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Brock v. State

The defendant failed to prove that the 8-year delay before trial violated his right to a speedy trial after he was charged with murder.

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Derrick Brock was convicted of the murder of James Lockett, who died from injuries sustained in a fire at his rooming house on Bolton Road in Atlanta.1 On appeal, Brock contends that he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial and that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to assert the speedy trial claim. Because the trial court properly concluded Brock was not denied his constitutional right to a speedy trial and trial counsel was not deficient for failing to raise the issue prior to trial, we affirm.

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, the evidence presented at trial shows that Brock got into a fight when he tried to enter the room of Raymond Dixon, a resident of the rooming house, to smoke some of Dixon’s crack cocaine. Dixon asked Brock to leave and pushed him out the bedroom door. They tussled and wrestled in the hallway for several minutes until another resident broke up the fight. They renewed the fighting on the front porch, and Dixon blackened both of Brock’s eyes. After Dixon returned to his room at the front of the house, Brock banged on the door, screamed “I’m going to burn this mother— down” three or four times, threw rocks at the windows, and broke some window panes. Other witnesses heard Brock say, “All you n—s and all you whores will die by daylight, I will burn that house down” and “All of the mother—s and the punk n—s are going to pay.” Brock remained outside in the driveway under Dixon’s window for at least an hour, yelling, cursing, drinking, and “hanging out.” In the early morning hours, Dixon left the house to buy more crack cocaine; the two women he had been entertaining went to meet a friend at the gas station across the street. One of them testified that she saw Brock next to the store holding a small can with flames on it. When Dixon returned home later, he found the house in flames.

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