Conviction from 2005 Dougherty County murder upheld by Georgia Supreme Court

ATLANTA — A conviction stemming from a Dougherty County murder that took place May 13, 2005, was upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court on Monday.

Reginald Cooper was found guilty of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and two counts of possession of a knife during the commission of a crime in connection with the death of Kelvin Lindsey on the 1300 block of South McKinley Street. He appealed his convictions and the trial court’s denial of his motion for new trial to the state’s highest court — challenging the sufficiency of the evidence, alleging he received ineffective assistance of counsel at trial and asserting the prosecution made an improper closing argument.

The evidence showed Cooper agreed to meet Lindsey early in the morning the day of the murder. After picking up a friend, Cooper drove his Ford Explorer to meet him and agreed to drive Lindsey to his brother’s house. Lindsey repeatedly asked Cooper for money, making Cooper angry. When they reached their destination, the two men began arguing — which reportedly turned into a physical altercation.

The friend said that, when Cooper got back in his car, she noticed blood on his shirt and hands and saw him holding what she thought was a knife. That witness, identified as Angela Peterman, was later dropped off at a mutual friend’s house by Cooper — who then went home, returned later in a different car and clean shirt and told Peterman not to speak of what she saw.

The investigation eventually determined Lindsey had been stabbed 19 times, and his blood was found where the two men had been fighting.

Cooper contended the evidence against him was entirely circumstantial and that the prosecution failed to eliminate every reasonable hypothesis other than his guilt.

“It is the province of the jury, not this Court, to determine the credibility of the witnesses, to resolve any conflicts or inconsistencies in the evidence, and where appropriate, to determine whether the evidence excluded every other reasonable hypothesis save that of guilt,” the court opinion reads. “Here, the evidence adduced at trial was not wholly circumstantial, but even if it was, we conclude the evidence was sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to have found appellant guilty of the victim’s murder beyond a reasonable doubt, and to have found beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence excluded every other reasonable hypothesis except that of the appellant’s guilt.”

On the contention of ineffective counsel, the high court noted that Cooper failed to call trial counsel to testify at the motion for a new trial hearing regarding the decisions she (trial attorney) made in respect to her theory of defense — and that given the evidence presented trial — Cooper could not show that her choice of defense was unreasonable.

Without testimony from the trial lawyer, and evidence to the contrary, it is presumed her decisions were strategic and therefore not enough to support an ineffective assistance claim, the court said.

“Nor can appellant show he was prejudiced by trial counsel’s failure to request a jury charge on circumstantial evidence as it is clear from the record that the jury received proper instructions on circumstantial evidence from the trial court,” the opinion said.

On the contention of prosecutorial misconduct, the court said Cooper had failed to object to any statements made by the prosecution in its closing argument and had, in turn, failed to preserve the issue for appeal.

At the time of his sentencing in 2007, Cooper was ordered to pay $6,500 in restitution to the victim’s family, and sentenced to life in prison for the murder charges plus five years probation for two knife possession charges to be served consecutive to the life sentence and concurrent to each other. He was also ordered to not have contact with Lindsey’s family as well as two other witnesses, and was deemed eligible for parole after 14 years.