Brooks v. State, 298 Ga. 722

In 1976 James Carter, a plant security guard, was bound and shot seven times in the back during an attempted theft at a meat packing plant; the case went cold.
Decades later (2012) Brooks confessed in prison to that murder and provided details that led detectives to match latent fingerprints from the scene to him; he was tried and convicted of malice murder in 2013.
Before trial the State notified it would introduce evidence of Brooks’s 1983 Mississippi murder of a state trooper (Brooks pled guilty to that crime) to prove identity, motive, and course of conduct; the trial court admitted the evidence over objection.
The Mississippi trooper was found face down and shot twice in the back of the head after Brooks escaped from prison and was stopped in a traffic stop; facts and circumstances of the two murders were similar in some respects but also differed substantially (time, place, binding of victim, number of shots, and motive/context).
On appeal Brooks argued admission of the other-acts evidence was improper under OCGA § 24-4-404(b) (the Evidence Code enacted effective Jan. 1, 2013); the Georgia Supreme Court reviewed admissibility under the Code’s three-part test and applied federal identity/motive precedents.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of Mississippi murder to prove identity	State: crimes show similarity/modus operandi supporting identity	Brooks: murders not sufficiently similar; no unique signature linking them	Reversed — not admissible for identity (similarities insufficient; crimes not signature/unique modus operandi)
Admissibility to prove motive	State: prior killing shows motive or bent toward violence	Brooks: facts and motive for 1983 killing (prison escape/traffic stop) are unrelated to 1976 theft murder; not necessary to prove motive	Reversed — not admissible for motive (not logically relevant or necessary; would allow propensity inference)
Admissibility to prove course of conduct / "bent of mind"	State: prior murder shows pattern/course of conduct supporting case	Brooks: course-of-conduct/bent-of-mind theories are disfavored under new Evidence Code	Reversed — not admissible; "course of conduct"/"bent of mind" exceptions eliminated under new Code
Harmless-error analysis	State: conviction supported by other evidence; admission harmless	Brooks: prior murder was highly prejudicial and could have affected verdict	Reversed conviction — error not harmless; not highly probable the improper evidence did not contribute to verdict

Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (sufficiency of the evidence standard)
Sheffield v. State, 281 Ga. 33 (application of sufficiency review in Georgia)
Bradshaw v. State, 296 Ga. 650 (standard of review and other-acts admissibility under new Evidence Code)
State v. Jones, 297 Ga. 156 (three-part test for other-acts evidence admissibility)
United States v. Phaknikone, 605 F.3d 1099 (identity/modus operandi analysis for other-acts evidence)
United States v. Clemons, 32 F.3d 1504 (similar-acts identity admissibility example)
Amey v. State, 331 Ga. App. 244 (prior offense not sufficiently similar to prove identity)
United States v. Cardenas, 895 F.2d 1338 (higher similarity required when other acts offered for identity)
United States v. Lail, 846 F.2d 1299 (consider dissimilarities as well as similarities)
United States v. Beechum, 582 F.2d 898 (motive definition and relevance of other-acts evidence)
Utter v. United States, 97 F.3d 509 (definition of intrinsic evidence)
Peoples v. State, 295 Ga. 44 (harmless-error standard in Georgia)