Ash v. State

Richard Ash was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in the 2016 shooting death of Shanna Smith, who was killed in a drive-by style shooting in Fulton County after a group of men, including Ash, went looking for retaliation over an earlier shooting of their friend. Ash's first trial ended in a mistrial because the jury could not agree on a verdict as to him, though his co-defendants were convicted; he was then retried and convicted on all counts. On appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia, Ash argued the evidence was too weak because it rested mainly on an accomplice's testimony that Georgia law requires to be backed up by other evidence, and that his second trial should never have happened because the first mistrial was declared without justification. The court rejected both arguments, finding cell phone records, ballistics, and other testimony corroborated the accomplice, and finding Ash had agreed to the mistrial by not objecting, so he could not later claim double jeopardy.

The court held that cell phone location records, ballistics evidence, and other circumstantial proof were enough to corroborate the accomplice's testimony under Georgia's corroboration statute and to satisfy federal due process, and that Ash's silence when the first trial's mistrial was declared amounted to implied consent, barring a double jeopardy challenge to his retrial.

The ruling reinforces that Georgia prosecutors can rely on circumstantial evidence like cell phone location data to back up an accomplice's account, and it confirms that defendants who stay silent when a mistrial is declared cannot later use double jeopardy to block a retrial.

Affirmed

1. The court applied the federal sufficiency-of-the-evidence standard from Jackson v. Virginia, which asks only whether a rational jury could have found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt viewing the evidence favorably to the verdict, without reweighing credibility.
2. It also applied Georgia's accomplice-corroboration rule (O.C.G.A. § 24-14-8), which says an accomplice's testimony alone cannot convict a defendant of a felony unless other evidence connects the defendant to the crime, even if that other evidence is only slight or circumstantial.
3. The court found Ash's cell phone was tracked traveling with his co-defendants' phones from Riverdale to the crime scene at the relevant times, that he later searched for directions home from the scene and searched for news about the shooting, and that shell casings matched the type of gun an accomplice said Ash carried, all of which corroborated the accomplice's account.
4. Because the jury could disbelieve Ash's own trial testimony denying involvement and treat that disbelief, combined with inconsistencies, as evidence of guilt, the combined evidence was legally sufficient under both the state corroboration rule and federal due process.
5. On the mistrial issue, the court explained that once jeopardy attaches, a judge's power to declare a mistrial is limited, but a defendant who consents to a mistrial, whether expressly or by silently failing to object, allows a retrial without triggering double jeopardy protections.
6. Because Ash did not object when the trial court effectively declared a mistrial after the first jury deadlocked on his case, and he later admitted he had agreed with that decision, the court concluded he impliedly consented and could not use the mistrial as grounds for a double jeopardy plea before his second trial.

• murder conviction
• accomplice testimony
• cell phone location evidence
• mistrial and double jeopardy
• gang retaliation shooting