BENNETT v. THE STATE (Two Cases)

Everett Bennett and Travis Kates were convicted of malice murder and gun possession after Antonio Randolph, the boyfriend of Bennett's drug-addicted mother, was shot dead in Brunswick in 2019. At trial, prosecutors used text messages, cell phone records, witness testimony, and rare ammunition evidence to argue that Bennett and his brother wanted revenge against Randolph and that Kates helped them. On appeal, Kates argued the evidence against him was too weak and too circumstantial to convict, while both men challenged testimony about a prior shooting where similar rare bullets were found near Kates. Bennett separately argued his trial lawyer made several serious mistakes. The Supreme Court of Georgia rejected all these arguments, finding the evidence sufficient, the challenged testimony properly admitted, and no reasonable probability that Bennett's trial would have gone differently even accounting for his lawyer's alleged errors. It also declined to order corrections to a sentencing paperwork issue Kates raised.

The evidence was constitutionally sufficient to convict Kates as a party to the murder based on circumstantial evidence including motive, companionship with the shooters, and matching rare ammunition, and the trial court properly admitted testimony about a prior shooting because it was intrinsic evidence not barred by Georgia's rules against character evidence, and Bennett failed to show his trial lawyer's alleged mistakes changed the outcome given the strong evidence against him.

The ruling confirms that Georgia juries may convict someone as an accomplice based on circumstantial evidence like presence, companionship, and matching rare ammunition, and that evidence of a defendant's own prior conduct can be used against him when it directly ties him to the charged crime rather than merely showing bad character.

Affirmed

1. The court applied the constitutional sufficiency-of-the-evidence standard, asking whether any rational jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and found that motive evidence, text messages planning to harm the victim, and testimony placing Kates with the shooters before and after the crime were enough to support a party-to-the-crime conviction under Georgia law, which allows conviction of someone who intentionally aids or abets a crime even without pulling the trigger.
2. Under Georgia's circumstantial-evidence statute, which requires the State to rule out other reasonable explanations for the crime, the court found the jury was entitled to reject Kates's theory that the Bennett brothers acted alone, since testimony placed Kates with them at the relevant times and rare matching ammunition tied him to the shooting.
3. On the evidentiary challenge, the court explained that testimony about a prior shooting involving the same rare type of ammunition was 'intrinsic evidence,' meaning it was part of the direct story of the crime rather than an attempt to show bad character, so it was not barred by the rule against propensity evidence and was not outweighed by unfair prejudice.
4. Reviewing Bennett's ineffective-assistance claims, the court applied the two-part test requiring proof that the lawyer's performance was unreasonable and that it likely changed the trial's outcome, and concluded that even assuming some mistakes occurred, the independent evidence of Bennett's guilt, including incriminating text messages and post-crime statements, was strong enough that the outcome would not have changed.
5. The court also rejected Kates's request to fix his sentencing paperwork, finding the count numbers on his sentencing sheet correctly matched the grand jury's original indictment rather than the renumbered version shown to the jury, so no correction was needed.

• murder conviction
• party to a crime
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• circumstantial evidence
• rare ammunition evidence