CLEMENTS v. THE STATE (Two Cases)

London Clements and Eric Velazquez were part of a group that stole cars and burglarized pawnshops and car dealerships in Hall County over several nights in July 2019. When law enforcement tried to stop a stolen car the group was riding in, a crash and foot chase followed, and one of the men, Hector Garcia-Solis, shot and killed Deputy Sheriff Blane Dixon. Clements was convicted of felony murder based on a conspiracy to commit robbery and burglary, and Velazquez was convicted of malice murder and other crimes as a party to Garcia-Solis's actions. On appeal, Clements argued the trial judge should have granted him a directed verdict and should have granted a new trial, while Velazquez raised several challenges including insufficient evidence, lack of corroboration for accomplice testimony, venue, a mistrial motion, and ineffective assistance of counsel. The Supreme Court of Georgia rejected every argument and upheld both convictions in full.

The court held that a death is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of an armed, masked burglary and robbery scheme carried out in a stolen car, making Clements liable for felony murder, and that Velazquez shared a common criminal intent with the shooter based on his presence, statements, and conduct, making the evidence sufficient for his malice murder conviction as a party to the crime.

The ruling confirms that people who join in armed burglaries and car theft can be held responsible for a killing that follows, even if they did not pull the trigger, as long as the death was a foreseeable result of the dangerous scheme they helped plan.

Judgments affirmed

1. The court explained that felony murder requires proximate cause, meaning a defendant is responsible for a death that reasonably followed from the underlying felony unless something unforeseen broke the chain of events.
2. Because Clements and his companions were traveling in a stolen car, wearing masks and gloves, and two of them carried loaded guns while planning to steal and sell firearms, the court found it reasonably foreseeable that they could run into police and that someone could be killed.
3. For Velazquez, the court applied the rule that a person can be convicted as a party to a crime (guilty even without personally committing the act) if the jury can infer he shared a common criminal intent with the shooter from his presence, words, and actions before, during, and after the crime.
4. The court found that Velazquez's participation in the earlier burglaries with the shooter, his role driving the stolen car during the chase, his flight alongside the others, and his statement that he would have shot the deputy himself if armed, together let a jury reasonably conclude he shared the shooter's criminal intent.
5. On the corroboration and venue claims, the court found that testimony from two accomplices and Velazquez's own admissions sufficiently backed up the accomplice testimony, and that Velazquez failed to show the pretrial publicity or memorials made a fair trial impossible.
6. On the ineffective assistance claim, the court found the challenged statements were either not hearsay, cumulative of other evidence, or admissible as a defendant's own admission, so an attorney's failure to object could not have changed the trial's outcome.

• murder conviction
• felony murder
• party to a crime
• pawnshop burglaries
• police officer killed