NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and official text of the opinion.
In the Supreme Court of Georgia
Decided: June 10, 2025
S25A0661. LEWIS v. THE STATE.
MCMILLIAN, Justice.
Appellant Latif Arthur Lewis was convicted of malice murder
and other charges in connection with the shooting death of Randy
Killens, Jr.1 On appeal, Lewis contends that the evidence was not
1 Killens died on April 5, 2018.On May 23, 2018, a Ware County grand
jury indicted Lewis for aggravated assault (Count 1), felony murder (Count 2),
malice murder (Count 3), possession of a firearm during the commission of a
felony (Count 4), possession of a firearm by a convicted felon (Count 5), and
simple battery (Counts 6 and 7). Lewis’s ex-girlfriend Cynthia Rowell was also
indicted with aggravated assault as a party to the crime, and she later pleaded
guilty, agreeing to testify truthfully as part of her plea deal. At a trial from
December 2 through December 5, 2019, the jury found Lewis guilty of all
counts except Count 5, which the State nolle prossed. The trial court sentenced
Lewis to life in prison without the possibility of parole for malice murder, plus
five years to serve consecutively for the firearm count on which he was
convicted and concurrent 12-month sentences in prison for the simple
batteries. The trial court initially imposed a sentence on the aggravated
assault count but later entered an amended sentence merging that count for
sentencing purposes. The trial court purported to merge the felony murder
count, but it actually was vacated by operation of law. See Noel v. State, 297
Ga. 698, 700 (2) (777 SE2d 449) (2015).
Lewis filed a timely motion for new trial on December 17, 2019, which
sufficient as a matter of constitutional due process to support his
convictions and that his trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance
by not allowing Lewis to review all of the discovery in his case. For
the reasons that follow, we affirm.
The evidence presented at trial showed that Lewis shot Killens
after a physical altercation with Killens the previous day. Rowell,
who was dating Lewis until after the shooting, testified that Lewis
and Killens argued the night before the shooting over a marijuana
transaction, and “[b]oth of them just went to taking their shirts off
and they got into a[n] altercation, a fight.” Lewis got “beat up. And
so he was mad.”
The next day, Killens called Rowell because Lewis had
apparently sent a picture to Killens of the house where Killens’s
young son lived, so Killens said, “Please just make sure that Latif
don’t go by my house.” During that call, Killens also informed
was amended by new counsel. Following a hearing on October 11, 2023, the
trial court denied Lewis’s motion for new trial, as amended, on October 23,
2023. Lewis filed a timely notice of appeal on November 21, 2023, and the case
was docketed to the April 2025 term of this Court and thereafter submitted for
a decision on the briefs.
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Rowell that Killens could “shoot up” Lewis’s house if he wanted.
Lewis was listening in on the call. Later that day, Lewis told Rowell
that he and Killens had agreed to meet to fight again, and she drove
Lewis to the agreed upon meeting place. Rowell testified that when
she pulled up, a friend of Killens approached her window to talk,
and
[h]e was saying, like “Don’t – don’t be clutching. Don’t let
him be clutching.” I was like, “I don’t understand what
that means.” So, I’m trying to get him to tell me what
that means and that’s when all of a sudden somebody had
walked up to our car on the side where [Lewis] was sitting
at. I don’t know who that was. I don’t think they had
nothing to do with this. But – and then so after that I was
like – [the friend at the window] was like “A gun, the gun.”
By that time [Lewis] was already out of the car, in front
of the car, looked like he was wrapping something around
his hand. And he walked up to [Killens] and like pointed
down and shot him in the leg.
Killens “just fell and was like, ‘Somebody please help me.’” Lewis
“casually walked back to the car and got in” with “the gun in his
hand,” and “[h]e was just like, ‘Drive. . . . Go home. . . . If you don’t
go home, . . . I’m going to kill your family. I’m going to kill you. . . .
Because you’re the only person that can, I guess, say what happened,
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who knows what happened.’”
Killens died at the scene. His autopsy showed that he was shot
in the thigh, with the bullet traveling in a “slightly downward
trajectory” and severing his femoral artery, causing massive blood
loss and death.
Law enforcement officers learned of Rowell’s involvement in
the shooting early in their investigation. A law enforcement officer
spoke to her on the telephone on the night of the killing, but she
initially refused to provide any information. She agreed to come
with her mother to the police department a couple days later but
initially denied any knowledge or involvement in the incident, before
acknowledging that she was present when a shooting took place but
saying that she thought everyone there had guns. Soon afterward,
officers arrested Rowell on the charge of accessory to murder, and
the same day, Rowell provided officers with the account comporting
with her trial testimony and told officers where they could find
Lewis. She acknowledged at trial that her final version of events
differed from her initial statements, testifying further that “[b]efore
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I had left from around [Lewis] he had told me multiple times we
needed to get our stories together. He had told me basically what
he wanted me to say to make it look like he didn’t, you know, I guess,
intend to hurt him.” Rowell testified at trial that contrary to her
previous statements to police, she never saw that Killens or any of
the individuals who were present with him had a gun at the time of
the shooting and that none of them ever made her feel like she was
in danger. No other witnesses testified that they saw Killens or
anyone other than Lewis with a firearm or any other type of weapon,
and no weapon was recovered near Killens’s body.
After Rowell’s arrest, officers began “rolling around” the area
where she said they could find Lewis. Eventually, one officer
observed Lewis “run past . . . carrying a camouflage jacket and it
appeared to be something under the jacket.” The officer pursued
Lewis and “saw a foot diving through a [house’s] window,” so officers
set up a perimeter around the house. Officers were able to make
contact with the homeowner, who said he “believed somebody was
in the guest bathroom with the door locked.” After the SWAT team
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was activated, an officer tried to convince Lewis to come out
peacefully, with no response, so, according to the officer, “I
instructed one of the other sergeants to grab their long gun . . . . And
as soon as I said that, Mr. Lewis said, ‘I give up.’ He surrendered. .
. . and we arrested him there on the spot.” Officers received the
homeowner’s consent to search the house, and in the bathroom
where Lewis had been trapped, they found the camouflage jacket
along with a bag with a Taurus 9mm handgun in it; the homeowner
confirmed that the items did not belong in the house. A GBI
firearms examiner determined that the gun had fired a casing that
was recovered from the crime scene.
Lewis testified in his own defense at trial. According to Lewis,
he and Killens had not gotten along previously; Killens regularly
“provoke[d]” him and cursed at him during their interactions; and
he got in a fight with Killens the day before the shooting, when
Killens “rushed [him], grabbed [him], [and] slammed [him],” causing
Lewis to bleed. Lewis said that he went home with Rowell after the
fight, “was angry. . . . upset about the fight,” and demanded from
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Rowell to know “Where does [Killens] stay?” She showed Lewis
Killens’s address from an old message she had on Facebook, and
Lewis took a screenshot of Killens’s house and sent it to Killens from
Rowell’s Facebook account. The next day, Killens called them,
“hollering” and saying, “How would you feel if I go to your house in
the hill and shoot your house up,” and “If I wanted to I’ll shoot your
house up.” The two agreed to meet that afternoon to fight again.
Lewis testified that afterward, an acquaintance informed him that
Killens was “running around asking people to borrow . . . guns.”
Lewis testified that when he arrived for the fight, Killens, who said
they were in his territory, was with two other people—one of whom
kept “reaching” and demanding that Lewis “just get out the car,”
plus there was yet another person nearby “reaching up under the
house for something” who then “started charging towards the car.”
At that point, Lewis got out of the car, and according to Lewis, the
two people with Killens pulled out guns. Lewis testified that “when
I started walking over there towards where Mr. Killens was[,] Mr.
Killens went to try to turn. And when he went to try to turn I don’t
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know if he was reaching to grab a firearm or what, when he went to
try to turn I pointed the gun like this (Demonstrating) downward
towards the thigh and I shot”; Killens “fell and was like, ‘Somebody
help.’ . . . I walked and got back in the car . . . [and] was like, ‘Drive.’”
1. Lewis contends that the evidence was not sufficient as a
matter of constitutional due process to support his convictions for
murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a
felony because he acted in self-defense in shooting Killens. 2 Pointing
to the evidence, consisting mainly of his own testimony, that Killens
had been provoking Lewis for some time; that Killens had sought to
borrow a firearm on the day of the incident; that Killens led Lewis
to meet Killens in Killens’s territory, where Killens was
accompanied by two armed men; and that a third man reached
beneath a nearby home and charged towards him, Lewis argues that
2 Lewis also argues that the evidence was not sufficient to support his
conviction for aggravated assault, but that conviction was merged for
sentencing purposes, so that contention is moot. See Lupoe v. State, 284 Ga.
576, 577 (1) n.2 (669 SE2d 133) (2008) (holding that contention that evidence
was insufficient to support conviction was moot because the trial court merged
that count into another count for purposes of sentencing). Lewis does not argue
that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions for simple battery,
which were based on him spitting on law enforcement officers after his arrest.
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the evidence was clear that he acted in self-defense and had no other
choice but to shoot Killens.
When this Court evaluates the constitutional sufficiency of the
evidence, “we review whether the evidence presented at trial, when
viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdicts, enabled the
jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the
crimes of which [he] was convicted.” Fitts v. State, 312 Ga. 134, 141
(3) (859 SE2d 79) (2021) (citing Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307,
319 (III) (B) (99 SCt 2781, 61 LE2d 560) (1979)). “In conducting that
review, we put aside any questions about conflicting evidence, the
credibility of witnesses, or the weight of the evidence, leaving the
resolution of such things to the discretion of the trier of fact.” Parker
v. State, 320 Ga. 572, 575 (1) (910 SE2d 580) (2024) (citation and
punctuation omitted).
“When a defendant presents evidence that he was justified in
using deadly force, the State bears the burden of disproving the
defense beyond a reasonable doubt.” Williams v. State, 316 Ga. 147,
150 (1) (886 SE2d 818) (2023) (citation and punctuation omitted).
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But “[i]t is the role of the jury to evaluate the evidence and, when
doing so, the jury is free to reject any evidence in support of a
justification defense and to accept the evidence that the [act] was
not done in self-defense.” Id. (citation and punctuation omitted); see
also Gibbs v. State, 309 Ga. 562, 565 (847 SE2d 156) (2020) (“[T]he
question of justification . . . is for the jury to decide.”).
Here, the evidence heard by the jury included Rowell’s
testimony that she witnessed the entire incident and that Lewis
exited her vehicle, “walked up” to an unarmed Killens, “pointed
down and shot him in the leg,” “casually walked back to the car and
got in,” and demanded that she drive him away—while threatening
her life and the lives of her family members because she was “the
only person” who could “say what happened, who knows what
happened.” Also, other than Lewis’s self-serving testimony, no other
witness testified that they saw Killens or anyone other than Lewis
with a firearm or any other type of weapon that day, and no weapon
was recovered near Killens’s body.
We conclude that a reasonable jury was authorized to resolve
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any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence and to reject Lewis’s
version of events and find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of
the crimes of which he was convicted. See Parker, 320 Ga. at 575-76 (1) (“[T]he jury was authorized to find [defendant] not credible,
resolve conflicts in the evidence against him, and find him guilty of
the crimes of which he was convicted.”); Orr v. State, 312 Ga. 317,
319 (1) (862 SE2d 513) (2021) (“[B]ased on the evidence presented at
trial and recounted above, the jury was authorized to reject Orr’s
theory of self-defense and find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt
of the crimes of which he was convicted.”); Taylor v. State, 303 Ga.
624, 626 (1) (814 SE2d 353) (2018) (“It is the role of the jury to
resolve conflicts in the evidence and to determine the credibility of
witnesses, and the resolution of such conflicts adversely to the
defendant does not render the evidence insufficient.” (citation and
punctuation omitted)); Morris v. State, 301 Ga. 702, 705 (1) (b) (804
SE2d 42) (2017) (reiterating that “questions about the existence of
justification are for the jury to resolve. The jury is free to reject any
evidence in support of a justification defense and to accept the
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evidence that the shooting was not done in self-defense” (citation
and punctuation omitted)). Accordingly, this enumeration of error
fails.
2. Lewis also contends that his trial counsel rendered
constitutionally ineffective assistance in not allowing him to review
all of the discovery in his case. But Lewis provides no argument
whatsoever explaining how counsel’s performance was deficient or
prejudicial. Nor does he cite any authority in support of this claim.
We therefore deem this claim abandoned. See Supreme Court Rule
22 (“Any enumerated error or subpart of an enumerated error not
supported by argument, citations to authority, and citations to the
record shall be deemed abandoned.”); Pounds v. State, 320 Ga. 288,
297 (5) (908 SE2d 631) (2024) (“[B]ecause [appellant] cites no legal
authority and offers no legal analysis to support this claim of error,
we conclude that he has abandoned it.”).
Judgment affirmed. Peterson, CJ, Warren, PJ, and Bethel,
Ellington, LaGrua, Colvin, and Pinson, JJ, concur.
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