Sheats v. State, 28314
| Decision Date | 08 November 1973 |
| Docket Number | No. 28314,28314 |
| Parties | Lafayette SHEATS v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court
1. The verdict was amply supported by the evidence.
2. The admission in evidence of the bullet was not error.
3. Refusal to grant a mistrial because of failure to testify was not erroneous.
4. The remaining special ground of motion for new trial is deemed abandoned.
Denny C. Galis, Athens, for appellant.
Harry N. Gordon, Dist. Atty., Athens, Arthur K. Bolton, Atty. Gen., Courtney Wilder Stanton, David L. G. King, Jr., Asst. Attys. Gen., Atlanta, for appellee.
Lafayette Sheats, having been denied a new trial following his conviction for attempted armed robbery and murder, appeals to this court. He, Ronnie Sims and Michael T. Arnold were indicted by the Grand Jury of Clarke County and upon separate trial Sheats was found guilty and received sentence of ten years confinement and death by electrocution. Subsequently, the trial court determined that there was no constitutionally valid penalty in this state for the crime of murder when the offense was committed or when he was tried except life imprisonment. Therefore it vacated the sentence of death by electrocution and imposed a sentence of life imprisonment. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346; Sullivan v. State, 229 Ga. 731, 194 S.E.2d 410.
The appellant's amended motion for new trial asserted the general grounds and three special grounds.
1. The general grounds are clearly without merit since the evidence amply supported the verdict.
The evidence of Sims and Arnold, insofar as necessary to recite here, was as follows: that during the early morning the appellant, Arnold and Sims drove to a motel in the City of Athens; that Sims remained in the automobile; that the appellant and Arnold armed with pistols summoned the night clerk; that after some words with him, they demanded that he turn over to them what money he had; that upon seeing that he had a pistol they began to run; that shooting ensued in which the victim was shot and died shortly thereafter. Subsequently the appellant admitted to Sims that he shot the victim.
The appellant, in a written statement, substantially corroborated the testimony of Sims and Arnold, but denied that he shot him, stating that he fired into the air. Arnold, in his sworn testimony, likewise claimed that he merely fired into the air.
A pistol identified as having been in the appellant's possession in the robbery and a bullet taken from the victim's body were given a ballistics test. A State Crime Labwitness testified that this bullet could have been fired from the pistol.
2. One of the special grounds of the motion for new trial was in substance that the trial court erred in admitting the bullet into evidence, urging that its whereabouts until presented at the trial was not shown.
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