Newsome v. State

The defendant's conviction and sentence for aggravated assault was vacated and his case remanded for resentencing, since his aggravated assault conviction merged with his armed robbery conviction under the "required evidence" test.

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After a jury trial, Mark Newsome was convicted of two counts of aggravated assault OCGA § 16-5-21, one count of armed robbery OCGA § 16-8-41, two counts of false imprisonment OCGA § 16-5-41, one count of burglary OCGA § 16-7-1, one count of theft by taking OCGA § 16-8-2, and one count of possession of a firearm during a felony OCGA § 16-11-106.1 Newsome appeals from his convictions and the denial of his new trial, asserting that the trial court committed the following errors: failing to give requested jury instructions; allowing the jury to rehear a portion of the arresting officer’s testimony; and failing to merge one of his aggravated assault convictions with an armed robbery conviction. For the following reasons, we affirm in part, vacate in part, and remand for resentencing.

On appeal from a criminal conviction, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, and the appellant is no longer entitled to the presumption of innocence. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560 1979. So viewed, the evidence shows that during the early morning of July 20, 2004, Sharra Henry and her roommate Latasha Arnold were asleep in the bedroom of her home in Palmetto, Georgia. Henry’s three-year-old son was asleep in his room. At about 3:00 a. m., Henry was woken up when her bedroom door was “kicked wide open” by two armed male intruders. One of them held “some type of machine gun . . . right in Henry’s face” and told her and Arnold not to move. The intruders forced the two women to get out of bed and sit in front of the dresser in their bedroom, and told them “to give us, you know, what we had.” At some point a third armed intruder entered the bedroom. Arnold gave one of the intruders about $800 in cash before she was hit across the face with a gun. After pleading with the intruders not to go into her son’s room, one of the intruders kicked Henry in the stomach, “knocking her from her dresser to the end of the bed.”

Newsome v. State

The defendant's conviction and sentence for aggravated assault was vacated and his case remanded for resentencing, since his aggravated assault conviction merged with his armed robbery conviction under the "required evidence" test.

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