Wilson v. State

Prospective juror who was formerly a defense attorney and stated that 99.9 percent of all defendants are guilty did not have to be removed for cause since he stated he believed he could render a fair verdict.

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A jury convicted Marion Wilson, Jr. of malice murder, felony murder, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and possession of a sawed-off shotgun.1 The jury fixed the sentence for the murder at death, finding as a statutory aggravating circumstance that Wilson committed the murder while engaged in the commission of an armed robbery. OCGA § 17-10-30 b 2. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

The evidence at trial showed that on the night of March 28, 1996, the victim, Donovan Corey Parks, entered a local Wal-Mart to purchase cat food, leaving his 1992 Acura Vigor parked in the fire lane directly in front of the store. Witnesses observed Wilson and Robert Earl Butts standing behind Parks in one of the store’s checkout lines and, shortly thereafter, speaking with Parks beside his automobile. A witness overheard Butts ask Parks for a ride, and several witnesses observed Wilson and Butts entering Parks’s automobile, Butts in the front passenger seat and Wilson in the back seat. Minutes later, Parks’s body was discovered lying face down on a residential street. Nearby residents testified to hearing a loud noise they had assumed to be a backfiring engine and to seeing the headlights of a vehicle driving from the scene. On the night of the murder, law enforcement officers took inventory of the vehicles in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Butts’s automobile was among the vehicles remaining in the lot overnight. Based upon the statements of witnesses at the Wal-Mart, Wilson was arrested. A search of Wilson’s residence yielded a sawed-off shotgun loaded with the type of ammunition used to kill Parks, three notebooks of handwritten gang “creeds,” secret alphabets, symbols, and lexicons, and a photo of a young man displaying a gang hand sign.

Wilson v. State

Prospective juror who was formerly a defense attorney and stated that 99.9 percent of all defendants are guilty did not have to be removed for cause since he stated he believed he could render a fair verdict.

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