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Woodard v. State

The Supreme Court overruled Heard v. State, 261 Ga. 262 1991, which held that O.C.G.A. § 16-3-21 subsection b 2—stating that the use of force in defense of oneself or others is not justified if the person is attempting to commit, committing or fleeing after the commission or attempted commission of a felony—should apply only "where it makes sense to do so."

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Appellant William Woodard was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting deaths of two DeKalb County police officers, Eric C. Barker and Ricky L. Bryant Jr. Although the State sought the death penalty, the jury recommended sentences of life without parole. Appellant now contends that several jury instructions improperly undermined his defense of justification by lessening the State’s burden of proof, and he asserts that his trial counsel were ineffective in failing to object to the trial court’s instruction, tracking the language of OCGA § 16-3-21 b 2, that a person is not justified in using force in self-defense if he is committing a felony. We affirm.1

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence at trial showed the following. At about 9:00 p.m. on January 15, 2008, Appellant and his friend Mario Westbrook went to a sparsely occupied apartment complex in south DeKalb County to visit Yanita Payne, the mother of one of Appellant’s friends. While Appellant was talking on Payne’s telephone, he took out a handgun and put it on her table. When she asked why he had the gun, Appellant explained that he knew that off-duty police officers worked security at the complex and patrolled the parking lot and said, “They tote theirs, I tote mine. They draw theirs, I draw mine.” Appellant, who had several prior felony convictions, had also told his girlfriend on numerous occasions that he carried his gun “everywhere he goes,” and whenever they were together and Appellant’s girlfriend mentioned that she saw a police officer, he would tell her “that he was under the recidivist act and that he wasn’t going back to jail, he would have court in the street.”

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