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Found 72 matching documents.
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · May 5, 2026
Jackson v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's convictions for the murder of a nine-month-old and other gang-related shootings, rejecting challenges to the evidence, his lawyer's performance, and the trial judge's handling of a mistrial request.
Agent Thompson testified as an expert in criminal street gangs and street gang activity. 10 As to cell phones, Agent Thomp- son testified that they were being smuggled into Georgia prisons at an increased rate and that they allowed for inmates—and par- ticularly gang members—to engage in criminal activity from prison. He also described the methods by which...
Dixon was present for Malone’s murder, afterwards fleeing to Marco Watson’s apartment where Devin Thomas—who was also an SMM member—was present. Dixon was “really frantic” as she told Watson and Thomas about Malone’s murder. After hearing about what had happened, Thomas “felt somebody would have to get some get back for this.” Thomas testified that he then...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · October 27, 2026
State v. McGriff
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed a Clinch County judge's order suppressing a teenager's March 11 statement to investigators, but sent two earlier statements back for more fact-finding because the judge's findings did not adequately support the conclusion that he was in custody.
(b) March 6 Statement At the motion to suppress hearing, the State presented the testimony of Agent Hundley in connection with McGriff’s March 6 interview. Agent Hundley testified that she asked to speak to McGriff at the Florida hospital, 9 and after he agreed, she inter- viewed him in a waiting room; a portion of that interview was audio recorded. She did...
The trial court also orally granted the motion to suppress the statements made in the March 6 interview, finding that Agent Hundley “drove to another state to get the cell phone of the De- fendant in a hospital, took him to a room, had a conversation that lasted almost 30 minutes that she deemed fit to record. There w[ere] conversations not on recording....
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · August 13, 2026
Dorsey v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's felony murder conviction, ruling that photos and video showing him with guns were properly admitted and that his lawyer's failure to press for identification jury instructions did not change the trial's outcome.
1. The evidence presented at trial showed the following. In October 2021, 22-year-old Wilson—who was on leave from the military—met 16-year-old Salazar-Chavez. Soon thereafter, the pair began an exclusive romantic relationship. Most of their re- lationship was long-distance, as Wilson was stationed in South Korea or North Carolina while Salazar-Chavez...
Wilson was shot in his left leg; Salazar-Chavez was shot in her left arm and the left side of her chest. A medical examiner testified that Salazar-Chavez died from the shot to her chest. Investigators who responded to the scene recovered 11 nine-millimeter cartridge casings, and a firearms examiner later testified that all 11 of those casings were fired...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · September 9, 2026
Ash v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Richard Ash's murder conviction, ruling that cell phone location data and other evidence sufficiently backed up an accomplice's testimony and that Ash's silence at his first trial's mistrial waived any double jeopardy challenge to his retrial.
Atlanta Police Detective Kevin Leonpacher, who was tendered as an expert at trial in the field of “historical cell phone data,” “cell tower analysis,” and “phone data analysis,” testified that he received phone records from the cellular service providers for the cell phones of Ash, Fuller, Larkins, Mack, and Sherry pursuant to a search warrant. Detective...
6 Ash’s Google account, including his gmail account, and his location services were activated on his cell phone. residence in Riverdale, 7 and at 5:38 a.m., the user of Ash’s cell phone placed a call near the intersection of Hadlock Street and Leslie Avenue while in close proximity to the other defendants’ cell phones. At 10:08 p.m. on August 4, the user of...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · February 17, 2026
Dempsey v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Gwinnett County teenager's felony murder convictions in the shooting deaths of two men during a botched marijuana deal, finding the evidence sufficient and the trial judge's decision to let jurors hear about his probation status proper.
On August 10, Sergeant Pierson interviewed Dempsey, who was 16 at the time, at his home with his grandmother present. During the interview, Dempsey gave his cell phone to Sergeant Pierson. On August 15, after reading Dempsey the “Advice of Rights to Juveniles” form, 4 Sergeant Pierson interviewed Dempsey again in the presence of his grandmother at police...
acquaintance of Davis, and Davis committed the murders.7 Additionally, Dempsey stated that, after investigators searched the Amy Road house, Davis called Dempsey and said that investigators found a firearm inside the house.8 After Sergeant Pierson obtained a search warrant for the information on Dempsey’s cell phone, the Gwinnett County Police Department’s...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · August 18, 2026
Greene v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Sumter County man's felony murder conviction, finding the evidence was enough for the jury to reject his self-defense claim and that his trial lawyer was not constitutionally deficient.
By way of background, on the second day of trial, the trial court sua sponte addressed jurors about potential misconduct on two occasions. First, the court dismissed the jury for lunch but asked an alternate juror to stay behind and asked her if she had been falling asleep. The alternate juror responded that she had not been falling asleep, that she had a...
Second, there is no evidence that the juror who checked his cell phone used the phone for any case-related purpose that might have impacted Greene’s right to a fair trial. The record suggested the opposite, as the juror’s explanation that he had used his cell phone to check a message from his mother indicated that he had used the phone for a personal...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · June 30, 2026
Owens v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Celeste Alexandria Owens's murder and child cruelty convictions in the death of her girlfriend's eight-year-old daughter, ruling that video evidence, medical findings, and a surviving child's testimony were enough to support the jury's verdict.
Police officers asked if Hall and Owens would accompany them to police headquarters to be interviewed, and they agreed, bringing the children along. Once there, Owens gave a video-rec- orded interview that was played for the jury at trial. During Ow- ens’s interview, investigators checked with her sister, who said Owens did not visit her the night before...
Investigators also found on Owens’s cell phone Google searches from November 19 for “What to do when a child just won’t listen,” “lakes near me,” “How the sewers on the streets work[],” “Why do kids run away?” and “How do I report someone missing?” All these searches had been deleted. By investigating the cell phone, business and financial records,...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · April 21, 2026
Larkins v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Matthew Larkins's murder conviction in the shooting death of Shanna Smith, rejecting challenges to the accomplice's testimony, a jury instruction, his lawyer's performance, hearsay evidence, and the prosecutor's closing argument strategy.
Fuller testified that, shortly after leaving the scene, he realized he had dropped his cell phone, but he did not know when or where. Later that morning, Jones told Fuller that the Atlanta Police Department had his cell phone, and when Fuller was interviewed by detectives in February 2017, he initially claimed he had lost the phone about a week prior to the...
Atlanta Police Detective Kevin Leonpacher, who was tendered as an expert at trial in the field of “historical cell phone data,” “cell tower analysis,” and “phone data analysis,” testified that he received phone records from the cellular service providers for the cell phones of Larkins, Fuller, Ash, Mack, and Sherry pursuant to a search warrant. Detective...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · September 9, 2026
Kennedy v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Malik Kennedy's malice murder conviction in the death of a two-year-old, ruling the evidence was sufficient and that any error in admitting cell phone evidence was harmless.
At trial, the medical examiner and Dr. Frasier testified about the extent of Trinity’s injuries, observing that Trinity would have had to endure violent shaking to suffer the head injuries that caused her death. Trinity was under the sole care of Kennedy when she suffered these injuries, and Kennedy admitted that he shook her while Kyles was at work....
(a) On May 2, 2021, the trial court authorized search war- rant No. 21X00592 (the “Seizure Warrant”), which allowed offic- ers to search the motel room and seize medications (prescribed or over the counter), illegal substances, blood, DNA, corpse of the deceased child, clothing and bedding, and electronic devices in room #206 at 3500 Venture Parkway,...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · March 17, 2026
Rainey v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Fulton County woman's convictions for felony murder and home invasion, ruling the evidence showed she directed others to a specific bedroom she had no right to enter and that her voice was properly identified at trial.
Appellant’s aunt testified that Appellant, who went to live with her for a few weeks after leaving the rooming house, told her that Appellant’s boyfriend (Ellison) went into the rooming house with a gun, that he harmed people, that someone shot him as he was leaving the house, and that Appellant then left the scene. 3 A detective testified that Medina...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · October 14, 2026
Brown v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Cobb County man's murder convictions in the shooting deaths of a couple during a drug deal gone wrong, ruling that any error in admitting his 1994 robbery conviction was harmless given overwhelming evidence of guilt.
At 1:18 a.m. on August 6, Catherine’s phone sent a message (pur- portedly from Anthony) to Brown’s phone observing that Brown was not by himself. At 1:20 a.m., Brown’s phone responded that his nephew was driving him because he did not have a driver’s license. Catherine’s phone sent a message to Brown’s phone at 1:23 a.m. telling Brown to enter their car and...
We agree with the State that the evidence against Brown was very strong. Text messages showed that Brown communi- cated with the victims about a drug transaction right before the shootings. Two witnesses testified to Brown’s plan to rob the vic- tims and that Brown confessed to shooting them. The murder vic- tims’ young daughter, who was found in the car...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · February 3, 2026
SHELLS v. THE STATE (Two Cases)
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the murder and robbery convictions of Lewis Shells and Marcus Leslie, rejecting challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence, trial procedures, evidence rulings, and claims that their lawyers were ineffective.
6. Leslie contends that the trial court abused its discretion by allowing the State to present expert opinion regarding the location of the defendants’ cell phones through a lay witness, Analyst Andrew Foy with the LaGrange Police Department. While pretrial matters were being discussed, the defense orally moved to exclude Foy’s testimony because he did not...
Foy was then called to testify. He was not tendered as an expert, and he testified from the cell phone records already admitted in evidence, as well as his own reports, which were tendered and admitted during his testimony, about the location of the defendants’ cell phones during the timeframe of the crimes. Foy began by explaining that he was an “analyst”...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · February 17, 2026
Bradford v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Fulton County man's felony murder and gang convictions, rejecting claims of insufficient evidence and ineffective trial counsel, but sharply criticized the 13-year delay in resolving his post-conviction motions.
Ga. 650, 653 (2015). But in a sufficiency analysis for cases tried under the pre-2013 Evidence Code, which applied to this trial, we do not consider improperly admitted hearsay evidence, which was considered to have no probative value. Id. at 653 n.2. (a) The trial evidence that we can consider on sufficiency review. Before engaging in our sufficiency...
10 We had held that, under the old Evidence Code, unless it was the rare case in which the conduct of an investigating officer was a matter needing to be explained, it was error to permit an investigating officer to testify, under the guise of explaining the officer’s conduct, to what other persons said to the officer during the investigation. See, e.g.,...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · January 21, 2026
Wells v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Tobias Wells's felony murder conviction for a fatal shooting during an attempted robbery, rejecting his claims about the evidence, plea deals given to co-defendants, and jury instructions.
Investigators got phone records for Street’s cell phone, as well as cell-site location information (CSLI) from her phone and the phones of Wells, Gilstrap, and Banks. The cell phone data, combined with license-plate-reader images of Street’s car and the video sur- veillance of the shooting, painted a picture of the group’s movements and communications on...
The group left in Street’s car. On the way back to the site of the dice game, the group dropped off Wells and Banks so that Wells could pick up a jacket to wear as a disguise. Then Street, Gilstrap, and Brantley continued on to the apartment complex, while staying in close contact with Wells. At 12:36 a.m., Street texted Wells, “We on the way to the move,”...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · June 30, 2026
Collins v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the felony murder and hijacking convictions of two men involved in a Gwinnett County gas station shooting, rejecting challenges to trial evidence, jury instructions, a jailhouse confession, and the jury oath.
From the gas station surveillance videos, law enforcement officers determined that the assailants were driving a black Mercedes E350. Using a license-plate reader system, law enforcement officers also determined that there was one black Mercedes around the gas station at the time of the shooting and that it was a rental car that had been rented to Booker...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · August 18, 2026
Williams v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Gwinnett County man's murder conviction, rejecting his claims that self-defense should have shielded him, that his lawyer botched a phone investigation, and that a text log was wrongly admitted.
Additionally, investigators found a black iPhone 11 that be- longed to Pough and a red iPhone 12 that belonged to Williams.4 Law enforcement officers performed a full data extraction from Pough’s phone, but only a limited extraction from Williams’s phone. 5 3 See OCGA § 16-13-25(3)(P) (providing that, except under certain cir- cumstances not present here,...
At Williams’s motion-for-new-trial hearing, his trial coun- sel testified that he met with Williams “probably four times” prior to trial and that he discussed trial strategy with Williams “exten- sively.” When asked about the limited data retrieval performed on Williams’s phone, trial counsel testified that he “suppose[d] that, with the defendant’s consent,...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · August 13, 2026
Lenon v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Angelo Lenon's murder convictions, ruling his trial lawyer was not ineffective for failing to challenge cell phone search warrants he argued were too broad.
WARREN, Presiding Justice. In October 2022, Angelo Lenon was convicted of two counts of malice murder, felony murder, and possession of a firearm dur- ing the commission of a felony related to the shooting deaths of Daishone Flagg, Jeremie Tyson, and Andrew Barkley. He ap- peals his convictions, arguing that trial counsel provided ineffec- tive assistance...
At Lenon’s trial, the State introduced evidence gathered from Lenon’s two cell phones pursuant to search warrants. 2 This evidence included data showing that: the phones were near the crime scene before the shooting; location tracking was turned off both phones around the time of the shooting; the phones were moving quickly at the time Tyson called 911...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · June 30, 2026
State v. Ovalle
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia sent a Bartow County drug case back to the trial court after ruling the judge used the wrong legal test in granting Erik Ovalle a new trial on a felony murder charge tied to a fatal fentanyl sale.
Ovalle’s statements were substantiated by text messages between Nicholson and Ovalle. Nicholson did not have his own cell phone and used the cell phone of one of his co-workers to com- municate with Ovalle. On June 19, 2021, Nicholson texted Ovalle and said the “boyd,” or heroin, he had gotten from Ovalle the night before was “bad.” Specifically, the text...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · July 1, 2026
Miller v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia vacated part of a DeKalb County man's murder conviction proceedings, ruling the trial judge used the wrong legal test when deciding whether police lied or recklessly misled magistrates in search warrant applications.
After receiving Miller’s name during the investigation, law enforcement discovered a pre-existing “be on the lookout” or “BOLO” depicting Miller’s face, connected to an alleged armed robbery that occurred at an Exxon gas station in Rockdale County on January 13, 2020, more than a month before the February Tic Toc shooting. The BOLO from that January 2020...
The extraction of the -9710 phone revealed a contact listed as “Rarri” with a phone number ending in -6516 and another contact listed as “Ronnie” with the phone number matching the - 8355 phone. At some point during the investigation, law enforcement developed a lead regarding a second suspect, Miller’s co-defendant, Character. The call logs of Miller’s...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · April 21, 2026
Ragland v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's murder and armed robbery convictions, rejecting arguments about limited cross-examination, a jailhouse recording, and claims his trial lawyer was ineffective.
The trial evidence showed the following. 2 Courtney Johnson was best friends with Adair and considered him to be “like [a] brother.” Johnson was also friends with Justin Cunningham, who was best friends with Ragland and introduced him to Johnson. In November 2016, Johnson introduced Adair to Ragland, from whom she bought drugs. Adair also began buying drugs...
At the motion for new trial hearing, trial counsel testified that when he learned the State had intended to use a new FBI technology that generated more precise cell-site location data, he began to search for an expert on the subject in order to review and advise him about the data. Counsel identified Larry Daniel as a potential expert, and the two...
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