Brooks v. State

The trial court erred in allowing the State to introduce similar transaction evidence to prove identity, motive and course of conduct in the defendant's murder trial, because it was not relevant to an issue other than bad character and the probative value of the evidence was substantially outweighed by its prejudicial effect.

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In this murder case, which was tried after January 1, 2013, the effective date of the new Evidence Code, we are called upon to decide whether the admission of other acts evidence to prove identity, motive and course of conduct was error. We find the trial court erred in admitting the other acts evidence and reverse appellant’s conviction.

Appellant Fred Dalton Brooks was convicted of malice murder in connection with the death of James Carter.1 Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, we find the following: Appellant and Harold David Edgens were employed at a Hormel meat packing plant for a short period of time in 1970 and 1971. Five or six years later, appellant and Edgens went to the plant to break into the coin and vending machines. They posed as employees so Carter, a security guard, would allow them entry into the plant. Carter saw appellant and Edgens attempting to retrieve money from the machines and told them they would be going to jail. Appellant and Edgens forced Carter into the employees’ locker room and bound him with two leather belts and a long-sleeved shirt. They took Carter’s wallet, keys, credit card, and driver’s license. Appellant shot Carter in the back seven times as he was lying face down on the floor. No arrests were made and the case went cold in 1977. Approximately 36 years later, in March of 2012, while housed as an inmate in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Georgia, appellant confessed to a deputy warden and DeKalb County detectives that he and Edgens killed Carter. In so doing, appellant provided specific details about the murder which enabled the detectives to determine that appellant was indeed one of the perpetrators. Latent fingerprints lifted from the crime scene2 at the time of the murder had been archived in the latent print section. The latent fingerprint cards were retrieved and shown to match appellant’s known fingerprints.

Brooks v. State

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