--- title: State v. Brinkley collection: opinions id: S23A0507 cite_as: State v. Brinkley, 316 Ga. 689 (2023) canonical_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S23A0507 md_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S23A0507.md text_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S23A0507/text source_url: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10680076/state-v-brinkley/ date: 2023-06-21 status: published corpus_version: opinions-2026-09-14 license: Public record of the Supreme Court of Georgia, via CourtListener and the court's own website; see about.md publisher: Georgia Commons, an independent project of Georgia Civic Data. Not the State of Georgia. Not legal advice. up: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/2023.md previous: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S23A0322.md next: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S23A0531.md index: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/index.md omitted: opinion extras omitted_chars: 1961 omitted_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S23A0507.md?full=1 docket: S23A0507 citation: 316 Ga. 689 court: Supreme Court of Georgia case_type: criminal appeal authoring_justice: Peterson disposition: Judgment vacated and case remanded with direction vote: All the Justices concur word_count: 801 date_filed_source: courtlistener citations: - 889 S.E.2d 787 record_source: courtlistener legal_areas: - criminal law - evidence law upstream_id: "10680076" summaries_model: claude-sonnet-5 --- # State v. Brinkley Supreme Court of Georgia, docket S23A0507, filed 2023-06-21, 316 Ga. 689. ## Opinion 316 Ga. 689 FINAL COPY S23A0507. THE STATE v. BRINKLEY. PETERSON, Presiding Justice. Demarcus Brinkley is charged with the kidnapping, attempted rape, and murder of Mariam Khalid Abdulrab. After the police identified him as a suspect for those crimes, Brinkley fled, leading officers in a high speed car chase. During the chase, Brinkley apparently told his mother on the phone that he did not want to pull over because he did not want to go back to prison.1 The trial court granted Brinkley’s pretrial motion to exclude this statement under OCGA § 24-4-403 (“Rule 403”), and the State appealed. See OCGA § 5-7-1 (a) (5). Because the trial court misapplied the Rule 403 standard, we vacate its order and remand for further consideration under the correct standard. The trial court granted Brinkley’s motion to suppress in a written order. Its full analysis was as follows: 1 The precise statement is not clear from the record, but this does not affect our analysis here. It is “universally conceded that the fact of an accused’s flight, escape from custody, resistance to arrest, concealment, assumption of a false name, and related conduct, are admissible as evidence of consciousness of guilt, and thus of guilt itself.” The Georgia Supreme Court has often held [that] “any statement or conduct of a person, indicating a consciousness of guilt, where such person is, at the time or thereafter, charged with or suspected of a crime, is admissible against him upon his trial for committing it.” However, in this indictment, the Defendant is not charged with Fleeing or Attempting to Elude and the prosecution failed to make a causal connection between this alleged statement and the present allegations against the defendant. Further, under Rule 403, the Court finds that absent a causal connection between the statement and the SPECIFIC allegations against the defendant, the probative value of the statement is outweighed by both the prejudicial effect and the risk of confusion of issues. Accordingly, the defense’s motion is GRANTED. (Citations omitted; emphasis in original.) “A trial court’s decision whether to admit or exclude evidence is reviewed on appeal for an abuse of discretion.” Martinez-Arias v. State, 313 Ga. 276, 285 (3) (869 SE2d 501) (2022). A trial court abuses that discretion when it applies the wrong legal standard. See State v. Harris, 316 Ga. 272, 277-278 (3) (888 SE2d 50) (2023). Rule 403 provides that “[r]elevant evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by” several dangers, including “unfair prejudice” and “confusion of the issues[.]” OCGA § 24-4-403. As illustrated above, the court’s order did not measure admissibility by that standard — it said only that the “prejudicial effect” of the evidence and the risk of confusing the issues “outweighed” the probative value of the evidence. It did not determine that the probative value was “substantially” outweighed by those dangers, or limit its focus on prejudice to only the “unfair” prejudice, as the Rule requires. Harris, 316 Ga. at 279 (3) (“the proper standard requires the trial court to determine whether the probative value of the evidence is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice”) (cleaned up). The trial court thus misapplied the Rule 403 standard and therefore abused its discretion. See id. (vacating and remanding a trial court order excluding evidence under the same circumstances). Accordingly, we remand for the trial court to apply the correct standard in the first instance. Given that disposition, we also point out one additional error to ensure that it does not affect the trial court’s determination on remand. The trial court’s order asserted that the State had not shown a “causal connection between this alleged statement and the present allegations,” and found it significant that “[Brinkley] is not charged with Fleeing or Attempting to Elude.” It is not clear whether the trial court believed all this minimized the statement’s probative value or increased its prejudicial effect. In any case, we have said that evidence of flight is generally relevant and supports an inference of consciousness of guilt of the underlying crime regardless of whether any flight-related crime is also charged. See Harris v. State, 313 Ga. 225, 231 (3) (869 SE2d 461) (2022); Rowland v. State, 306 Ga. 59, 65 (3) n.4 (829 SE2d 81) (2019) (“Evidence showing that a defendant attempted to evade arrest . . . may be admissible as evidence of flight[,] and statements about flight are generally admissible as circumstantial evidence of guilt.” (emphasis added)). Judgment vacated and case remanded with direction. All the Justices concur. Decided June 21, 2023. Murder; evidence. Fulton Superior Court. Before Judge Cox. Fani T. Willis, District Attorney, Michael S. Carlson, Kevin C. Armstrong, Burke O. Doherty, Juliana Y. Sleeper, Bruce P. Dutcher, Assistant District Attorneys, for appellant. Stephen R. Scarborough, Richard W. Marks, Stacy S. Levy, for appellee. ## Summaries written by Georgia Commons The following was written by claude-sonnet-5 from the opinion above and is not part of the court's opinion. Quote the opinion, not the summary. The Supreme Court of Georgia sent a murder case back to a Fulton County trial judge after finding she applied the wrong legal test in blocking evidence that the defendant said he fled police because he did not want to return to prison. ### Plain-language summary Demarcus Brinkley is charged with kidnapping, attempted rape, and murder. After a high speed chase to escape police who suspected him, he reportedly told his mother on the phone that he did not want to pull over because he did not want to go back to prison. Before trial, Brinkley asked the trial court to keep that statement out of evidence, arguing it was too prejudicial and confusing for the jury under Georgia's evidence rule on unfair prejudice (O.C.G.A. § 24-4-403). The trial judge in Fulton Superior Court agreed and excluded the statement, and the State appealed. The Supreme Court of Georgia found that the trial judge did not use the correct legal test. Instead of asking whether the evidence's value was substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice, the judge simply weighed prejudice against value without the word 'substantially' and without limiting herself to unfair prejudice. The court vacated the ruling and sent the case back for the trial judge to apply the right standard. ### Holding, as summarized A trial court abuses its discretion when it excludes evidence under Rule 403 without determining that the evidence's probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice specifically, rather than mere prejudice or confusion generally; because the trial court applied the wrong test here, its exclusion order must be vacated and reconsidered. ### Disposition Judgment vacated and case remanded with direction. All the Justices concur. ### Why it matters The decision clarifies that Georgia trial judges must use the precise legal standard, weighing whether probative value is substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice, when deciding to exclude evidence like flight statements, which matters for prosecutors and defendants across the state facing similar suppression fights. > The summarized reasoning, checked quotes, suggested questions, and the CourtListener opinion records (1,961 characters) are at https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S23A0507.md?full=1