Carter v. State, 305 Ga. 863

On Dec. 27–28, 2013, Eric Chepkuto was shot dead in his Fulton County apartment; he was found naked on the bed, with a 9mm casing and a ricocheted bullet nearby.
Jehaziel Carter and Chepkuto exchanged texts that night and had a sexual encounter; Carter’s saliva was found on Chepkuto’s penis.
Chepkuto’s personal cell phone and debit-card data show postmortem activity: calls and attempted Guitar Center purchases using his debit-card number; one attempted order used Carter’s email and a delivery address tied to Carter.
Police arrested Carter at his cousin’s residence, recovered Chepkuto’s work phone behind the couch where Carter slept, and found a Helwan 9mm in Carter’s backpack; ballistics matched the fatal bullet to that gun.
Carter was indicted for malice murder, multiple counts of felony murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault, financial-transaction card fraud (OCGA § 16-9-33), identity fraud, and several firearm offenses; convicted on most counts (some counts vacated/merged) and sentenced to life with parole eligibility plus additional terms.
On appeal Carter challenged sufficiency of the evidence generally and specifically argued insufficient proof of financial-transaction card fraud; the Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the convictions except reversed the financial-transaction card fraud conviction for lack of proof that he obtained anything of value.

Issue	Carter’s Argument	State’s Argument	Held
Sufficiency of evidence for murder and related counts	Evidence was only circumstantial, left gaps about intervening hours, lacked fingerprints/motive; thus insufficient	Circumstantial evidence placed Carter at scene, showed postmortem use of victim’s phone/card, possession of murder weapon and victim’s phone — sufficient for conviction	Affirmed: evidence (viewed favorably to jury) was sufficient to support convictions other than the card-fraud count
Standard for circumstantial-evidence cases (OCGA § 24-14-6)	Alternative hypotheses need not be excluded if not reasonable; Carter argued reasonable hypotheses remained	State argued proved facts excluded every reasonable hypothesis other than guilt	Court applied Georgia precedent: only reasonable hypotheses must be excluded; jury reasonably rejected alternatives
Sufficiency of evidence for financial-transaction card fraud (OCGA § 16-9-33)	State failed to prove Carter obtained money, goods, services, or anything of value using victim’s account number	State pointed to multiple attempted online purchases using victim’s account and links to Carter’s email/shipping info	Reversed: attempts shown but no evidence Carter actually obtained anything of value — element of offense not proved

Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (standard for sufficiency of the evidence)
Winston v. State, 303 Ga. 604 (circumstantial evidence placing defendant as last person with victim)
Menzies v. State, 304 Ga. 156 (appellate review defers to jury on credibility and inferences)
Brown v. State, 304 Ga. 435 (circumstantial evidence may support conviction)
Williams v. State, 287 Ga. 199 (competent evidence supports verdict even if contradicted)
Phillips v. State, 287 Ga. 560 (possession/timing evidence can support murder conviction)
Benson v. State, 294 Ga. 618 (use of victim’s credit card linked to defendant supports conviction)
Johnson v. State, 288 Ga. 771 (defendant’s use of victim’s debit card is incriminating)
Eckman v. State, 274 Ga. 63 (possession of victim’s property supports guilt inference)
Gibson v. State, 300 Ga. 494 (circumstantial evidence need exclude only reasonable hypotheses)
Willis v. State, 304 Ga. 781 (jury determines whether alternative hypotheses are reasonable)
Almanza v. State, 304 Ga. 553 (prior evidence-code interpretations carry forward)