Manning v. Georgia

Appellant Marvin Manning was charged with malice murder, two counts of felony murder, and other offenses arising out of the shooting death of Jimmy Sims. The jury found Manning not guilty of malice murder but found him guilty of the remaining charges. According to appellant, because the trial court lumped all the charges against him together when instructing the jury on how to determine guilt or innocence, and did not instruct the jury to make a separate determination regarding guilt or innocence with respect to each of the counts against him, the instructions were confusing and harmful, and were erroneous as a matter of law. Viewing the charges as a whole, the Georgia Supreme Court concluded the manner in which the trial court instructed the jury was not confusing with respect to whether the jury was to make a determination of guilt on each individual count of the indictment, and thus the Court found the instruction was not erroneous. This was further evidenced by the fact that the jury found appellant not guilty of malice murder as charged in Count 1 of the indictment but found him guilty on the remaining counts. Accordingly, appellant failed to establish that the alleged error in the jury instruction as a whole likely affected the outcome of the proceedings. View "Manning v. Georgia" on Justia Law