DeSean Lamar Graham was tried by a DeKalb County jury, and he was convicted of the murder of Carlos Daniels and the unlawful possession of a firearm during the cоmmission of a felony Graham appeals, contending that the evidence is insufficient to sustain his convictions and that the trial court erred when it refused tо charge the jury on voluntary manslaughter as a lesser included offense. Upon our review of the record and briefs, we see no error, and we affirm.
1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence shows that on July 9, 2012, Graham drove his girlfriend and his eight-year-old nephew to the pool at the Jasminе at Winter’s Chapel Apartments in DeKalb County Graham lived at Cornerstone Apartments, which is adjacent to the Jasmine.
When Graham returned to his apartment at Cornerstone, his girlfriend observed that he was out of breath and that he threw up in the bathroom. Graham told his girlfriend that he shot “the dude at the pool” because “the dude” had “disrespected his family.” He also provided several details about the shooting, including that he continued firing his weapon at Daniels after he fell to the ground and that he fled the scene by running through the “cut,” which was a wooded trail betwеen the Jasmine and Cornerstone. For several months, Graham’s girlfriend told no one about the confession.
Police investigators initially were unable to identify or locate the man who had been involved in the poolside confrontation with Daniels. But Graham’s girlfriend eventually saw a report that policе were “searching for a man who shot and killed another man after an altercation at a swimming pool at . . . [t]he Jasmine at Winter’s Chapel Apartmеnts.” She told a friend about Graham’s confession, the police were notified, and Graham was arrested. Graham admitted to the poolside alterсation with Daniels, but he denied that he returned to the Jasmine to shoot him.
On appeal, Graham contends that the evidence is insufficient to support his convictions, and he relies upon OCGA § 24-8-823, which provides that “[a] confession alone, uncorroborated by any other evidence, shall not justify a conviction.” But while the State may not rely solely on a defendant’s confession, “no specific manner of corroboration [of the confession] is required, and corroboration in any particular is sufficient.” McMullen v. State,
Graham points to the lack of physical evidence connecting him to the crime, the failure of any eyewitness to identify him, and his assertion that his girlfriend was not a credible witness. But the State “was not required to produce any physical evidence,” Johnson v. State,
2. We turn now to Graham’s contention that the trial court should have charged the jury on voluntary manslaughter as a lesser included offense. Such a charge is required only when there is some evidence that the defendant acted “solely as the result of a sudden, violent, and irresistible passion resulting from serious provocation sufficient
Here, the poolside confrontation was not the type of “serious provocation” that would require a charge on vоluntary manslaughter. Graham acknowledged that he and Daniels merely engaged in an argument, and his most serious complaint about Daniels’s conduct was that it initially made him fear that Daniels “wanted to hit [him] and stuff” or might try to “push [him] in the pool or something.” Graham points to evidence that he was “very angry” after the argument with Daniels, but there was no evidence that Daniels’s conduct at the pool would provoke any reasonable person to go home, get a gun, run back to Daniels’s apartment complex, and shoot him. We find that Graham’s response to the confrontation at the pool was objectivеly unreasonable as a matter of law, and it does not support a voluntary manslaughter charge. See Johnson v. State,
Judgment affirmed.
Notes
Daniels was killed on July 9, 2012. On July 15,2014, a DeKalb Cоunty grand jury indicted Graham for malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, and the unlawful possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. (Graham аlso was charged with the unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, but that charge was dismissed by nolle prosequi.) Graham’s trial commenced on February 2, 2015, and the jury returned its verdict four days later, finding him guilty on all counts (other than the dismissed count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon). Graham was sentenced to imprisonment for life for malice murder and imprisonment for a consecutive term of five years for the unlawful possession оf a firearm during the commission of a felony. The verdict as to felony murder was vacated by operation of law, and the aggravated assault mergеd with the malice murder. See Malcolm v. State,
Othеr evidence was presented showing that this trail was used almost exclusively by residents of Cornerstone to access the Jasmine and “most people” would not even know that the trail existed.