Not even the winning prosecutor knows why the Georgia Supreme Court decided, without prompting, to reconsider an opinion and ultimately reverse its own reversal in a murder case.

On its own motion, the high court reconsidered and ultimately reversed its own opinion within six weeks. Both decisions were unanimous. Both were written by Justice Britt Grant—who has been on the court less than a year and has already been named to President Donald Trump's U.S. Supreme Court wish list. Both dealt with the law in regard to possession of a murder weapon. But they took opposite views.

“I've been a lawyer since 1984. I've never seen this,” Clayton County District Attorney Tracy Graham Lawson said Thursday of the high court's change of heart.

Lawson said her team of prosecutors were talking about asking for reconsideration of an Oct. 31 opinion reversing a felony murder conviction for Lisa Lebis, whose husband, Tremaine Lebis killed Officer Sean Callahan.

“I was sad and upset because this was an important verdict to us,” Lawson said. “I actually tried the case. I had to call Sean's mom and tell her the day it was reversed. She was very upset.”

The 25-year-old officer was new to the job the day he died, Dec. 17, 2012. He had called his mom before his shift started like every other day. The reason he was shot was he was younger and faster than his partner, so he was the first to catch up with the fleeing suspect, Lawson said.

The DA had not determined whether to appeal when she received notice in November that the court had decided to reconsider. She filed a brief urging the court to reverse the first opinion and uphold the conviction and sentence of life without parole.

“I felt strongly we needed to push party to a crime—that she was a party to a crime even though she wasn't the shooter,” Lawson said.

The defense attorneys—Jack Martin and Sandy Michaels—filed their own brief. They had on their side the fact that the wife was not holding the gun or even present on the scene the moment her husband turned and shot the officer chasing him.

Martin and Michaels could not be reached.

The defense view prevailed the first time.

“The felony murder count against Lebis requires proof that she jointly possessed the murder weapon at the time of the murder. The State did not prove what it charged,” Grant said on Oct. 31.

“The first opinion was going to be difficult for us,” Lawson. “It was going to have lasting effects for prosecutors.” For example, a getaway driver or a partner in an armed robbery in the future could use it to overcome the charge of having a purpose and plan in common with the shooter, she said.

And Lawson argued that Lisa and Tremaine Lebis had a common purpose and plan. They both had a criminal history that included serious convictions such as aggravated assault. They both had been in prison. He was out on probation and dodging another warrant for his arrest when the pair moved from their home to a nearby motel with their three dogs. They had guns, harpoons with razor tips, knives, a silencer and a homemade bandolier for shotgun shells.

“He had said every day he was not going back to prison,” Lawson said, quoting from police interviews with Lisa. “She was intending to take people out, I believe.”

The irony was that, although police were looking for Tremaine, they only found him because of Lisa's outburst in the motel office that day. She had just been notified that she was being evicted for not paying the bill. She yelled and cursed at the desk clerk, using a racial slur and profanity. “It was egregious,” Lawson said. The clerk called 911. A manager went to the room, finding Tremaine—who was not registered—plus upheaval, damage and a terrible odor. Forget the bill, just get out, the manager said, adding that the police were on the way.

The Lebises were packing belongings and moving them outside when police arrived, thinking they were making an arrest for criminal damage to property. When they tried to handcuff the husband, the wife began yelling. He ran. The police chased. They did not notice the husband was wearing a pack on his waist until he pulled a .357 Glock out of it and shot at them, hitting Callahan and knocking him off a retaining wall.

The officers shot back and killed Tremaine Lebis.

Although Lisa Lebis wasn't present at that moment, the DA tied her to the crime with more than just joint possession of weapons in their room. While Officer Waymondo Brown was giving CPR to his wounded partner, Lisa appeared at the top of the wall and began screaming.

Reminded that he had not picked up the Glock, Brown asked her to put up her hands to show she wasn't armed. She refused. Brown turned his attention away from the CPR for about 48 seconds until he could see her hands anyway. But by then the color had drained from the wounded officer's face, Lawson said.

“I don't know that's when we lost the young man, but it could have been,” Lawson said.
The justices did not explain why they came to view the wife's culpability for the murder in a different light.

“Can parties to a crime be guilty of illegal possession of a weapon even when they themselves exercise no physical control over the weapon, or even potential access to the weapon?” Grant asked in her second opinion.

The justice said that in the past, both her court and the Georgia Court of Appeals have “reached the right answer on that question, albeit for the wrong reason.”

Prior decisions have held that “because the act of one conspirator is the act of all co-conspirators, a defendant may constructively possess a firearm at the time that a co-conspirator alone actually possessed and used it,” Grant said. “But we read those cases as ones that should have instead determined that a defendant can be held responsible for the actions of another as a party to the crime,” Grant added, repeating the district attorney's theme.

“So even though Lebis did not jointly possess that firearm with Tremaine at the moment of the murder, it remains true that she can be held to account for the actions of another—here, her husband—as a party to the crime or as a co-conspirator. Accordingly, her arguments that she did not constructively possess the firearm do not help her escape responsibility for the crime.
That is because Tremaine Lebis's possession of the firearm as a convicted felon was the proximate cause of Officer Callahan's shooting,” Grant said.

On the day Grant's second opinion was released, Dec. 11, Lawson said she called Callahan's mother again.

“Darlene, I've got some good news. I've got a Christmas present for you,” the DA recalled telling the officer's mom. “The Supreme Court justices on their own motion have reversed themselves and reinstated the murder conviction.”

The second opinion, she told the mom, restores the sentence of life without parole for Lisa Lebis.
The case is Levis v. State, No. S17A0948.