Partridge v. State
Decision Date | 14 January 1987 |
Docket Number | No. 43783,43783 |
Citation | 256 Ga. 602,351 S.E.2d 635 |
Parties | PARTRIDGE v. The STATE |
Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Carl P. Greenberg, (Court-appointed), Decatur, for Robert partridge.
Robert E. Wilson, Dist. Atty., John H. Petrey, Susan Brooks, Asst. Dist. Attys., Decatur, Michael J. Bowers, Atty. Gen., Eddie Snelling, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
A DeKalb County jury found the appellant, Robert Partridge, competent to stand trial for the murder of his mother, Mrs. Rebecca Goolsby. A second DeKalb County jury found him guilty of murder but mentally ill. He raises four issues on appeal. We affirm. 1
Partridge built an exemplary high school record in the Chamblee area in the mid-1960s. He subsequently attended and failed out of Ohio State University. After his brush with college, he served in the infantry in Vietnam. When he returned from college and the war, his friends and family perceived that he had lost all of his ambition and self-respect.
Partridge bounced from job to job, living with his mother and his step-father in Doraville. On August 27, 1985, he and his mother had an argument over the choice of radio stations for household listening. He wanted to listen to a rock music station, and she wanted to listen to religious programming. She turned the dial to her favorite station and started to take a bath.
Partridge, enraged, took a pistol from his room, opened the bathroom door, and shot his mother six times, killing her. He left the bathroom, placed the pistol back in his room, and called the police to report a homicide. When the police arrived, he told them that he must have shot his mother, because he was the only one there.
At the competency trial, one psychiatrist questioned Partridge's ability to effectively participate in the defense to the murder charge lodged against him. Another psychiatrist testified that Partridge appeared sufficiently lucid to ably assist in defending against the murder charge. Lindsey v. State, 252 Ga. 493, 496, 314 S.E.2d 881 (1984). In this case, the evidence was in conflict, therefore the jury was certainly entitled to find Partridge competent, and the trial court correctly denied Partridge's motion for a new trial. We find no error.
The court charged the jury, This charge adequately informed the jury as to the consequences of its verdict. See OCGA § 17-7-130. We find no error.
3. Partridge claims that the evidence in the trial on the merits did not support a guilty verdict. The conflicting evidence as to Partridge's sanity at the time of the crime certainly supported the jury verdict, unlike the evidence in Stevens v. State, 256 Ga. 440, 350 S.E.2d 21 (1986). The remaining evidence overwhelmingly supported the jury verdict under the standard set out in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).
4. Partridge finally...
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