Dunn v. State

The trial court properly admitted evidence of the defendant's prior conviction for aggravated assault and aggravated battery of the victim, which resulted from an incident that took place two weeks before the defendant fatally stabbed the victim.

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Appellant Phillip Chad Dunn was convicted and sentenced for the malice murder of his wife, Shelley Dyan Dunn, and two counts of child cruelty in the third degree. See OCGA § 16-5-1a; 16-5-70d1.1 In his appeal from the judgment of conviction, appellant contends the trial court erred in admitting evidence of his 2011 conviction for the aggravated assault and aggravated battery of his wife, and in refusing to admit evidence of the victim’s blood alcohol level at the time of her death. Finding no error, we affirm the judgment of conviction.

1. The victim died on February 15, 2010, as a result of three stab wounds she had received to her back a day earlier. Two stab wounds perforated her right lung, with one wound extending through her diaphragm into the right hepatic vein. The seven- and nine-year-old daughters of appellant and the victim testified that appellant had hurt their mother with a knife in a commercial parking lot where they had met to exchange custody of the children. The older child testified appellant had told her earlier that day that he was going to kill the victim because “she had killed him on the inside.” Two men testified they were returning to their respective vehicles in the parking lot and ran to appellant’s and the victim’s vehicles when they heard the children screaming and saw the victim on the ground, kicking at a man identified by the witnesses as appellant, who was standing over the victim and swinging at her. After appellant was subdued by the witnesses, one of them saw a kitchen steak knife in the bed of the pickup truck in which appellant had arrived. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy of the victim testified the knife was consistent with the victim’s stab wounds.

Dunn v. State

The trial court properly admitted evidence of the defendant's prior conviction for aggravated assault and aggravated battery of the victim, which resulted from an incident that took place two weeks before the defendant fatally stabbed the victim.

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