Lowe v. State

Walter Jerome Lowe was convicted by a Gwinnett County jury of felony murder and other crimes after shooting his wife, Erica Powell, to death in 2017. The same indictment also charged him with domestic violence acts against Powell from 2015, including hitting her and threatening her. Lowe argued the trial judge should have separated the 2015 charges from the murder trial, and that his trial lawyer was ineffective for not citing older American Bar Association guidelines on splitting up charges. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed on both points, finding that evidence of the 2015 violence would have been allowed at the murder trial anyway to show Lowe's motive and the tumultuous relationship, so keeping the charges together was not an abuse of the trial judge's discretion. The court also found Lowe's lawyer was not ineffective for relying on binding Georgia case law instead of nonbinding guidelines. However, the court found Lowe had been improperly sentenced on two felony murder counts for killing one person, so it sent the case back for correction of that sentencing error only.

The trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to sever the 2015 domestic violence charges from the 2017 murder trial because evidence of the 2015 acts would have been admissible anyway to show motive and rule out accident, and trial counsel was not ineffective for relying on binding Georgia precedent rather than nonbinding ABA guidelines.

The ruling confirms that Georgia prosecutors can join related domestic violence history with a later murder charge in one trial when the earlier acts show motive or a pattern, and it reinforces that defendants cannot be punished twice for felony murder when there is only one victim.

Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for resentencing

1. The court explained that when charges are joined only because they are similar in character, a defendant has a right to severance, but when evidence of one charge would be admissible at the trial of another, the trial judge has discretion to deny severance.
2. Applying Georgia's rule for admitting other-acts evidence (O.C.G.A. § 24-4-404(b)), the court found the 2015 domestic violence evidence would have been relevant to show Lowe's motive and the troubled nature of his relationship with his wife, not just his bad character.
3. The court weighed the probative value of the 2015 evidence against any unfair prejudice under O.C.G.A. § 24-4-403 and found the evidence would help the jury reject Lowe's claim that the shooting was accidental, so its value was not outweighed by unfair prejudice.
4. Because eyewitnesses had observed the 2015 violence firsthand, there was enough proof for a jury to find those acts occurred by a preponderance of the evidence, satisfying the final requirement for admitting such evidence.
5. On the ineffective assistance claim, the court applied the two-part test from Strickland v. Washington, which requires showing both that a lawyer's performance fell below reasonable professional standards and that this failure likely changed the trial's outcome; the court found Lowe's lawyer reasonably relied on binding Georgia case law (Dingler v. State) rather than a nonbinding 1980 American Bar Association standard.
6. Separately, the court identified that Lowe had been sentenced on two felony murder counts for killing only one person, which Georgia law forbids, so it vacated those sentences and sent the case back for the trial court to resentence him on only one felony murder count.

• felony murder
• domestic violence
• severance of charges
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• sentencing error