Nwakanma v. State

The defendants were among a group of armed gunmen who entered an apartment complex to rob a man with whom one of them had a dispute and shot towards another group of men, fatally hitting one of them.

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Miracle Nwakanma and Louis Francis were tried together by a Cobb County jury and convicted of the murder of Justin Brown, among other crimes. Both Nwakanma and Francis appeal. Nwakanma contends only that he was denied due process when the prosecution failed to reveal a deal with a material witness and to correct critical misstatements of fact during that witness’s testimony. Francis contends that the trial court erred when it failed to sever his trial from that of his co-defendants, when it limited his questioning of prospective jurors and refused to strike one of them, when it limited the scope of his cross-examination of a witness for the State, and when it admitted certain evidence at trial. Francis also claims that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel. Upon our review of the record and briefs, we see no error, and we affirm.1

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence shows that on the evening of August 1, 2007, Nwakanma, Francis, Muhammad Abdus-Salaam, Milton Blackledge, and David Hayes—all members of a criminal street gang known as “MPRC 300″—made plans to rob Dylan Wattecamps, who recently had been involved in a dispute with Abdus-Salaam over a sale of marijuana. Early on the morning of August 2, Hayes gave Nwakanma a .380 caliber pistol, and Blackledge drove Nwakanma, Francis, and Abdus-Salaam to the gated apartment complex in which Wattecamps lived. Hayes drove there separately in his pickup truck, arranged entry for the other four men through a resident he knew, parked his truck across the street from the entry gate, and waited there while the others entered the apartment complex. After parking near Wattecamps’s apartment, Blackledge and his passengers began to survey the area on foot. Blackledge and Nwakanma were armed with silver handguns. Wattecamps was having a party in his third-floor apartment, and when one of his guests left, she saw the men standing around and recognized Nwakanma. The four men decided to go forward with their plan, and Nwakanma gave Hayes’s gun to Francis.

Nwakanma v. State

The defendants were among a group of armed gunmen who entered an apartment complex to rob a man with whom one of them had a dispute and shot towards another group of men, fatally hitting one of them.

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