Price v. State

Trevis Lavell Price was convicted by a Dougherty County jury of murdering L.C. Tumblin, Jr. and Dexter Covin, along with drug and firearm charges, after a shooting outside a residence that police believed grew out of a cocaine deal. One victim identified Price by name to police before dying, and an eyewitness described seeing Price shoot Covin, though that witness could not identify Price in a photo lineup or at trial. On appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia, Price argued the evidence was too inconsistent and incomplete to support his murder convictions, and that the trial court wrongly refused to separate the cocaine possession charge from the murder charges for trial. The court disagreed on both points, finding the evidence sufficient for a jury to convict and finding no abuse of discretion in trying all the charges together because they arose from the same drug-related course of conduct.

The evidence, including a dying victim's repeated identification of the shooter, phone records, and testimony about a drug deal, was sufficient for a rational jury to find Price guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of malice murder, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying severance of the drug charge because all offenses stemmed from Price's drug-dealing conduct.

The ruling confirms that Georgia juries, not appellate courts, resolve conflicts and gaps in trial evidence, and that prosecutors can try drug and murder charges together when they stem from the same criminal episode, affecting how future multi-charge cases are structured and appealed.

Affirmed

1. The court applied the standard sufficiency-of-the-evidence test, which asks only whether a rational jury, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, could have found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
2. Under that standard, the court explained it does not reweigh evidence or resolve conflicts in testimony; those tasks belong to the jury, so inconsistencies Price pointed to (like the lack of body camera footage or one witness's failure to identify him) did not undermine the verdict.
3. The court noted Georgia law allows a single witness's testimony to establish a fact, so the absence of a recorded identification or additional identifying witnesses did not make the evidence insufficient.
4. On severance, the court applied the rule that when charges are joined because they arise from the same conduct or a connected scheme rather than merely similar character, separating them is discretionary with the trial judge, and the key question is whether the jury could distinguish the evidence and apply the law to each charge.
5. Because the murder and drug charges all arose from Price's drug-dealing activity and the State's theory that the shooting followed a drug deal gone bad, the court found no abuse of discretion in trying the charges together, especially since Price showed no evidence the jury was actually confused.

• malice murder
• dying declaration
• drug trafficking
• motion to sever
• cocaine possession