Mayes v. State

Evidence that the defendant shot and killed the victim after he interceded in an argument between the defendant's companion and an eyewitness supported his malice murder conviction.

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Christopher Bernard Mayes was convicted of malice murder and possession of a firearm during commission of a crime.1 Two witnesses testified that when they and Christopher Jester, the victim, arrived at a restaurant, Mayes and a companion were standing in the parking lot. Mayes’s companion began an argument with one of the witnesses. When Jester interposed, seeking to end the argument, Mayes produced a pistol and shot Jester once in the chest. Mayes and the other man fled, but one of them fired another shot which hit the van in which Jester had arrived. Police officers responding to a 911 call apprehended both men. A pistol recovered nearby was determined to be the weapon from which the fatal shot was fired. Mayes did not testify at trial, but claimed in a statement to police that the one shot he fired did not hit Jester. Other defense evidence indicated that Mayes’s companion took the weapon from him and fired it, and had bloodstains on his shirt.

Mayes’s only enumerations of error are that the evidence was insufficient to authorize his convictions and that the trial court erred in denying his motion for directed verdict. The appellate standard for both those issues is the “sufficiency of the evidence” test of Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 99 SC 2781, 61 LE2d 560 1979, i.e., whether the evidence adduced at trial was sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Moore v. State, 273 Ga. 11 1 537 SE2d 334 2000. The testimony of two eyewitnesses that Mayes used a firearm to shoot the victim to death was sufficient to meet that standard. DeLoach v. State, 272 Ga. 890 1 536 SE2d 153 2000.

Mayes v. State

Evidence that the defendant shot and killed the victim after he interceded in an argument between the defendant's companion and an eyewitness supported his malice murder conviction.

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