State v. Leverette

Jasmine Williams shot and killed her boyfriend, Gregory Swinson, in her Coffee County home in September 2017 after a night of arguing and fighting. She was convicted of malice murder and sentenced to life without parole. On appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia, she argued that the trial judge should have recused himself after a brief conversation with attorneys close to the victim's family, that the jury should have been instructed on self-defense, accident, and voluntary manslaughter, and that her trial lawyer was constitutionally ineffective for withdrawing a request to instruct the jury on defense of habitation, the right to use force to remove an intruder from one's home. The court rejected every argument. It found the judge's hallway conversation, held after jurors had left and unrelated to the case, did not create an appearance of bias. It found no evidence supported the requested jury instructions because Williams's own testimony showed the confrontation had ended before she got her gun. It also found no reasonable probability the trial's outcome would have changed even if the defense of habitation instruction had been given, given the strength of the evidence against her.

The court held that a trial judge's brief, case-unrelated conversation with attorneys connected to the victim's family did not require recusal, that no evidence supported jury instructions on self-defense, accident, or voluntary manslaughter because the confrontation had ended before the shooting, and that trial counsel's withdrawal of a defense-of-habitation instruction request did not prejudice Williams given the strong evidence of guilt.

The ruling reinforces that Georgia trial judges have latitude to have incidental, case-unrelated conversations with community members without triggering recusal, and clarifies how strictly courts require evidence before giving self-defense, accident, or manslaughter instructions in domestic shooting cases.

Affirmed

1. The court reviewed the recusal denial for abuse of discretion, applying a reasonable-person standard under the Code of Judicial Conduct, which asks whether an impartial observer could reasonably question the judge's impartiality.
2. It found the judge's hallway conversation with attorneys connected to the victim's family occurred after jurors left, covered unrelated topics, and did not touch the pending case, so it did not create an appearance of impropriety.
3. On the jury instructions, the court applied the 'slight evidence' standard, which requires only a small amount of supporting evidence to justify a requested charge, but found Williams's own testimony showed the physical confrontation with Swinson had already ended and he was unarmed and retreated to another room before she retrieved her gun, so neither self-defense nor voluntary manslaughter (which requires serious provocation causing sudden passion) was supported.
4. The court found Williams's account of deliberately raising the gun and swinging it at Swinson's head, with her finger on the trigger, showed criminal negligence rather than accident, since Georgia law bars an accident defense where the death results from criminal negligence.
5. Applying the two-part test from Strickland v. Washington for ineffective assistance of counsel, requiring both deficient performance and resulting prejudice, the court concluded that even assuming counsel was deficient in withdrawing the defense-of-habitation request, the weak evidentiary support for that defense and the strength of the evidence against Williams meant there was no reasonable probability the trial's outcome would have differed.

• malice murder conviction
• judicial recusal
• self-defense instruction
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• defense of habitation