Georgia CommonsSearch every collection
Search Georgia Commons
Bills, Supreme Court opinions, the Code and the two constitutions, and House and Senate meeting transcripts, in one search. Ask in plain words: the search ranks passages by meaning as well as by their words.
Filters:2024 Clear filters
Found 285 matching passages in 135 documents.
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · May 29, 2024
Baker v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Kenneth Lee Baker's murder convictions for the deaths of his wife and stepdaughter, rejecting his claims that the evidence was too weak and that the trial judge should have given a special jury instruction and excluded certain photos and a notebook.
K. B. testified that on May 16, 2010, he and his mother had spent the night at his aunt’s home in College Park. At 5:39 a.m. on May 17, 2010, Lynnale sent Baker’s cell phone a sexually suggestive text message, apparently intended for someone else. Lynnale dropped K. B. off at school and proceeded to the Griffin residence to see Shaelinda, according to K. B....
Pursuant to a consent-to-search form signed by Baker, law enforcement searched Baker’s truck and found divorce papers and a notebook. The first page in the notebook began with the statement, “My name is Kenneth Lee Baker,” and included Baker’s address and names and some contact information for various people, including Baker’s father and children. The...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · December 10, 2024
Troutman v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's malice murder conviction for stabbing his former friend to death, finding the evidence sufficient and rejecting claims that his trial lawyer's mistakes cost him a fair trial.
The evidence at trial showed the following. Troutman, a 21- year-old high school student, and Clemons, a student at DeVry University, were friends. But their friendship deteriorated when Clemons and a mutual friend whom Troutman had dated, Marlana Ackey, created a fake Facebook profile featuring naked photos of Troutman. Troutman thereafter threatened...
A cell phone associated with Troutman did not make or receive any phone calls or send or receive any texts on January 22, 23, or 24, 2014, and the phone’s location during that time could not be determined. Troutman’s MARTA card records and surveillance photos show that on January 24 Troutman arrived at the Avondale MARTA station at 4:21 p.m. and exited from...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · December 10, 2024
Sharkey v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Clayton County man's murder and armed robbery convictions, finding overwhelming evidence of guilt and ruling that excluding a young child's inconsistent photo identification was harmless.
Janaille testified that Barker’s phone records showed that, at 1:27 p.m. on the day of the shooting, Barker’s phone placed a call to a St. Louis, Missouri phone number, which Moore identified as Appellant’s. Leonard testified that, later that afternoon, around 2:00, he called Appellant and spoke with him over the phone. And according to Janaille, Barker’s...
Mickles testified that she heard gunshots while inside her house, and shortly thereafter she ran to her front door, where she found J. H. and R. W. According to Mickles, she then went inside the girls’ duplex, where she saw D. B. sitting on the couch and Barker lying on the kitchen floor.3 Mickles said that, after seeing blood around Barker’s head, she took...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · June 11, 2024
Eleby v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Lamar County man's murder-related convictions from a deadly home invasion, but ordered his armed robbery and conspiracy convictions vacated because they should have merged into other convictions.
Although a .22-caliber bullet was recovered from Bussey’s leg, the handgun used in the crimes was never recovered. GBI Agent Cayce Ingalls testified about text messages that Appellant and Spinks sent to each other from December 4 to 5, 2010. For example, at 4:37 p.m. on December 4, Spinks sent Appellant a text message saying that he would “be over” and that...
The State also offered evidence that Spinks texted Smith at 1:55 a.m. on December 5, asking him if he “want[ed] to hit a lick.” Smith asked, “where about and what’s it worth.” Spinks replied that “it’s [the] college boys,” and Smith said that he lived “right by” them, that he watched them, that there “ain’t none in there worth all that.” Smith added that...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · June 11, 2024
Tatum v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that courts applying the independent source doctrine must decide whether police decided to seek a search warrant because of an earlier illegal search, not just whether the warrant application had enough evidence on its own.
Evidence from Deputy Townsend’s testimony, his body-worn camera, and the parties’ stipulations was largely consistent and shows the following. On July 15, 2018, at 10:34 p.m.,5 the Madison County 911 call center received a call regarding an unknown 5 The parties jointly stipulated that the call was received at 10:34 p.m., but the warrant affidavit states...
Deputy Townsend asked if Appellant would show him the last photograph he had taken. Appellant initially declined, but after Deputy Townsend told Appellant that he could detain him and obtain a search warrant, Appellant agreed. As Appellant was pulling up the gallery of photographs on his phone, he tilted his phone away from the deputy, preventing the deputy...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · January 17, 2024
Adams v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Fulton County man's murder conviction for a fatal drive-by shooting, rejecting his claims that the evidence was too weak, that evidence found in his home should have been suppressed, and that his lawyer had a conflict of interest from representing him and his brother together.
When the police arrived at the nightclub, Ward showed them the video recordings from the nightclub’s security cameras. As Ward looked at the recordings with the officers, he identified Pitts and the Adams brothers getting into a white Ford Escape that matched the description of the car Dobson said had followed her and Lowe. Isaiah got into the driver’s...
On August 22, 2016, the police went to the Adams home to execute an arrest warrant for Leon, who, unrelated to the shooting, had violated the terms of his probation. Officers knocked at the front door, and a woman permitted them to enter. When they showed the woman the warrant, she claimed nobody else was in the residence. But then Xavier Adams — Isaiah’s...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · October 31, 2024
WILLIAMS, CONGRESSWOMAN v. POWELL
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a state law that makes it a crime to disrupt General Assembly sessions and meetings, rejecting claims that the law is unconstitutionally vague or so broad it sweeps in protected speech.
PETERSON, Presiding Justice, concurring. I concur fully in the Court’s opinion affirming the trial court’s rejection of the appellants’ state constitutional challenge to a Georgia statute regulating conduct at the Georgia State Capitol and related locations. The appellants are limited on appeal to only those arguments that they chose to make below, and they...
1. The statute is seriously flawed. I concur fully in the Court’s decision today that OCGA § 16-11- 34.1 does not criminalize so much protected speech and expressive conduct relative to its constitutionally permissible applications that it must be struck down as overbroad under State v. Fielden, 280 Ga. 444 (629 SE2d 252) (2006). But it is nevertheless...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · September 17, 2024
Pyne v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Jacob Pyne's murder conviction in the shooting death of Gerard Foster, rejecting claims that his trial lawyer was ineffective and that the prosecutor's closing argument improperly shifted the burden of proof.
Later on July 6, law enforcement officers located K. C.’s Impala at a residence connected to Demarcus White, a friend of Pyne’s, and they towed the vehicle to department headquarters. After obtaining a search warrant and conducting a search of the vehicle, law enforcement officers located Pyne’s cell phone and a credit card in his name inside the vehicle....
After the trial court swore the jury in, the trial court gave the jury preliminary instructions, which included the following: (1) “[t]he defendant is presumed innocent until he is proven guilty”; (2) “[t]he defendant enters upon the trial of the case with a presumption of innocence in his favor,” which “remains with the defendant until it is overcome by...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · March 14, 2024
Andre Pugh v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Andre Pugh's murder conviction for killing his wife, ruling that the cell phone search warrant used against him was valid and that his lawyers were not ineffective for how they challenged it.
PINSON, Justice, concurring. I concur fully in the Court’s opinion. Relevant to Division 2 (d) of that opinion, I want to flag one important point about the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement as applied to search warrants for cell phones, because it’s going to come up again and again. In State v. Wilson, 315 Ga. 613 (884 SE2d 298) (2023), we held...
phone necessarily must list each specific kind or category of data the police may look through when they search the phone’s contents. Just as specifying the address of a home can be particular enough to allow police to search rooms, closets, and cabinets throughout the home, identifying a specific cell phone as the “place to be searched” may well be...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · August 13, 2024
Pinkins v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Gwinnett County man's murder conviction, ruling the evidence supported a finding of malice and that trying the charges involving both victims together was proper.
1. The trial evidence showed the following. Appellant and Clay met and started dating in 2014. At some point during that year, Clay became pregnant with Appellant’s child. And in late 2014, Clay and her son from a prior relationship moved in with Loving, whom Clay described in her testimony as an older woman, a motherly figure, and a friend. Appellant...
After the domestic-violence incident, Appellant and Clay continued to stay in contact due to their son. But Clay testified that Appellant would frequently show up wherever she was without invitation. On November 13, 2018, Clay invited a male friend to come over to her apartment in the evening. When she heard a knock, she opened the door expecting to greet...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · April 30, 2024
Ward v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Paulding County man's felony murder and related convictions, rejecting his claims that the jury should have heard a voluntary manslaughter option, that his second-shooting conviction was legally inconsistent, and that his lawyer was ineffective.
Law enforcement officers learned that Ward was driving a black Ford Explorer with New York plates on the night of the shooting. During the early morning hours of March 25, law enforcement officers located Ward and co-defendant Brooks at the home of Shayla George, and Ward was arrested and taken into custody.9 While he was in custody, Ward was swabbed for...
10 Mason testified that she spoke to Brooks by phone on the night of the shootings, and she told him to park the Pathfinder in the garage at George’s house because it was “linked” to Mason as the renter of the vehicle. On March 30, 2021, law enforcement officers executed a search warrant at Ward’s residence and located Ward’s cell phone. Law enforcement...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · January 17, 2024
Williams v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Chatham County man's murder conviction for a nightclub shooting, finding that any errors in admitting cell phone evidence and a demonstration video were harmless given the strong evidence against him.
1. Williams argues that the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence seized from his cell phone. Assuming without deciding that the admission of this evidence was error, we conclude that any error was harmless. As established at a pre-trial hearing, Detective Jason Manley proceeded to Charietta’s home on the day of the shooting....
Later, police obtained a passcode for the phone from Charietta. Williams filed a motion to suppress evidence gathered from the search of his phone, arguing that police illegally seized the phone without a search warrant or probable cause, and illegally searched his phone when they “without [a] warrant or probable cause deputized [Charietta] as [an] agent of...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · October 22, 2024
CAMPBELL v. THE STATE (Four Cases)
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the murder and gang convictions of four Chatham County men, finding that although the trial court made a couple of errors in admitting evidence and instructing the jury, those errors did not affect the verdicts.
In April 2016, Jay Buchans, who shared a cell with Parrish, talked to Sergeant Santoro about statements Parrish made to him regarding Foley’s murder.7 Buchans said that Parrish told him the following. There were “three or four of them” driving around in the car, including “their driver and [Parrish’s] stepbrother,” Campbell. 8 “[T]hey had a pistol” and were...
Sergeant Santoro testified about maps created based on records showing which cell phone towers Campbell’s and Parrish’s phones were connected to on the day of the murder. The records showed that at around 6:03 p.m., Campbell’s and Parrish’s phones were both in the area that was served by the same cell phone tower as Parrish’s house.10 At 6:16 p.m.,...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · July 2, 2024
Grant v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Chatham County woman's felony murder conviction, ruling that circumstantial evidence linking her to the man who killed a gambler who had just won thousands of dollars was legally sufficient.
Shawntray’s body was found lying next to his vehicle in the parking lot of his apartment complex. He had suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police recovered five shell casings and several spent bullets from around Shawntray’s body, as well as Shawntray’s empty wallet. Shawntray’s Springfield XD 9mm handgun was also...
The evidence also showed that Grant concealed information from police officers and, at times, affirmatively misled them. Although Grant asserts that she merely “declined to reveal the communications” with Dunham to police, the evidence at trial showed that she went beyond simply concealing the communications. Besides the deletion of her communications with...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · August 13, 2024
Bowman v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Polk County man's murder conviction for killing his ex-fiancee, rejecting claims that his trial lawyer was ineffective and finding any error in admitting evidence of his past violence against a former wife was harmless.
(e) Next, Bowman argues that counsel was ineffective for failing to introduce evidence and elicit testimony about cell phone records that Bowman claims would show that he and Wolfe had a good relationship leading up to Wolfe’s death, despite evidence that the two had a volatile relationship previously. First, Bowman argues that counsel should have called a...
We conclude that Bowman has failed to show that counsel was deficient in failing to call a “cell phone expert” to give testimony as Bowman describes above or to produce the cell phone records. At the motion-for-new-trial hearing, counsel testified that the State’s expert in cell phone forensics had “admitted everything [that counsel] asked him to admit” on...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · October 15, 2024
Rana v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Fulton County police officer's murder conviction for killing a woman he had solicited for sex, rejecting his claims that the trial judge gave faulty jury instructions on accident, self-defense, and defense of habitation.
Agent Josh Ellis of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, a crime scene specialist, arrived at the crime scene about 6:30 p.m. on August 22. Agent Ellis testified that he located a .40-caliber shell casing at the crime scene. He also found a $20 bill in Woodard’s pants pocket and testified that Woodard had a significant head injury. Woodard, who was five...
On the morning of August 27, 2014, Appellant was stopped by City of Hapeville law enforcement officials for a traffic violation. A detective told him that he had been stopped for a “tag violation” and that the detective was interested in talking to him about a homicide because Appellant’s “phone number had been identified as a last known contact of...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · October 15, 2024
Wallace v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld David Wallace's felony murder conviction in a Fulton County gang shooting, rejecting arguments that the evidence was too weak, that being restrained with a leg iron at trial was unfair, and that his lawyer was ineffective.
Police arrested Appellant the next week. Officer Daniel Burnett of the Atlanta Police Department testified that on June 21, 2014, he and other uniformed police officers conducted a routine patrol using a marked police vehicle in an area near the intersection of Sells Avenue and Legacy Drive. The officers turned into a restaurant parking lot; immediately, a...
Detective Tyrone Dennis testified for the State as an expert in gangs, as mentioned above. As a general matter, Detective Dennis explained that Bloods members used the color red, five-pointed stars, and red tattoos to identify themselves. Furthermore, Detective Dennis explained to the jury that older members of gangs are called “OGs,” short for “original...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · October 15, 2024
Siders v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a man's murder conviction in a drug-related home invasion killing, rejecting his claims about insufficient evidence, wrongly admitted social media posts, and jury instructions.
Detective Scott Demeester, who was qualified as an expert in cell phone data interpretation and cell-site analysis, testified regarding data recovered from the defendants’ cell phones. A cell phone associated with Washington2 called and texted Jackson’s cell phone several times in the days leading up to the shooting. When Washington called Jackson around...
Additional hotel surveillance video showed that the Pontiac entered the Best Western parking lot at 6:20 a.m. on the day after the shooting. Although the video did not show who exited the car, it did show three men unload what appeared to be heavy bags from the Pontiac. At 8:01 a.m., the three men returned to the car and left the hotel. The car then...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · February 6, 2024
Rashad v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the murder conviction of a Floyd County man for killing his girlfriend's two-year-old son, finding the evidence was strong enough for the jury and that his trial lawyer's choices were not constitutionally deficient.
(i) April 12, 2018 On the morning of April 12, Sydney, taking Adrian with her, dropped L. D. off at school and then ran errands with Adrian. After Sydney and Adrian returned home, she cleaned the house and he ran around. At one point, Adrian knocked a TV onto himself. Sydney picked him up, and after he “wiggl[ed] to get back down,” she set him down and he...
Early in the morning at about 6:00 a.m., after Sydney texted Rashad to ask if he was up, he texted: “I hope this boy is okay [ ]b/c he acted like his [sic] is so sleepy.” Sydney texted back that she was worried about Adrian. At about 6:50 a.m., as she was getting off work, she and Rashad spoke on the phone, and Rashad told her that Adrian had a seizure. In...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · May 29, 2024
Jones v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's felony murder conviction in the beating death of a woman he had arranged to pay for sex, rejecting challenges to the evidence, his decision not to testify, and his life sentence.
Sergeant M. S. McLendon of the DeKalb County Police Department testified that he obtained a search warrant for Parke’s car and inspected her cell phone. He found the last phone number that Parke’s phone contacted, discovered that the phone number belonged to Appellant, and found Appellant’s address, which was next door to the crime scene. Sergeant McLendon...
1The crime occurred on May 12, 2015. On July 30, 2015, a DeKalb County grand jury indicted Appellant for malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault. At a trial from August 29 to September 2, 2016, the jury found Appellant not guilty of malice murder but guilty of felony murder and aggravated assault. The trial court sentenced Appellant to serve...
Narrow the results
Counts are of the documents this search found.