Brown v. State

Roy Lee Brown Jr. was convicted of murdering Anthony and Catherine Costner in front of their three-year-old daughter during a 2015 drug deal in Cobb County. Prosecutors used testimony from two accomplices, cell phone records, and surveillance video to show Brown planned to rob the couple and shot them during the exchange. At trial, prosecutors also introduced evidence that Brown had committed an armed robbery in 1994, arguing it showed his intent to rob people during drug deals. On appeal, Brown argued the 1994 robbery evidence should never have been admitted, that the jury instructions about how to use that evidence were flawed, and that his trial lawyer was ineffective for not objecting more forcefully. The Supreme Court of Georgia did not decide whether admitting the old robbery evidence was actually wrong, because it found that even if it was an error, it was harmless: the evidence against Brown was overwhelming and his claim of self-defense was weak. The court affirmed his convictions and sentence.

Even assuming the trial court wrongly admitted evidence of a prior armed robbery to show intent, any such error was harmless because the evidence of guilt was overwhelming and the defendant's self-defense claim was undercut by his own flight and lies to police, so reversal was not warranted.

Affirmed

1. The court applied the nonconstitutional harmless-error test, which asks whether it is highly probable that an evidentiary error did not contribute to the jury's verdict, rather than deciding whether admitting the 1994 robbery evidence was actually proper.
2. It found the evidence of guilt overwhelming: text messages tied Brown to the drug deal, two accomplices testified he planned to rob the couple and confessed to shooting them, the young daughter identified the shooter by Brown's alias 'Trey,' and cell tower and video evidence placed him at the scene.
3. The court concluded Brown's claimed self-defense theory was fatally weak because Georgia law (O.C.G.A. 16-3-21(b)(2)) bars a self-defense claim by someone committing a felony, and the undisputed evidence showed Brown was attempting a felony drug transaction when the shooting occurred.
4. Because the trial court gave the jury repeated limiting instructions restricting use of the 1994 robbery evidence to narrow purposes, any risk that jurors misused it to infer bad character was reduced, further supporting a finding of harmlessness.
5. On the jury-instruction claim, the court held that Brown's own trial counsel requested and approved the instruction's wording, so he affirmatively waived any plain-error challenge to it on appeal.
6. On the ineffective-assistance claims, the court held Brown failed to show his lawyer performed deficiently, since no controlling case required a count-specific limiting instruction and there was no evidence a mistrial motion would have succeeded given the overwhelming evidence of guilt.

• malice murder conviction
• other-acts evidence
• ineffective assistance of counsel
• drug deal shooting
• Cobb County