Grell v. State

The Supreme Court vacated one of the defendant's two aggravated assault convictions, as he fired the two gunshots at issue without a deliberate interval and thus they did not constitute separate aggravated assaults.

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Appellant Devin Anthony Grell was convicted of the felony murder of Donny Edouard, with the aggravated assault of Edouard as the underlying felony. He was also convicted of burglary of the Edouard home, two counts of aggravated assault of Brianna Morgan, and five counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, with each of the possession counts using as its predicate felony a different one of the five felonies with which appellant was charged. Grell appeals the judgment of conviction, contending that he was not afforded the effective assistance of counsel and that the trial court improperly excluded the testimony of a defense witness and improperly instructed the deliberating jury in response to a question the jury raised. After reviewing the appellate record, we affirm six of the nine convictions and vacate two of the convictions for possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and one of the aggravated assault convictions in which Morgan was the victim.

The victim who died was killed in a second-story bedroom of his family’s Gwinnett County home on July 11, 2008.1 The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the face that went through the base of the victim’s skull and lodged under the skin behind his left ear. The aggravated assault victim, Brianna Morgan, a visitor in the victim’s home the night he was killed, identified appellant as a man she previously had met through Edouard. She testified appellant was one of two men she saw arrive at the Edouard home and appellant was the visitor who entered the victim’s home and went upstairs. While standing in the home’s front yard, Morgan heard a bang and saw appellant run down the stairs and exit the home. Appellant then twice shot Morgan, who was approaching the house. The first shot injured Morgan’s ear and she fell to the ground; the second shot struck her in the leg.

Grell v. State

The Supreme Court vacated one of the defendant's two aggravated assault convictions, as he fired the two gunshots at issue without a deliberate interval and thus they did not constitute separate aggravated assaults.

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