254 Ga. 149 - Walker v. State

How this case has been cited

Cited by 52 later decisions — most recently June 2009 · most notably Pope v. State (1986), McClain v. State (1996)

50 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

Hill, Chief Justice,

¶1concurring.

¶2I concur in the majority opinion and judgment. I write to elaborate on Division 1 of the majority opinion.

¶3This is at least the sixth (6th) time since 1977 that this court has reversed a conviction for an underlying felony where the jury’s verdict was unclear as to whether the jury found the defendant guilty of murder with malice aforethought or felony murder. Reed v. State, 238 Ga. 457 (7) (233 SE2d 369) (1977); Casper v. State, 244 Ga. 689 (7) (261 SE2d 629) (1979); Dampier v. State, 245 Ga. 427 (13) (265 SE2d 565) (1980); Burke v. State, 248 Ga. 124 (1) (281 SE2d 607) (1981); Dillard v. State, 251 Ga. 858, fn. 1 (310 SE2d 518) (1984); see OCGA § 16-5-1 (a) (c).

¶4As Justice Weltner pointed out in Dillard v. State, supra, when a judge charges a jury on malice murder and on felony murder, the judge should instruct the jury to make its verdict clear by finding the defendant “guilty of murder with malice aforethought,” or “guilty of felony murder” (or “not guilty”).

¶5If the jury does not return a verdict clearly distinguishing between malice murder or felony murder, the jury should be recharged and required to make its verdict clear.