In the Supreme Court of Georgia
Decided: October 15, 2024
S24A0835. WIPFEL v. THE STATE.
WARREN, Justice.
After a jury trial in 2016, Kristian Wipfel was convicted of
malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting
death of eight-year-old Jai’mel Anderson.1 In his sole enumeration
1 The crimes occurred on January 6, 2015. In March 2015, a Peach County grand jury indicted Wipfel, Dennis Eason, Jr., Antonio Garvin, Jeremy Jackson, and Tevin Sams for malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault against Anderson’s brother J.A., making terroristic threats against Dejad Williams, and two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Garvin and Jackson both pled guilty to two counts of aggravated assault in exchange for their truthful testimony at trial. Their cases are not part of this appeal. Wipfel, Eason, and Sams were tried together from October 31 to November 9, 2016. The jury found Wipfel not guilty of making terroristic threats, but guilty of the remaining counts. The jury found Eason and Sams guilty of all counts, except, with respect to Sams, the count of making terroristic threats. Eason’s case is not part of this appeal, and we affirmed Sams’s convictions in Sams v. State, 314 Ga. 306 (875 SE2d 757) (2022). The trial court sentenced Wipfel to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole for malice murder, 20 concurrent years for aggravated assault, and five consecutive years for each of the firearm offenses. The trial court purported to merge the felony-murder count into the malice-murder conviction, but the felony-murder count was actually vacated by operation of of error, Wipfel contends that the trial court plainly erred when it
failed to instruct the jury on involuntary manslaughter as a lesser
offense of malice murder. For the reasons explained below, we
affirm.
1. As relevant to Wipfel’s enumeration of error on appeal, the
evidence presented at Wipfel’s trial showed the following. Wipfel,
Dennis Eason, Jr., Tevin Sams, Antonio Garvin, and Garvin’s cousin
Jeremy Jackson were together on the night of January 5, 2015.
law. See Malcolm v. State, 263 Ga. 369, 371-372 (434 SE2d 479) (1993). Wipfel filed a timely motion for new trial, which he later amended through counsel. After an evidentiary hearing in May 2021, the trial court entered an order denying the motion on February 10, 2022.
On May 3, 2022, Wipfel filed a motion to set aside the February 10, 2022 order on the ground that he was not timely notified of its entry, and on May 20, 2022, Wipfel filed a notice of appeal. On May 31, 2022, the trial court entered an order setting aside and re-entering the February 10, 2022 order. On April 19, 2023, this Court vacated the trial court’s May 31, 2022 order and dismissed Wipfel’s appeal on the ground that the May 31 order was filed after the notice of appeal divested the trial court of jurisdiction, such that the May 31 order was a nullity, and Wipfel’s notice of appeal was not timely filed from the date of the entry of the original order on the motion for new trial on February 10, 2022. We noted, however, that because Wipfel did not receive timely notice of the February 10, 2022 order, he could file another motion to set aside that order. See Cambron v. Canal Ins. Co., 246 Ga. 147, 148-149 (1) (269 SE2d 426) (1980). On April 24, 2023, Wipfel filed such a motion. Nearly 10 months later, on February 7, 2024, the trial court entered an order setting aside the February 10, 2022 order and re-entering it. Wipfel then filed a timely notice of appeal, and the case was docketed to the April 2024 term of this Court and submitted for a decision on the briefs.
2
Eason was a drug dealer, and Wipfel sold drugs on his behalf. Eason
was involved in a dispute over drugs and money with Dejad
Williams, who lived with his girlfriend and her sons, eight-year-old
Anderson and six-year-old J.A., in an apartment in Fort Valley.
At trial, Garvin testified as follows. Wipfel, Eason, Sams,
Garvin, and Jackson met at Jackson’s apartment in Macon, where
Eason discussed his dispute with Williams. Spurred on by Eason,
the five men decided to drive to Fort Valley and confront Williams
to “get [Eason’s] product or his money back.” When the men arrived
at the apartment complex, they saw Williams standing outside an
apartment building holding a gun. They parked near the back of the
complex and got out of the cars. Eason and Sams were carrying
handguns, and Eason told Wipfel, “[Y]ou have to do this for me.”
Eason, Sams, and Wipfel walked from the cars to the apartment
complex. Eason walked back toward the cars, and then Garvin
heard gunshots.
Moments later, Sams and Wipfel ran back to the cars; Wipfel
got in Garvin’s car; Eason and Sams got in Jackson’s car; and they
3
all fled to Jackson’s apartment. There, Wipfel and Sams stated “that
they shot into the doorway of an apartment.” Wipfel also said that
Sams shot through the door first and then Wipfel started shooting;
Garvin thought that Wipfel used Eason’s gun.
Jackson told a similar story. He testified that on the evening
of January 5, he, Wipfel, Eason, Sams, and Garvin discussed “an
altercation between [Eason] and some other guy” before the group
made “a decision to go down to Fort Valley.” After the two cars
parked near the apartment complex, Sams and Wipfel—who was
carrying Eason’s “silver and black gun”—got out and talked with
Eason. Eason then got back in the car with Jackson, and Wipfel and
Sams went toward the apartment complex. Jackson then “heard
shots” and saw Wipfel and Sams “running back” to the cars. Wipfel
got in Garvin’s car, and Sams got in Jackson’s car, and the men
drove back to Macon.
Sams testified that he went to the apartment complex with the
other men and, when they arrived, Wipfel and Eason went into the
apartment complex, gunshots rang out, and Wipfel and Eason—who
4
had a gun in his hand—then ran back to the cars. Sams admitted
that he had owned a .40-caliber Glock handgun, but claimed that it
was stolen several months before the shooting.
Williams—the apparent target who was not wounded in the
shooting—testified that in the early morning hours of January 6, he
received multiple threatening text messages from a phone number
he did not recognize and that he responded to the messages with
threats of his own. Moments later, multiple shots were fired into
the door to Williams’s apartment. Williams was in the bedroom, and
eight-year-old Anderson, who was playing a video game, and sixyear-old J.A., who was sleeping, were in the living room. Anderson
was shot twice: once in the leg and once in the upper abdomen. He
later died.
Wipfel did not testify at trial. His defense strategy was to
argue that he did not possess the requisite intent to commit malice
murder because he was merely present at the scene of the crimes.
2. Wipfel contends that the trial court plainly erred by failing
to instruct the jury on involuntary manslaughter based on reckless
5
conduct as a lesser offense of malice murder. Wipfel did not ask for
this instruction at trial but contends the trial court should have
given it on its own. Specifically, he argues that the evidence at trial
showed that he lacked the requisite malice to shoot and kill
Anderson and that he merely participated in shooting at Williams’s
apartment door, which amounted to the misdemeanor crime of
reckless conduct, and—without any intent to do so—caused
Anderson’s death. See OCGA §§ 16-5-3 (a) (“A person commits the
offense of involuntary manslaughter in the commission of an
unlawful act when he causes the death of another human being
without any intention to do so by the commission of an unlawful act
other than a felony.”); 16-5-60 (b) (“A person who causes bodily harm
to or endangers the bodily safety of another by consciously
disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk that his or her act
or omission will cause harm or endanger the safety of the other
person” is guilty of misdemeanor reckless conduct where “the
disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care
which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation.”).
6
As Wipfel concedes, because he did not object to the trial court’s
omission of an instruction on involuntary manslaughter based on
reckless conduct, we review his claim for plain error only. See OCGA
§ 17-8-58 (b); Acosta v. State, 311 Ga. 320, 327 (857 SE2d 701) (2021).
For an appellant to establish plain error,
[f]irst, there must be an error or defect—some sort of
deviation from a legal rule—that has not been
intentionally relinquished or abandoned, i.e.,
affirmatively waived, by the appellant. Second, the legal
error must be clear or obvious, rather than subject to
reasonable dispute. Third, the error must have affected
the appellant’s substantial rights, which in the ordinary
case means he must demonstrate that it affected the
outcome of the trial court proceedings. Fourth and finally,
if the above three prongs are satisfied, the appellate court
has the discretion to remedy the error—discretion which
ought to be exercised only if the error seriously affects the
fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial
proceedings.
Lewis v. State, 311 Ga. 650, 664 (859 SE2d 1) (2021) (citation
omitted). “An appellant must establish all four elements of the test
in order to demonstrate plain error, so satisfying this test is difficult,
as it should be.” Clark v. State, 315 Ga. 423, 440 (883 SE2d 317)
(2023) (citation and punctuation omitted).
7
(a) The State contends that we can decide the plain-error
analysis on the basis that the trial court did not err at all in this
case. Citing State v. Stonaker, 236 Ga. 1 (222 SE2d 354) (1976), the
State contends that “the law in Georgia remains that a trial court
does not err when it does not sua sponte charge the jury on an
unrequested instruction for a lesser-included offense.” As we
explain more below, we agree that the substantive rule Stonaker
sets forth in this regard, which our Court has applied dozens of times
since Stonaker was decided, is still valid and applies today—even
after our appellate courts’ application of plain-error review for
“alleged jury instruction errors to which no objection was asserted
at trial.” See State v. Kelly, 290 Ga. 29 (718 SE2d 232) (2011)
(interpreting OCGA § 17-8-58). And we apply that rule here to
conclude that Wipfel’s claim of instructional error fails on plainerror review. In so doing, however, we explain our misgivings about
the approach this Court took in Stonaker when it announced various
rules of criminal law pertaining to jury instructions.
In Stonaker, this Court reviewed the Court of Appeals’ decision
8
reversing a defendant’s conviction for child molestation on the basis
that the trial judge had not charged the jury on a “lesser offense to
that offense delineated in the indictment . . . even though no such
charge was requested in writing.” 2 Our holding in that case was
narrow: because “simple battery . . . is not a lesser crime included in
the crime of child molestation,” as Georgia’s criminal code defined
those offenses, “[i]t was therefore not error for the trial judge to fail
to charge the jury on the crime of simple battery in this case.” Id. at
3. Yet our Court proceeded to announce four “rules in this area of
criminal law” in an apparent “attempt to clarify for the trial courts
what must be charged and what may be charged and what need not
be charged in the area of lesser included crimes in criminal trials.”
Id. at 2.3 We did so without conducting any meaningful analysis and
2 The Court of Appeals also concluded that the trial court had committed
reversible error based on a separate instructional error that did not relate to lesser crimes. This Court held that conclusion to be erroneous. See Stonaker, 236 Ga. at 1, 3.
And although it is not at issue here, we note that “[a] criminal defendant is ordinarily required to present written requests for any desired jury instructions.” Woods v. State, 291 Ga. 804, 809 (733 SE2d 730) (2012). See also OCGA § 5-5-24 (b); Uniform Superior Court Rule 10.3.
3 The other three “rules” were:
9
without citing any relevant authority—common law, decisional law,
statute, or otherwise—and even though none of the four “rules” was
required to resolve the defendant’s claim of error.
The State has raised the first of the Stonaker “rules” in Wipfel’s
appeal: that “[t]he trial [judge] also may, of his own volition and in
his discretion, charge on a lesser crime of that included in the
indictment or accusation. However, his failure to do so, without a
written request by the State or the accused, is not error.” Id. at 2.
“The trial judge must charge the jury on each crime specified in
the indictment or accusation, unless the evidence does not warrant
a conviction of such crime, or unless the State has affirmatively
withdrawn a crime or stricken it from the indictment or
accusation.
The State or the accused may, by written application to the trial
judge at or before the close of the evidence, request him to charge
on lesser crimes that are included in those set forth in the
indictment or accusation, and his failure to so charge as requested,
if the evidence warrants such requested charge or charges, shall
be error.
An erroneous charge on a lesser crime to that set forth in the
indictment or accusation does not rise to the level of reversible
error, unless such charge was harmful to the accused as a matter
of law.”
Stonaker, 236 Ga. at 2. Because those legal rules are not at issue in this appeal, we do not analyze them here.
10
Though that substantive legal rule was necessarily dicta in
Stonaker, 4 this Court applied it as an alternative holding just days
later in another criminal case. See Smith v. State, 236 Ga. 5, 10 (222
SE2d 357) (1976) (in rejecting appellant’s claim that the trial court
erred by failing to charge a lesser offense in the absence of a request
to do so, stating that “today this court has held that it is not error
for the trial court, in the absence of a written request, to fail to
charge on lesser crime included in the crime charged in the
indictment or accusation . . . regardless of whether the evidence
would have authorized or demanded such a charge,” and citing and
applying Stonaker, 236 Ga. at 1). And we have continued to apply
that substantive rule, first announced in Stonaker, for decades. See
also, e.g., Wellborn v. State, 236 Ga. 319, 319 (223 SE2d 698) (1976);
4 Indeed, a substantive rule about a trial court instructing a jury about
a lesser crime has no legal bearing in a case like Stonaker, where the allegedly lesser crime on which the defendant wanted the jury instructed is not, in fact, a lesser crime. See Stonaker, 236 Ga. at 3 (“Under the facts of this case we hold that simple battery as defined in . . . the Criminal Code of Georgia is not a lesser crime of child molestation.”). See also Zepp v. Brannen, 283 Ga. 395, 397 (658 SE2d 567) (2008) (explaining that “a statement in an opinion concerning some rule of law or legal proposition not necessarily involved nor essential to determination of the case in hand” is dicta) (citation and punctuation omitted).
11
Bouttry v. State, 242 Ga. 60, 62 (247 SE2d 859) (1978); Chastain v.
State, 255 Ga. 723, 725 (342 SE2d 678) (1986); Hawkins v. State, 267
Ga. 124, 124 (475 SE2d 625) (1996); Wyman v. State, 278 Ga. 339,
341 (602 SE2d 619) (2004); Brown v. State, 285 Ga. 324, 327-328
(676 SE2d 221) (2009).
We acknowledge, however, some confusion about whether and
how to apply Stonaker (and its progeny) in the wake of State v. Kelly,
290 Ga. 29, 31-32 (718 SE2d 232) (2011), in which “this Court noted
the similarities between OCGA § 17-8-58 (b) and Federal Rule of
Criminal Procedure 52 (b), and looked to federal cases which
articulated and applied the plain error standard found in that Rule.”
Cheddersingh v. State, 290 Ga. 680, 683 (724 SE2d 366) (2012).5 The
Court of Appeals recently grappled with this question in Miles v.
5 See Smith v. State, 292 Ga. 316, 319 (737 SE2d 677) (2013) (“The ‘plain
error’ test adopted by this Court in State v. Kelly . . . authorizes reversal of a conviction if the instruction was erroneous, the error was obvious, the instruction likely affected the outcome of the proceedings, and the error seriously affected the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.”).
12
State, 362 Ga. App. 288 (868 SE2d 262) (2022).6 There, the
defendant had been convicted of multiple criminal offenses and did
not request that the jury be charged on two lesser offenses, yet later
claimed on appeal that the trial court committed plain error by
failing to charge the jury on the lesser offenses. In evaluating that
argument, the Court of Appeals noted that it was not entirely clear
whether, in such a circumstance, an appellate court should evaluate
the claim of error under Kelly’s plain-error standard or under the
substantive rule announced in Stonaker that a “trial judge never
errs in failing to instruct the jury on a lesser included offense where
there is no written request to so charge.” See Miles, 362 Ga. App. at
6 Other cases illustrate the different approaches taken when applying
the rule from Stonaker (that is also at issue in this case) after articulating the plain-error standard review of unpreserved errors in jury instructions in Kelly. See, e.g., Martin v. State, 349 Ga. App. 656, 659 (825 SE2d 227) (2019) (applying Stonaker and no plain error review); McMurtry v. State, 338 Ga. App. 622, 625 (791 SE2d 196) (2016) (applying a Stonaker progeny and no plainerror review); Styles v. State, 329 Ga. App. 143, 149-150 (764 SE2d 166) (2014) (applying plain-error review only); Anthony v. State, 317 Ga. App. 807, 811-812 (732 SE2d 845) (2012) (same); Ingram v. State, 317 Ga. App. 606, 607 (732 SE2d 456) (2012) (applying both a Stonaker progeny and plain-error review “to the extent we are required to evaluate whether plain error resulted from the trial court’s failure to charge on the lesser included offense”).
13
291 (quoting Stonaker, 236 Ga. at 2).7 The court then went on to
analyze the defendant’s claim of error “under the plain error
standard of review of Kelly rather than the simplified no error
approach of Stonaker,” but nonetheless looked to Stonaker to
determine whether there was “a clear or obvious error that
substantially affected the outcome of the proceedings.” Miles, 362
Ga. App. at 293-294 (citing Kelly, 290 Ga. at 33). It then applied the
substantive rule from Stonaker to conclude that the trial court had
7 The Court of Appeals also raised a third possibility: evaluating the
claim of error under a line of cases “developed before the enactment of OCGA § 17-8-58 in 2007” in which appellate courts apply a “predecessor statute to OCGA § 5-5-24 (c),” which said that “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of this Code section, the appellate courts shall consider and review erroneous charges where there has been a substantial error in the charge which was harmful as a matter of law, regardless of whether objection was made hereunder or not.” See Miles, 362 Ga. App. at 292. The cases taking this approach were decided before Kelly in 2011. As we explained in Kelly, “[p]rior to the enactment of OCGA § 17-8-58, OCGA § 5-5-24 (c) was the exclusive avenue in all cases for appellate review of instruction errors that had been waived[.]” Kelly, 290 Ga. at 32 n.3. In Kelly, we held that “under OCGA § 17-8-58 (b), appellate review for plain error is required whenever an appealing party properly asserts an error in jury instructions.” See id. And we clarified that our construction of OCGA § 17-8-58 (b) was “consonant with” OCGA § 5-5-24 (c). See id. All of which is to say that in a post-Kelly world, appellate courts should not rely on the line of cases the Court of Appeals described above when evaluating claims of alleged error in jury instructions to which no objection was raised at trial. See Kelly, 290 Ga. at 29.
14
not plainly erred by not instructing on the lesser offense that the
defendant did not request at trial, but later complained of on appeal.
Id. at 294.
We take this opportunity to clarify that the plain-error review
standard set forth in OCGA § 17-8-58 (b) and applied in Kelly did
not undermine the validity of the substantive legal rule first
announced in Stonaker that a trial court’s failure to charge the jury
on a lesser crime without a written request to do so “is not error.”
Stonaker, 236 Ga. at 2. That is because Stonaker articulated a
substantive rule about whether a trial court’s failure to give a
particular jury instruction was legal error; it did not set forth a
framework governing when a claim of instructional error is subject
to appellate review. Compare Kelly, 290 Ga. at 32 (overruling
decisions from this Court and the Court of Appeals decided after
enactment of OCGA § 17-8-58 (b) concluding—without addressing
plain error—that appellate review of jury instructions was waived if
claims of instructional error were not raised below, and overruling
such cases “to the extent such cases could be construed” as
15
permitting something other than “appellate review for plain error .
. . whenever an appealing party properly asserts an error in jury
instructions”).
We also take this opportunity to express our disapproval of the
way our Court announced legal “rules” in Stonaker on its own
accord, without citing any authority in support, in a case that did
not present the issues the rules would resolve (that is, in dicta). See
Stonaker, 236 Ga. at 2. See also Zepp, 283 Ga. at 397. Whatever
good intention our Court may have had in doing so,8 our job is to
discern and apply the law—not to create it. See, e.g., Sons of
Confederate Veterans v. Henry County Bd. of Comm’rs, 315 Ga. 39,
8 Justice Hill, for example, stated in a special concurrence that he felt
“compelled . . . to state [his] reasons” for signing onto the portion of the majority opinion that announced the “no error” legal rule discussed above. In that special concurrence, he explained that the rule in place before Stonaker was decided—that a “trial judge was required to charge, without request, the law applicable to lesser included offenses, where the evidence would have authorized convictions on a lesser offense”—allowed for gamesmanship insofar as a criminal defendant who was “accused of an offense, as to which there was a lesser included offense as shown by the evidence” at trial could “avoid referring to the lesser offense at his first trial and if the trial judge only charged the jury according to the defendant’s announced theory of the case,” then he would be “virtually assured of a second trial” because of the trial court’s instructional error. See Stonaker, 236 Ga. at 4.
16
52 n.10 (880 SE2d 168) (2022) (“The limitations on the judicial power
prevent us from rendering advisory opinions on Georgia law.”);
Fulton County v. City of Atlanta, 299 Ga. 676, 677 (791 SE2d 821)
(2016) (“It is a settled principle of Georgia law that the jurisdiction
of the courts is confined to justiciable controversies, and the courts
may not properly render advisory opinions.”).9
(b) Having clarified that the substantive rule from Stonaker at
issue in this case remains valid, we now apply that rule here. To
prevail on his claim of instructional error, Wipfel must demonstrate
that the trial court’s failure to charge on a lesser offense constituted
legal error. But no one asked for such a charge at trial, and the
failure to charge on a lesser crime than the crime included in the
indictment, “without a written request by the State or the accused,
is not error.” See Stonaker, 236 Ga. at 2; Smith, 236 Ga. at 2.
Having failed to demonstrate legal error, Wipfel’s claim of plain
error fails.
9 Some of us have expressed concern about the soundness of the Stonaker
rule articulated above and would be willing to revisit it in an appropriate case.
17
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur, except Boggs, C.J., who concurs in judgment only in Division 2.
18