Graves v. State, 298 Ga. 551

In 2006 Demarcus Graves was indicted for malice murder and related counts after Samuel Landers was shot to death at an Atlanta apartment complex; Graves was convicted by a jury in 2011.
Witnesses who implicated Graves included Jabarie Glover (recanted; prior inconsistent statements admitted), Autrey Love (testified about incriminating statements Graves made in federal custody), and co-defendant Jasper Adams (plea deal; testified that Graves grabbed a gun during a struggle and shot the victim).
Evidence admitted at trial included a May 2006 incident where Graves was found in his El Camino with a concealed handgun and 14 grams of crack cocaine; the State offered this as similar-transaction evidence to show bent of mind and course of conduct.
During trial Love twice referenced a separate "gun case" involving Graves while testifying in federal custody; the defense moved for a mistrial which was denied and the defendant did not renew the motion after curative steps.
Graves challenged (1) sufficiency of the evidence, (2) admission of the May 2006 similar-transaction evidence, (3) denial of a mistrial over Love’s references to a "gun case," and (4) the trial court’s sentencing treatment (merging certain counts).

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (Graves)	Defendant's Argument (State)	Held
Sufficiency of the evidence	Convictions rest on impeached/unreliable witnesses and are insufficient	Evidence (admissions, testimony of Adams and Love, prior conduct) supports convictions	Affirmed: evidence sufficient under Jackson v. Virginia; credibility is jury province
Admissibility of May 2006 incident (similar transaction)	Improper, prejudicial prior-bad-act evidence	Admissible to show bent of mind and course of conduct; satisfied Williams test	Admitted: trial court did not abuse discretion — purposes, proof defendant committed act, and similarity satisfied
Motion for mistrial over Love’s "gun case" references	References unfairly injected bad-character evidence requiring mistrial	References were non-responsive, trial court took corrective action, and one reference came from a letter read with defense consent	Denied: argument waived in part; no abuse of discretion given curative action and defense’s own consent to letter evidence
Sentencing merge error	Trial court purported to merge multiple counts with felony murder counts	State had the sentence structure adopted by trial court	Vacated in part: felony-murder counts were vacated by operation of law (same victim), so the court erred in merging two independent felonies into them — remand for proper sentencing on those counts

Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (establishes sufficiency standard for conviction)
Williams v. State, 261 Ga. 640 (standards for admitting similar-transaction evidence)
Palmer v. State, 271 Ga. 234 (three-prong Williams test explained)
Lamb v. State, 273 Ga. 729 (focus on similarities for similar-transaction evidence)
Matthews v. State, 294 Ga. 50 (deference to trial court on admitting similar-transaction evidence)
Rucker v. State, 293 Ga. 116 (mistrial denial/review for improper character evidence)
Cowart v. State, 294 Ga. 333 (felony-murder counts vacated by operation of law when duplicative with malice murder)
Malcolm v. State, 263 Ga. 369 (once felony murder vacated, underlying felony cannot merge into it)