’s bleeding and then woke up his parents and sent them

outside with Gonzalez.

     B. O., meanwhile, testified that he observed Gonzalez and

Arizaga enter the house from the garage, arguing. B. O. testified

that the two went into Olvera’s room and that Gonzalez walked out

of the bedroom and left the house a few minutes later. When

Gonzalez came back inside, B. O. observed a knife in Gonzalez’s

pocket, saw him go back into Olvera’s room, and, a few seconds later,

heard groaning coming from the room. B. O. notified his parents,

called 911, observed Gonzalez leave the house, and saw his parents

follow Gonzalez.

     2. In his first enumeration of error, Gonzalez argues that the

trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress his statement

made to Sergeant White after he was handcuffed at the scene.

                                 4
Specifically, Gonzalez argues that his statement indicating where

the murder weapon was located was inadmissible because he made

the statement before receiving the warnings required by Miranda

and that the trial court erroneously relied on the public-safety

exception to Miranda in finding his statement admissible.

Gonzalez’s argument fails.

     “A trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress is reviewed for

abuse of discretion.” Glenn v. State, 

 (2) (

) (2020).

     As we recently explained,

     [i]n Miranda, the United States Supreme Court
     interpreted the Fifth Amendment and set forth the now
     well-established rule that a defendant who is in custody
     and subject to interrogation “must be warned prior to any
     questioning that he has the right to remain silent, that
     anything he says can be used against him in a court of
     law, that he has the right to the presence of an attorney,
     and that if he cannot afford an attorney one will be
     appointed for him prior to any questioning if he so
     desires.”

State v. Lopez-Cardona, 

 (2) (a) (

) (2024)

(quoting Miranda, 

 (III)). Though statements


                                 5
obtained in violation of Miranda are generally inadmissible, in New

York v. Quarles, 

 (

, 81 LE2d 550) (1984),

the United States Supreme Court has recognized a “narrow

exception” to Miranda that applies in “situations where there is a

threat to public safety.” United States v. Newsome, 

 (II) (A) (11th Cir. 2007). Pursuant to this exception, an officer

may “ask questions reasonably prompted by a concern for public

safety” before giving the warnings required by Miranda. Quarles,

. See also Newsome, 

 (II) (A) (“The

public safety exception allows officers to question a suspect without

first Mirandizing him when necessary to protect either themselves

or the general public.”); Bowling v. State, 

 (4) (a)

(

) (2011) (applying public-safety exception).

     We conclude that the trial court did not err in finding that the

public safety exception applied to Gonzalez’s statement, and

therefore did not abuse its discretion in denying Gonzalez’s motion




                                  6
to suppress.5 Officers were dispatched to the crime scene following a

911 call regarding a stabbing in progress, so responding officers

were alerted to the possibility that they might encounter an armed

and violent assailant, whose identity was not yet known to them.

After arriving at the crime scene only six minutes after the 911 call

was placed, Sergeant White found Gonzalez waiting outside with

blood visible on his hands and shirt. Given these circumstances,

Sergeant White had a reasonable basis to believe that Gonzalez may

have been armed and dangerous. After handcuffing Gonzalez, he

asked what was necessary to secure the scene and prevent injury to

the responding officers and others present at the scene, specifically,

“Where’s the knife?” See Bowling, 

 (4) (a) (despite lack

of Miranda warnings, officer’s question regarding location of gun fell

within the public safety exception as officer was “confronted with an

immediate need to locate a gun that the suspect recently possessed”


     5 The parties do not dispute that Gonzalez was in custody at the time

Sergeant White questioned him about the location of the knife. See Jenkins v.
State, 

 (2) (b) (

) (2023) (“Miranda warnings must
be administered to an accused who is in custody and subject to interrogation
or its functional equivalent.” (citation and punctuation omitted)).
                                     7
and had likely discarded nearby, which “posed more than one danger

to public safety” (citation and punctuation omitted)). And Sergeant

White asked only the single question necessary to locate the knife,

which was proper to protect himself, his fellow officers, and the other

individuals at the scene. See Newsome, 

 (II) (A).

     Although Gonzalez contends that the crime scene and the knife

had already been secured by the time Sergeant White handcuffed

and questioned him, Gonzalez points to no evidence in the record

showing that Sergeant White could have known that. Indeed, the

officers’ testimony and the footage from Sergeant White’s body

camera support the trial court’s finding of a rapid sequence of

events, with Sergeant White focused on locating the unknown

assailant while other officers cleared the interior of the residence.

Because Sergeant White was entitled to take the safety measure of

ascertaining the location of the knife prior to giving Gonzalez the

Miranda warnings, the trial court did not err in finding that the

public safety exception applied to Gonzalez’s statement, and

therefore did not abuse its discretion by denying Gonzalez’s motion

                                  8
to suppress. See Martin v. State, 

 (2) (

)

(2003) (“[T]he officer was entitled to determine the location of the

knife prior to reading [the defendant] his Miranda rights.”); Smith

v. State, 

 (3) (

) (1995) (holding that an

officer’s question regarding location of a gun was not an

interrogation requiring Miranda warnings but an attempt to

determine whether defendant was armed). Gonzalez’s first

enumeration of error therefore fails.

     3. In his second enumeration of error, Gonzalez challenges the

admission of certain evidence at trial, specifically, pictures of

Gonzalez’s clothing and body taken at the police station after his

arrest, as well as the results of DNA testing showing that the blood

on Gonzalez’s hands was Arizaga’s. In Gonzalez’s estimation, the

photographs and blood evidence should have been suppressed

because they were taken from him in violation of the Fourth

Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibition against

unreasonable searches and because the collection of this evidence

violated his right against self-incrimination under Paragraph XVI

                                  9
of our State Constitution. 6 For the reasons explained below, each of

Gonzalez’s claims fails.

      (a) Turning first to Gonzalez’s Fourth Amendment challenge,

Gonzalez argues that police, by swabbing his hands for DNA

evidence and taking photographs of his body and clothing, conducted

a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment for which a

warrant was required. And because no warrant was obtained,

Gonzales argues, the search was unreasonable, and the evidence

collected as a result of that search was due to be suppressed.

      As an initial matter, Gonzalez does not address whether this

claim was preserved for ordinary appellate review. But our review

of the record reflects that, despite raising the issue in a pre-trial

motion to suppress, Gonzalez failed to obtain a ruling from the trial

court with respect to the admissibility of this evidence on Fourth

Amendment grounds. 7 Nor did Gonzalez object on Fourth


      6 See Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. XVI (“No person shall be

compelled to give testimony tending in any manner to be self-incriminating.”).
     7 Though Gonzalez’s appellate brief notes that the issue raised in this

enumeration of error was raised in a pretrial motion to suppress, he fails to

                                     10
Amendment grounds when the evidence was admitted during trial.8

Accordingly, we review only for plain error. See Williams v. State,

 (2) n.7 (

) (2023). To establish plain

error,

      [f]irst, there must be an error or defect – some sort of
      deviation from a legal rule – that has not been
      intentionally    relinquished      or    abandoned,      i.e.,
      affirmatively waived, by the appellant. Second, the legal
      error must be clear or obvious, rather than subject to
      reasonable dispute. Third, the error must have affected
      the appellant’s substantial rights, which in the ordinary
      case means he must demonstrate that it affected the
      outcome of the trial court proceedings. Fourth and finally,
      if the above three prongs are satisfied, the appellate court
      has the discretion to remedy the error – discretion which
      ought to be exercised only if the error seriously affects the
      fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial
      proceedings.



identify where in the record the trial court ruled on the issue. And we have not
located anything in the record reflecting that such ruling was made. As we
have explained before, it is not enough merely to raise an evidentiary issue in
the trial court—a ruling must be obtained from the trial court to preserve the
issue for ordinary appellate review. See Goins v. State, 

 (4)
(

) (2020) (Though appellant filed a pretrial motion to suppress
certain evidence and the trial court held a hearing on the motion, the trial court
“did not issue a ruling at the hearing or in an order, and [a]ppellant’s trial
counsel did not request a ruling or object when the . . . evidence was admitted
during the trial. We therefore review [a]ppellant’s claim only for plain error.”).
       8 Instead, Gonzalez’s objection relied exclusively on decisions concerning

the right against compelled self-incrimination under the Georgia Constitution,
and the trial court’s ruling was limited to that issue.
                                       11
Id. at 495 (2) (citation, punctuation, and emphasis omitted).

“Satisfying all four prongs of this standard is difficult, as it should

be.” Hood v. State, 

 (2) (a) (

) (2018)

(citation and punctuation omitted).

     The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution

guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons,

houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and

seizures.” U. S. Const. Amend. IV. “Ordinarily, a search is deemed

to be reasonable when conducted pursuant to a judicial warrant,

which the Fourth Amendment requires to be supported by probable

cause.” Caffee v. State, 

 (2) (

) (2018).

On the other hand, “[s]earches conducted without a warrant are

unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment unless they fall within

a well-established exception to the warrant requirement,” including

“searches conducted pursuant to consent, the existence of exigent

circumstances, and searches incident to a lawful arrest.” 

     In support of this claim of error, Gonzalez argues only that

there were no exigent circumstances that justified the actions of

                                  12
police officers in swabbing his hands for DNA evidence and taking

photographs of his body and clothing without first obtaining a

warrant. But, even assuming that the photographs and swabs

constituted a search,9 Gonzalez’s argument ignores that, as we just

explained above, the existence of exigent circumstances is not the

only exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

Among other exceptions to the warrant requirement is a search

incident to a lawful arrest, which “‘derives from interests in officer

safety and evidence preservation that are typically implicated in

arrest situations.’” Kennebrew v. State, 

 (2) (a) (

) (2016) (quoting Arizona v. Gant, 

 (II)



     9 Gonzalez cites no case law in support of his conclusory assertion that

the mere taking of photographs constitutes a search within the meaning of the
Fourth Amendment. Compare Mitchell v. State, 

 (3) (

) (2017) (“Generally, in a ‘search’ of an individual, some tangible
evidence is taken from that person: whether a physical object in the person’s
possession, or a sample of some part of their body, such as hair, blood, or
urine. An action by the State which does not obtain any tangible item, but
merely obtains information as to ‘personal characteristics,’ lies in a middle
ground. The United States Supreme Court has concluded that . . . ‘searches’
include such actions as taking blood, breath, or urine samples, removing
scrapings from underneath an individual’s fingernails, or obtaining DNA
evidence via a cheek swab.” (citations and punctuation omitted; emphasis in
original)), disapproved on other grounds by State v. Turnquest, 

 (4) n.15 (

) (2019).
                                     13
(

, 173 LE2d 485) (2009)).

     Here, the record reflects that, after his arrest at the scene in

the early morning hours, Gonzalez was transported to the police

station and placed in an interrogation room where he remained

handcuffed. Shortly before noon that same day, a crime scene

investigator took photographs of Gonzalez and swabbed his hands

while Gonzalez remained in the interrogation room at the police

station. And the swabbings and photographs clearly were taken for

the purpose of preserving evidence of the offense—that is, blood on

Gonzalez’s hands and clothing—that was within Gonzalez’s

immediate control and could be easily destroyed. See Gant, 

 (II) (“[A] search incident to arrest may only include the

arrestee’s person and the area within his immediate control—

[meaning] the area from within which he might gain possession of a

weapon or destructible evidence. That limitation, which continues

to define the boundaries of the exception, ensures that the scope of

a search incident to arrest is commensurate with its purposes of

protecting arresting officers and safeguarding any evidence of the

                                 14
offense of arrest that an arrestee might conceal or destroy.” (citation

and punctuation omitted)). Gonzalez does not argue that probable

cause to arrest him was lacking. See Caffee, 

 (2) (the

search-incident-to-arrest exception “applies only if there is probable

cause to arrest”). Nor does Gonzalez make any effort to demonstrate

that the swabbing and photographing was unauthorized under the

search-incident-to-arrest exception. See Cupp v. Murphy, 

 (

, 36 LE2d 900) (1973) (given the existence of

probable cause and “the ready destructibility of the evidence, no

Fourth Amendment violation where police took scraping of

fingernails); Thomason v. State, 

 (2) (d) (

) (1997) (trial court did not err in denying motion to suppress

swabs of blood that “were permissibly taken from [the defendant]’s

skin surface after he was taken into custody, as they also preserved

evidence”). See also 1 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A

Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 2.6 (a) (6th ed. 2024) (“if a

person has been lawfully arrested it really is not significant whether

certain types of in-custody investigation (e.g., fingerprinting)

                                  15
constitute a Fourth Amendment search; the investigation is lawful

in any event because a valid arrest was made”). Given these

circumstances, we conclude that Gonzalez has failed to meet his

burden of showing that the trial court committed any error, much

less a clear legal error required under plain error review, by failing

to suppress the evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds. See

Ruthenberg v. State, 

 (3) (

) (2023)

(appellant carries burden of showing plain error).

     (b) Relying on Olevik v. State, 

 (

)

(2017), Gonzalez further argues that he was compelled to act and

produce evidence against himself in violation of his state

constitutional right against self-incrimination when police told him

to produce his hands palms up and palms down to provide access to

the specific DNA-covered areas the police needed to obtain evidence

from and when they told him to remove his shirt and pose at various

angles for photographs.10 But as the trial court correctly determined


     10 Gonzalez objected to this effect at trial, and thus this error was
preserved for ordinary appellate review. See Adams v. State, 

 (1)

                                     16
Olevik does not support Gonzalez’s argument. Rather, in Olevik, we

explicitly stated that “the right against compelled self-incrimination

is not violated where a defendant is compelled only to be present so

that certain incriminating evidence may be procured from him” and

that “the right is not violated when evidence is taken from a

defendant’s body or photographs of the defendant are taken.” Id. at

242 (2) (c) (iii). Gonzalez’s claim therefore fails. See id.

      Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.




(

) (2019) (“In order to preserve an objection for ordinary appellate
review, the specific ground of the objection must be made at the time the
challenged evidence is offered.” (cleaned up)).
                                      17