Thompson v. State, 302 Ga. 533

Background

On May 15, 2008, Andre Geddis and Melody Keller were found shot to death in their home with a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson; no forced entry but cars and electronics were missing.
Cell-phone records linked Thompson and co-defendant Vincent Russell to calls near the victims’ home the night of the murders; Geddis’s phone later pinged near Thompson’s house after an unanswered call.
Ronnie Heath gave statements to police implicating Thompson in the robbery that led to the murders; at trial Heath recanted and was impeached with his prior statements and a transcript/video of those statements.
Police recovered the victims’ white Chevy Malibu stripped of parts; Heath’s prior statement described Thompson directing others to strip the car.
The State introduced other-acts evidence: (1) Thompson’s involvement in a separate attempted armed robbery of Jason Ward about 3.5 years after the murders, and (2) evidence Thompson was a drug dealer who bought a rifle from Russell. The State also admitted Coey Keller’s testimony recounting Geddis’s phone statement that he was expecting someone to sell him a .40 gun.
Thompson appealed convictions for two counts of malice murder (among other charges), arguing evidentiary errors (404(b) character evidence and hearsay under Rule 807), denial of continuance, insufficiency of evidence, and ineffective assistance; the Court reversed based on improper admission of the later attempted-robbery evidence.

Issues

Issue	State's Argument	Thompson's Argument	Held
Sufficiency of evidence / directed verdict	Cell-phone records, Heath’s prior statements (impeachment), stripped Malibu, and corroborating circumstantial evidence suffice to convict.	Evidence was insufficient to support guilty verdicts beyond a reasonable doubt.	Evidence was sufficient under Jackson v. Virginia; directed verdict denied (convictions supported on sufficiency grounds).
Admission of subsequent attempted armed robbery (404(b))	Admissible to show motive, plan, course of conduct, and lack of mistake; probative value outweighed prejudice.	The later robbery was remote in time, involved different actors, and only showed propensity; not admissible for motive/plan/mistake.	Admission was improper: similarity and temporal/participant gaps made it inadmissible for the proffered purposes; error was not harmless — reversal required.
Admission of drug-dealer/gun-purchase evidence (404(b))	Evidence that Thompson was a drug dealer and purchased a gun from Russell explained motive/circumstances (testing drugs) and provided context; probative, not character-only.	That evidence improperly placed bad character before the jury.	Properly admitted: evidence explained why Heath would go to test drugs and purchase-of-gun evidence did not equate to bad-character evidence.
Admission of Geddis’s phone statement via Coey (Residual hearsay, Rule 807)	The statement that Geddis awaited someone to sell a .40 gun was material, unavailable by other means, corroborated, and trustworthy under Rule 807.	The statement lacked adequate guarantees of trustworthiness and notice was inadequate.	Trial court did not abuse discretion admitting it under the residual exception; on notice, Court left unresolved whether lack of pretrial notice would be fatal on retrial.

Key Cases Cited

Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (standard for assessing sufficiency of the evidence)
Bradshaw v. State, 296 Ga. 650 (Rule 404(b) admissibility framework and Rule 403 balancing)
State v. Jones, 297 Ga. 156 (Rule 404(b) three-part test and rule of inclusion)
Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681 (other-acts admissibility / relevance standard)
Edwards v. State, 299 Ga. 20 (corroboration of accomplice testimony by slight independent evidence)
Smith v. State, 299 Ga. 424 (harmless-error standard for nonconstitutional evidentiary error)