King v. State

Rico Jabar King shot and killed Michael Brooks on a DeKalb County sidewalk in 2018, then fled from police before being arrested. At trial King argued he was insane at the time of the shooting, claiming a weight-loss drug called phentermine caused him to become psychotic and believe Brooks was a threatening version of himself. A jury convicted him of malice murder and a firearm charge. On appeal, King argued the trial judge should have granted a new trial, that testimony and arguments about voluntary intoxication were improper, that testimony about his past drug and alcohol use was improper character evidence, and that his trial lawyer was constitutionally ineffective in several ways. The Supreme Court of Georgia rejected every claim. It found the trial judge properly considered and rejected the request for a new trial, that King's own lawyer introduced the intoxication and drug-use evidence as part of his defense strategy (so he could not complain about it later), and that his lawyer's alleged mistakes did not change the outcome of the trial. The conviction was affirmed.

King's general-grounds claim fails because the trial court properly exercised its discretion as thirteenth juror and the evidence was sufficient; his intoxication and character-evidence claims fail because he affirmatively waived or failed to preserve them; and his ineffective-assistance claims fail because he showed no reasonable probability of a different trial outcome.

The ruling confirms that defendants who introduce evidence or arguments themselves as part of their trial strategy cannot later claim error from that same evidence on appeal, and it reinforces how narrowly Georgia courts read intoxication-based insanity defenses, affecting how future insanity defenses are litigated.

Affirmed

1. The court explained that under Georgia's 'general grounds' statutes (OCGA §§ 5-5-20 and 5-5-21), a trial judge sitting as a 'thirteenth juror' has broad discretion to weigh the evidence and grant a new trial, but that discretionary decision is not reviewable on appeal.
2. Because the trial court's order expressly found the verdict was not against the weight of the evidence, the court concluded the judge properly exercised that discretion, defeating King's general-grounds claim.
3. On the intoxication and character-evidence claims, the court applied plain-error review (used when a defendant did not object at trial), which requires showing a clear legal error that likely changed the trial's outcome, and found that King's own lawyer had introduced the intoxication and drug-use testimony as part of the insanity defense strategy, meaning King affirmatively waived any objection to it.
4. Regarding the claim that jurors were not told voluntary intoxication can excuse a crime if it permanently altered brain function, the court found King never argued at trial that his brain was permanently altered, so any omission of that instruction was unlikely to have changed the verdict.
5. On the prosecutor's closing argument, the court found no 'golden rule' violation (asking jurors to imagine themselves as the victim) because the prosecutor asked jurors to imagine King's future release, not to place themselves in the victim's shoes, so a defense objection would have failed and counsel was not deficient for not raising it.
6. For the ineffective-assistance claims, applying the Strickland test requiring both deficient performance and resulting prejudice, the court found King failed to show that admitting uncertified medical records, objecting to drug-use testimony, or requesting a clarifying instruction would have produced a reasonably probable better outcome.

• murder conviction
• insanity defense
• voluntary intoxication
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• phentermine psychosis