State v. Mizell

Neither collateral estoppel nor res judicata applied in this case because both require a previous action between the same parties, and the trial court's previous orders came in the same action now on appeal.

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Willie Mizell was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in May 2005. Almost five years later, the trial court granted Mizell a new trial. Several months after that, the trial court granted Mizell’s motion to dismiss his indictment, ruling that the State had violated his due process rights by acting in bad faith in failing to preserve apparently exculpatory evidence. The State appeals from that order, and we reverse. 1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence at trial showed that Mizell beat a friend, Cassandra Bryant, to death on October 7, 2003, and put her body under some kudzu near a dumpster in the apartment complex where Mizell lived. In another dumpster at the apartment complex, the police found a rolled up orange towel. Inside were part of the victim’s broken dentures, six cigarette butts, a pair of men’s underwear, bloody shoes, two wash cloths, and a blue slipper. In a subsequent search of Mizell’s apartment, the police found the other half of the victim’s broken dentures, seven more cigarette butts, an orange towel like the one found in the second dumpster, and the other blue slipper.

On the day after the crimes, Mizell gave a statement to the police, in which he claimed that Stanley Brealand had borrowed his apartment and committed the murder. Later that month, the lead investigator sent numerous items of evidence to the GBI crime lab, including the cigarette butts from the apartment and the dumpster, DNA samples from Mizell and Brealand, and a piece of carpet taken from Mizell’s apartment. On March 1, 2004, Mizell filed a general motion to preserve and permit testing of physical evidence. Later in March, the GBI returned the evidence to the Atlanta Police Department, with the note that “this case may contain evidence that must be preserved in accordance with OCGA § 17-5-56.”1 In June 2004, Mizell filed a particularized motion to preserve and test physical evidence, specifically listing the two sets of cigarette butts.

State v. Mizell

Neither collateral estoppel nor res judicata applied in this case because both require a previous action between the same parties, and the trial court's previous orders came in the same action now on appeal.

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