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Found 109 matching documents.
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · June 1, 2020
Dixon v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Stanley Dixon's murder and gang-activity convictions for a fatal shooting after a school fight, finding the evidence and jury instructions were legally sound.
The expert reviewed numerous photographs and screen shots taken from Reid’s cell phone that depicted Dixon and others. The expert pointed out details in the photos that signified that Dixon was affiliated with the Bloods: Dixon wearing a green bandana; wearing “YSL” clothing items; making Slime hand signs, including in group photographs with other...
The expert reviewed a series of group text messages recovered from Reid’s cell phone. On October 12, 2016, Dixon messaged the group that certain people were not Slime because they had not paid their dues yet. When questioned about this text message, the expert testified that most gangs require members to pay monetary dues. Also on October 12, 2016, Dixon...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · August 10, 2020
Griffin v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Antonio Griffin's murder conviction, finding his lawyer was not ineffective for letting a witness testify about a recorded phone call, since no court had ever ruled such testimony inadmissible.
(a) Nothing in Code Section 16-11-62 shall prohibit a person from intercepting a wire, oral, or electronic communication where such person is a party to the communication or one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception. (b) After obtaining the consent required by this subsection, the telephonic conversations or...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · February 10, 2020
State v. Lane
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County judge's decision to grant a new trial to a man convicted of hiring a hitman to kill a romantic rival, and along the way overruled decades of precedent that barred courts from weighing multiple trial errors together.
The State also tried to corroborate Stallworth’s testimony through cell phone data. Cell phone records showed communications between Stallworth’s phone and two separate phone numbers listed in Stallworth’s cell phone contacts as “D” and “Punkin D.” Talking to Detective Delima, Stallworth called Lane “D” and confirmed that “Punkin D” was the same person;...
12 We can think of at least two other standards that might apply to other types of errors. On ordinary review, the State must prove that a constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See Stovall v. State, 287 Ga. 415, 418 (3) (696 SE2d 633) (2010). And certain unpreserved trial court errors are subject to plain error review, under which the...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · August 10, 2020
Clark v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Jennifer Clark's murder conviction, rejecting her claim that her trial lawyer should have asked for a special jury instruction about her co-defendant's criminal record.
Yost admitted that, after the beating, he tied two plastic bags around Donald’s head. He and Clark rolled Donald’s body in the bed linens and placed Donald in the trunk of Donald’s own car along with his wallet, work boots, and the aluminum bat. Clark gave Yost the keys to Donald’s car and Donald’s cell phone. She instructed Yost to get rid of the items,...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · April 20, 2020
Rickman v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Victoria Rickman's malice murder conviction for shooting William Carter Jr., rejecting claims that her lawyer should have challenged cell phone searches and that prior-incident evidence was wrongly admitted.
2 Testimony at trial established that this type of blood spatter is caused by the gunshot wound victim coughing up blood. 3 Testimony at trial established that this type of blood spatter is not caused by direct or indirect force, but by blood dripping from the body onto another surface. the floor below. Based upon the type, pattern, and location of the...
County, entered his house without permission, grabbed him by the gold necklace on his neck, and forcefully led him around his house demanding to know to whom he had been talking. Eventually, Carter was able to remove Rickman from his home; she then proceeded to run through the neighborhood yelling “rape.” When officers arrived, Rickman alleged that Carter...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · June 16, 2020
Heard v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed a Clayton County man's murder and armed robbery convictions, ruling that jurors should never have heard evidence that he committed an unrelated carjacking and kidnapping months later.
4 Detective Gosart testified that the Four Seasons Apartments are five to seven miles from the Everses’ house. he did not personally know Appellant, but “a lot of people say in the streets” that Appellant is called “Mastermind.” The green Mountaineer, which had been stolen from the Four Seasons Apartments on the day before the murder, was found burned on...
5 Detective Gosart did not see a photograph of Stephens until about a month and a half after the crimes. By that time, Stephens had a different hairstyle. between 1:57 p.m. and 2:32 p.m., Stephens’s phone called Appellant’s phone eight times, and Appellant’s phone called Stephens’s phone twice. During these calls, Stephens’s phone was pinging on a tower...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · October 19, 2020
Goins v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Gwinnett County man's murder conviction for the second time, rejecting his renewed speedy trial claim and finding no reversible error in the trial court's handling of evidence and a mistrial request.
4. Appellant contends next that the trial court erred by failing to suppress evidence obtained from his cell phone. Appellant’s pretrial counsel filed a motion to suppress the evidence, arguing that the lead detective seized Appellant’s phone from him during an interview about two weeks after Taylor’s murder, without a warrant and under no applicable...
The evidence that Appellant saved Taylor’s phone number under a false name and that he deleted her number, their text messages, and some of their call entries at some unknown time was not especially incriminating, given that Appellant admitted to the police and at trial that he had an extramarital affair with Taylor. And although the report showed and the...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · February 10, 2020
Gittens v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the murder conviction of a Telfair State Prison inmate who stabbed a fellow inmate during a fight over a cell phone, rejecting claims of insufficient evidence, ineffective counsel, and newly discovered alibi witnesses.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, the evidence adduced at trial established as follows. Appellant, his co- defendant Abdullahi Mohamed, and Johnson were all inmates at Telfair State Prison residing in the D-2 dormitory and were involved in a fight that led to Johnson’s death. The jury heard testimony from several witnesses that...
At the hearing on Appellant’s motion for new trial, trial counsel was unable to shed light on why he did not object to this testimony other than noting that he reserves objections for situations where there is “a significant reason” to object. In any event, “it is the conduct of the lawyer, not his thinking, that we assess for reasonableness, even though...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · September 28, 2020
LUMPKIN v. THE STATE (Two Cases)
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the murder and robbery convictions of two men involved in a fatal Gwinnett County home invasion, rejecting challenges to a traffic stop, excluded evidence, and the sufficiency of the evidence.
Inside and around the van, law enforcement officers located four firearms, a ski mask, a stocking cap, several sets of latex gloves, duct tape, and a laptop belonging to Jackson’s mother. They also collected several of the men’s cell phones. In addition, they found Lumpkin’s cell phone and a ski mask in the bushes where he and West had been hiding and found...
Chandler and Johnson testified that they knew Green as “Tiger” and that Green had helped plan and commit the robbery, including by providing the silver van. The State also presented testimony from an auto shop owner, who stated that he also knew Green as “Tiger”; that on the day before the home invasion, Green had driven the silver van to his shop; and that...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · April 20, 2020
Keller v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the felony murder conviction of a Columbus man who beat his ex-wife's two-year-old son to death, rejecting claims of ineffective counsel, trial errors, and judicial bias.
Third, Keller contends that, had trial counsel properly authenticated medical records from Columbus Regional Medical Center, she would have been able to present them as exculpatory evidence, arguing that because the Columbus records showed no skull fracture, that injury must have occurred during Powell’s transport to Scottish Rite. But the underlying...
2 These medical records were identified as a defense exhibit at trial, though not admitted, and they were identified and testified to by Keller’s trial counsel at the hearing on Keller’s motion for new trial. phone searches without a search warrant allowing the reasonable assumption the outcome of the trial would have been different.” While the search and...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · August 10, 2020
State v. GRIER (And Vice Versa)
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a trial judge's decision to grant a new trial to a man convicted of felony murder, finding the judge acted within his discretion as a 'thirteenth juror' in weighing the evidence.
With these guiding principles in mind, we turn to the facts of this case. The evidence shows that, on the evening of December 21, 2007, Yarborough and his nephew, Kenneth Kaiser, were walking to a check-cashing store with a check for roughly $1,500. Along the way, they encountered Darius Jordan and Rawlings, who offered them a ride. Jordan and Rawlings were...
Also at trial, the State presented Rawlings as a witness. Rawlings testified, but only after the State granted him immunity from prosecution. He testified that he was riding in a black Honda with Jordan when they picked up Yarborough and Kaiser. After the men cashed a check, he and Jordan sold them drugs and helped them obtain drug paraphernalia with which...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · February 28, 2020
Westbrook v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a DeKalb County man's murder conviction, rejecting challenges to his warrantless arrest, a phone lineup identification, and a recorded jail phone call used against him at trial.
1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence showed that at around 4:00 a.m. on July 13, 2015, a man walked into a convenience store on Memorial Drive in DeKalb County and shot the store clerk, Harry Wells, in the abdomen, resulting in his death. Warren Mitchell was at the convenience store early that morning when a man walked by him,...
After obtaining permission from apartment complex management, the detectives also searched the apartment in which Westbrook was living. There, they found a pair of black sweatpants with yellow emojis on them and a dark shirt with the letters “BC” on the front of the shirt. Additionally, information extracted from Westbrook’s cell phone pursuant to a search...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · June 16, 2020
Glover v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Savannah man's murder conviction, rejecting his claims that his lawyer should have objected to the prosecutor's closing argument and that hearsay testimony was wrongly admitted.
1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, the evidence at trial showed that in the early morning hours of November 27, 2015, Glover and his co-indictee Brandon Miller met up while walking to a Savannah gas station convenience store. When the two reached the store, Miller was approached by Williams, a homeless man to whom Miller, a dealer...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · October 19, 2020
Middleton v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Gwinnett County man's felony murder conviction for shooting a marijuana dealer during a drug deal, rejecting arguments about the evidence, the indictment, and a missing self-defense jury instruction.
Corporal Micah Hegwood of the GCPD was assigned as the lead detective. He obtained the access code to Bryant’s cell phone from Bryant’s family and saw the text message exchange between Appellant and Bryant that led up to the shooting. Corporal Hegwood tried to ping Appellant’s cell phone, but it had been turned off, and within a couple of hours of the...
Appellant then changed his story. Appellant admitted that he knew about the shooting at the pharmacy, that he did “cancel” his cell phone, and that he got a new phone the day after the shooting. Appellant said that on the evening of the shooting, he was at Face’s apartment near the pharmacy with Face, Check, and another man when they decided to chip in...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · May 18, 2020
Walker v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a Columbus man's felony murder conviction for killing his girlfriend, rejecting his claims about jurisdiction, evidence rulings, and his lawyers' performance.
2. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence at trial showed the following. In August 2012, Jessica Osborne and her sister Latasha Houston moved from Mississippi to Columbus, Georgia. They saw and talked to each other every day until April 2014, when Osborne met and began dating Appellant. Appellant isolated Osborne from her sister,...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · December 21, 2020
Nuckles v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that a hidden camera video from a nursing home patient's room can be used as evidence against a nurse charged in his death, because the patient counted as an occupier of the property and the nurse had no reasonable expectation of privacy while working there.
Also, whether an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy may depend on factors such as the conduct occurring, or other people present, at the time of the recording. See, e.g., Katz, 389 U.S. at 351 (“What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.”); Bowling v. State,...
Therefore, regardless of whether Dempsey or others had an expectation of privacy in the area recorded, we must determine whether Nuckles had a reasonable expectation of privacy in that area at the time of the recording. Dempsey’s room was part of Nuckles’s workplace, and although courts have recognized that under the Fourth Amendment, “[w]ithin the...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · July 1, 2020
Lofton v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a teenager's felony murder conviction in the killing of a pizza delivery driver, ruling that trial errors and even the prosecutor's improper appeals to jury sympathy did not outweigh the strong evidence of guilt.
According to cell phone records and testimony from Varnadore’s supervisor at Papa John’s, at 10:38 p.m., Appellant’s 2 Because this case turns on a cumulative error analysis, we set forth the evidence as reasonable jurors would have viewed it, rather than in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts. prepaid Tracfone, rather than his cell phone that...
Call records for Appellant’s Tracfone showed that it had been used several times before and after the shooting to call and receive calls from Young’s cell phone.4 Young’s Facebook profile made several references to Malek Buckley and to Appellant’s Facebook profile, which was titled “Rayray Da Shoota.” Detectives later discovered that both Appellant and...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · April 6, 2020
Holzheuser v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia refused to review a man's child molestation conviction, letting stand a Court of Appeals ruling that his lawyer's failure to object to internet images was not ineffective assistance.
BLACKWELL, Justice, concurring in the denial of certiorari. When Robert Holzheuser was tried for child molestation and public indecency, the trial court admitted evidence of digital images of young girls that a detective had retrieved from several websites. The detective earlier had searched Holzheuser’s mobile phone, and his search revealed the web...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · February 10, 2020
DELOACH v. THE STATE (And Vice Versa)
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Arheem DeLoach's murder conviction for killing Jamell Law but reversed a trial court order that had granted him a new trial on a separate murder charge for killing Rashad Biggins.
When law enforcement responded to the shooting, Biggins was still alive. He later died from his wounds at the hospital. He had three gunshot wounds, one to his back, one to his right thigh, and one to the sole of his foot. Investigators photographed the crime scene, and gathered evidence of the shooting. They recovered seven .40-caliber shell casings and...
Forensic evidence gathered from the crime scene eventually led the investigators to the second shooter, DeLoach. A forensic expert determined that the four 9mm shell casings from the Biggins shooting matched a single 9mm shell casing recovered from the scene of a shooting that had occurred on April 25, 2015, the day before Biggins was killed. On April 25,...
Supreme Court opinion · Supreme Court of Georgia · December 21, 2020
Lynn v. State
Summary by Georgia Commons (AI-written): The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld James Lynn's murder conviction for killing his wife Tonya with a baseball bat, rejecting his claims of trial error and ineffective counsel, but voided his separate aggravated assault sentence because it should have merged into the murder conviction.
Meanwhile, Lynn continued to communicate with Butler, stating that he did not want to be a part-time dad and frequently expressing his frustration with the pending divorce and fear that Tonya would leave with their children. On June 30, Lynn wrote an e-mail to Butler, saying, “I have high hopes my problem will soon be gone for good. I have to be patient and...
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