Collins v. State

Tommy Collins got into a fight near Underground Atlanta on New Year's Eve with a group he believed included 14-year-old Rueben Hand and two friends, and he thought they had stolen his phone, cash, and bracelet. After the Peach Drop, Collins confronted the teenagers, followed them into the MARTA station, and stabbed Hand in the neck, killing him. A jury convicted Collins of felony murder but acquitted him of malice murder and other assault counts. On appeal, Collins argued only that the trial judge should not have given the jury an instruction explaining that a person is not justified in attacking someone purely out of revenge for a past wrong, rather than to prevent an ongoing threat. He argued this undercut his defense that he was misidentified as the stabber. The Supreme Court of Georgia reviewed the instruction for plain error because his lawyer did not object when the final charge was read, and it found the instruction was supported by evidence and legally accurate, so there was no error at all.

The trial court did not err, let alone plainly err, in instructing the jury that a person is not justified in attacking someone solely in revenge for a past wrong, because slight evidence supported that theory and the instruction was a legally accurate statement matching the pattern jury charge.

The decision reaffirms that Georgia trial judges can give the 'revenge for a prior wrong' jury instruction whenever even slight evidence supports it, guiding how self-defense claims are weighed against evidence of retaliation in future murder and assault trials statewide.

Affirmed

1. Because defense counsel objected to the instruction only during the charge conference and said 'No, your honor' when asked about objections after the final charge was read, the court reviewed the claim only for plain error, a strict standard requiring a clear and obvious mistake that affected the trial's outcome.
2. Under Georgia law, a jury instruction is authorized if there is even slight evidence supporting the theory behind it, and that evidence can come from either side's case, not just the prosecution.
3. The court found such evidence here: the defendant told police he acted in self-defense after Hand supposedly said 'Let's get this dude,' but he had earlier accused the teenagers of theft, followed them to the train platform, and told a friend he 'retaliated against the boy who stole his cell phone.'
4. Because this evidence supported the theory that the stabbing may have been an act of revenge rather than pure self-defense, giving the revenge instruction was proper and not merely harmless, it was correct.
5. The court rejected the argument that the instruction undermined the defendant's misidentification defense, noting his own closing argument also challenged whether he had the specific intent to kill, so misidentification was not his only defense.
6. The court also rejected the claim that the instruction was an improper comment on the defendant's guilt, relying on a prior case holding that nearly identical pattern language did not constitute such a comment.

• felony murder conviction
• jury instructions
• self-defense
• MARTA stabbing
• Fulton County