Lee v. State

A Fayette County jury found Andre Lee guilty of two counts of armed robbery, three counts of kidnapping, and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. On appeal, Lee’s sole contention is that the trial court erroneously allowed the State to impeach his testimony with evidence of his guilty plea under the First Offender Act.1 We agree that the trial court erred in allowing a certified copy of the plea to be entered into evidence, but affirm the judgment of conviction because it is highly probable that the error did not contribute to the jury’s verdict. The evidence showed that two masked men with guns confronted a Tinseltown Theater manager as she was leaving her office. One of the men put a gun to her back and directed her to open the safe, which she did using the “duress” code to signal the theater’s security company to call the police. The man then took money from the safe. He also took items from the manager’s purse, including her cell phone.

During the course of the robbery, two other theater employees encountered the perpetrators and were bound at gunpoint. When the police arrived, the manager alerted the officers that the men had climbed up into the tiled ceiling. Shortly thereafter, Lee fell from the ceiling, colliding with an officer’s shoulder on the way down. Police found a semi-automatic pistol in the ceiling above the safe, and theater employees later found two firearms in a copier machine.