Freeman v. State
| Decision Date | 30 January 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 2,No. 48939,48939,2 |
| Citation | 204 S.E.2d 445,130 Ga.App. 718 |
| Parties | Holman FREEMAN v. The STATE |
| Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
Syllabus by the Court
In the trial resulting in this manslaughter conviction, the defendant admitting his presence at the scene and the shooting of the deceased, the evidence supported a verdict of manslaughter based on mutual combat.
The special grounds of the motion for new trial are without merit.
The defendant Freeman was indicted in two counts for the murder of Saffles and Hill. He admitted the shooting and consequent deaths and contended the homicides were necessary in self defense. The jury found him guilty of murder without recommendation in the Hill killing and of voluntary manslaughter of Saffles. The trial court granted the motion for new trial in the Hill case on general discretionary grounds, and denied the motion going to the Saffles count.
The evidence of two eyewitnesses who happened to be on the street at the time, and who were unknown to the participants, the victims, or each other, was to the general effect that a Cadillac containing the two victims and driven by one Darlene McLane was parked at the curb by a parking lot at about 3:00 a.m. in the Buckhead section of Atlanta; that two cars approached, one turning into the lot at the right of the Cadillac while the other halted in the street alongside it; that the defendant approached from the car in the parking lot and shot several times into the parked vehicle, then re-entered his Chevrolet with another person and drove rapidly down Peachtree Street. One of the eyewitnesses, with her husband, chased the speeding car and got the license number, which turned out to belong to a vehicle leased by a rental agency to Zimmerman, a nightclub owner who was the defendant's apparent employer. From this point the evidence is highly contradictory and revolves around the relationship of the various people involved. It appears that Hill, one of the victims, was in love with Darlene McLane, driver of the Cadillac, and that he had informed Zimmerman that her husband intended to blow up the night club. It further appears that shots were fired from the Cadillac, and that shots were also fired into the Cadillac from the car which had paused in the street beside it. It was uncontradicted that Hill had asked Zimmerman for a loan, and that Zimmerman had on the occasion of the slaying sent the defendant to Hill to give him money. There is also the testimony of the eyewitness Sutton that as the defendant's car shot out of the parking lot past him he heard a voice say, 'Get him, Homer,' and the defendant fired at him as he dove for the pavement. By inferences from these scattered facts the state attempted to establish a type of gangland killing, and the defendant a plot against his life under such circumstances that the homicides would be justifiable.
This appeal is from the voluntary manslaughter conviction in the Saffles case.
Joe Salem, Atlanta, for appellant.
Lewis R. Slaton, Dist. Atty., Morris H. Rosenberg, J. Melvin England, Carter Goode, Atlanta, for appellee.
1. The defendant contends that the assistant district attorney violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights in his opening statement while introducing others at the counsel table, one of them as 'our official agent in charge of what we call our intelligence unit, and he has the responsibility of supervising the information about organized crime and also is involved in certain special unusually important cases.' The court ruled that the remark would be improper unless there was evidence sustaining a gangland type slaying. At the conclusion of the evidence the motion was renewed and overruled. We find no error. The evidence as a whole suggested that various persons engaged in pimping, prostitution and other illegal activities, were engaged in a private feud accompanied by threats of bombing a place of business, and that the homicides occurred when two automobiles containing an undetermined number of people hemmed in a third car during an exchange of money and gunned down the two passengers. Even the defendant's statement shed no other light on why, assuming he spoke the truth, the men he shot should have drawn guns on him as he approached their car for the ostensible purpose of bringing them money. 'The solicitor general, in commenting on the evidence in his argument, may advance and urge any theory as to the motive which is not absolutely inconsistent with the facts and circumstances in proof.' Sterling v. State, 89 Ga. 807, 15 S.E. 743.
2. The charge on mutual combat excepted to in the third enumeration of error is taken almost verbatim from that approved in Cribb v. State, 71 Ga.App. 539(3), ...
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...crime is a reasonable inference from the evidence. Thomas v. State, 268 Ga. 135, 137(4), 485 S.E.2d 783 (1997); Freeman v. State, 130 Ga.App. 718, 720(1), 204 S.E.2d 445 (1974). In the absence of a showing of bad faith, the granting of a mistrial is a drastic remedy for a prosecutor's menti......
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Freeman v. State of Ga., 78-2871
...manslaughter conviction. This denial was appealed to the Georgia Court of Appeals, which affirmed the conviction. Freeman v. State, 130 Ga.App. 718, 204 S.E.2d 445 (1974) (not raising the grounds urged here). Freeman then instituted a state habeas corpus application, alleging, Inter alia, t......
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...71 Ga.App. 539, 542, 31 S.E.2d 248. A further consideration of a similar charge also has received appellate approval. Freeman v. State, 130 Ga.App. 718, 720, 204 S.E.2d 445. There was no error in the charge on mutual Judgment affirmed. PANNELL, P.J., anc EVANS, J., concur. ...
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