Compton v. State

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In the
Supreme Court of Georgia
No. S26A0227
Javaris Compton
v.
The State

On Appeal from the Superior Court of Hancock County
No. 2021SUCR007

Decided: June 2, 2026

LAGRUA, Justice.
Appellant Javaris Compton appeals his conviction for
malice murder related to the stabbing death of Rashad Bolton. 1
On appeal, Compton argues that the trial court abused its
discretion in denying his motion for a mistrial. Because Compton
failed to preserve this issue for appeal, we affirm.
The evidence presented at trial showed that, on January 4,
2021, Compton and Bolton were incarcerated and shared a cell at

1 Bolton was killed on January 4, 2021. On March 25, 2021, a Hancock
County grand jury indicted Compton for the following counts: malice murder
(Count 1); felony murder predicated on aggravated assault (Count 2); and
aggravated assault (Count 3). Compton was tried from April 29 to 30, 2024,
and the jury found him guilty on all counts. The trial court sentenced Compton
to life without the possibility of parole on Count 1. The remaining counts
merged or were vacated by operation of law. Compton filed a timely motion for
new trial, which he later amended through new counsel on May 19, 2025. After
holding a hearing on the motion, the trial court denied the motion on August
5, 2025. Compton filed a timely notice of appeal, and his case was docketed to
this Court’s term beginning in December 2025 and submitted for a decision on
the briefs.
Hancock State Prison. That morning, Compton and Bolton were
locked inside their cell when Correctional Officer Joshua Andrews
heard inmates yelling his name. The inmates told Officer
Andrews, “That dude in the next cell need help. If you don’t get
him some help, he going to die.” Officer Andrews approached
Compton and Bolton’s cell, where he observed that Bolton had
blood on his chest and appeared to be injured. Officer Andrews
then handcuffed Bolton and Compton through the cell door’s open
“flap.” When the emergency response team later arrived and
opened the cell door, Officer Andrews observed that Compton had
“jumped” his handcuffs by moving them from his back to his front.
Compton then pulled a “shank” from his pants, which the
correctional officers took from him. Bolton did not have a weapon,
and no weapons were found in Compton and Bolton’s cell. 2
After Compton was removed from the cell, correctional
officers took him to the medical unit. While Compton was there,
Warden Annettia Toby asked if he was okay. Compton responded
that he “did not want Bolton in his room,” “was having some
family issues on the outside,” and wanted to be left alone.
In his sole enumeration of error, Compton argues that the
trial court abused its discretion by declining to grant a mistrial
after the State introduced evidence that Compton refused to
speak to an investigator after being advised of his Miranda
rights. 3
At trial, the State called Georgia Department of
Corrections Special Agent Timothy Konzelman as a witness, and
Agent Konzelman engaged in the following exchange with the

2 By the time medical personnel tended to Bolton, he was not breathing
and did not have a pulse. The medical examiner testified that Bolton’s cause of
death was multiple sharp force injuries.
3 See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436 (1966).

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prosecutor:
[PROSECUTOR]: [A]t some point did you attempt to
go to speak to Mr. Compton?
[AGENT KONZELMAN]: Yes.
[PROSECUTOR]: And did you read him his
Miranda rights?
[AGENT KONZELMAN]: Yes, I read him his rights,
and he refused to talk with me.
[PROSECUTOR]: And that’s absolutely his right;
correct?
[AGENT KONZELMAN]: Yeah.
[PROSECUTOR]: But did you then -- did you ask
Warden Toby to go talk to him on your behalf or
anything like that?[ 4]
[AGENT KONZELMAN]: No.
[PROSECUTOR]: Did you say, “Hey, go see what he
can say” or anything like that?
[AGENT KONZELMAN]: No.
[PROSECUTOR]: In fact, until you talked to
Warden Toby afterward, were you aware that she
had gone and talked to him?
[AGENT KONZELMAN]: No.
Compton’s trial counsel then requested to approach the
bench, where he objected to Agent Konzelman’s earlier testimony

4 Warden Toby testified earlier in the trial—without objection—about
the comments that Compton made to her.

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by saying, “The testimony that [Compton] refused to talk to
[Agent Konzelman], that should not be any evidence that enters
in.” After some discussion, Compton’s trial counsel moved for a
mistrial. The trial court sustained the objection and stated that it
would give a curative instruction, but it denied the mistrial
motion. Compton’s trial counsel said that he would “welcome any
instruction” but did not believe it would cure the issue. After the
trial court gave the curative instruction, telling the jury to
disregard Agent Konzelman’s testimony, Compton renewed his
mistrial motion, which the trial court again denied. The
prosecutor then asked Agent Konzelman two more questions
before concluding the direct examination.
Because Compton did not move for a mistrial “at the
earliest opportunity in the trial court,” Moss v. State, 322 Ga. 757,
762 (2025) (quotation marks omitted), his claim that the trial
court abused its discretion by denying his mistrial motion is not
preserved for appeal. It is well settled that, to preserve a motion
for mistrial for appellate review, an appellant must make a
contemporaneous motion at the time he becomes aware of the
matter giving rise to the motion. See id. See also Smith v. State,
323 Ga. 246, 253 (2026). Here, that would have been when Agent
Konzelman testified that Compton refused to speak to him. 5
For example, in Moss, a detective testified at trial that she

5 Compton’s trial counsel could have objected after the prosecutor first
asked Agent Konzelman if he attempted to speak to Compton if counsel
thought the question was seeking testimony from the agent that Compton
refused to speak to him. See generally Glover v. State, 309 Ga. 102, 106 (2020)
(noting that evidence about the defendant’s exercise of the right to silence is
generally considered improper). Notably, in his appellant’s brief, Compton
acknowledges that this question was objectionable, asserting that “[t]here
simply is no reason to ask an investigator if he spoke with a defendant if the
defendant refused to talk.”

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“attempted to interview [the appellant],” but the appellant did not
immediately object and move for a mistrial. 322 Ga. at 761.
Instead, the appellant permitted the State to finish questioning
the detective before moving for a mistrial based on the detective’s
statement. Id. at 761–62. We concluded that a contemporaneous
motion would have been one that was made at “the moment when
[the detective] testified that she ‘attempted’ to interview [the
appellant].” See id. at 762. Because the motion was not made at
that time and was therefore not contemporaneous, we held that
the appellant’s claim that the trial court abused its discretion by
denying his mistrial motion was not preserved for appellate
review. Id.
Similarly, in Pittman v. State, the prosecutor asked a
witness a question that elicited testimony that the appellant later
argued was in violation of a pretrial ruling. 318 Ga. 819, 828
(2024). But the appellant did not object to the question or the
witness’s answer, and the appellant allowed the State to finish
the direct examination of the witness before moving for a mistrial
on the basis that the witness’s testimony violated the trial court’s
pretrial ruling. See id. We held that the appellant’s claim that the
trial court abused its discretion in denying his mistrial motion
was not preserved for appeal because, among other things, the
appellant “did not object to the State’s question, which clearly was
intended to elicit the [complained-of testimony], and did not move
to strike [the witness’s] answer, and then waited until after the
prosecutor completed the direct examination to make a motion for
mistrial.” Id. at 829.
In this case, Compton did not object after the prosecutor
asked Agent Konzelman if he attempted to speak to Compton, nor
did Compton immediately move for a mistrial after Agent
Konzelman said that Compton refused to talk to him. Instead,

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Compton allowed the State to continue questioning Agent
Konzelman about an unrelated subject before eventually
objecting to the testimony and moving for a mistrial. As such,
Compton failed to make a contemporaneous motion for a mistrial
and therefore failed to preserve this issue for appellate review.
See Moss, 322 Ga. at 762; Pittman, 318 Ga. at 829; Kilpatrick v.
State, 308 Ga. 194, 199–200 (2020) (holding that a mistrial motion
based on the admission of improper character evidence during an
investigator’s direct examination was not contemporaneous and
therefore was not preserved for appellate review, where it was
made after the investigator had “testified for some time about
how the [evidence at issue] fit into the overall timeline of events”);
Thaxton v. State, 260 Ga. 141, 143 (1990) (“A motion for mistrial
not made at the time the testimony objected to is given is not
timely and will be considered as waived because of the delay in
making it.”); St. Romaine v. State, 251 Ga. App. 212, 213 (2001)
(concluding that the defendant’s motion for a mistrial following
the introduction of testimony concerning his possession of drugs
“was untimely, as he permitted seven questions to be asked on
the subject of marijuana after it came up and then four more
questions on cocaine before making his motion”). See also Jackson
v. State, 306 Ga. 266, 270–72 (2019) (relying, in part, on St.
Romaine, 251 Ga. App. at 213, to hold that the appellant’s claim
that the trial court abused its discretion by denying his mistrial
motion was not preserved for appeal). Cf. Bates v. State, 317 Ga.
809, 819 (2023) (noting that the defendant made a
contemporaneous motion when he objected “as soon as” the
witness testified about the prohibited topic and then moved for a
mistrial); Johnson v. State, 292 Ga. 785, 787 (2013) (holding that
appellant’s claim that the State improperly questioned him
during cross-examination about his failure to come forward and
make a statement was waived because he “did not object to the

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cross-examination … until a bench conference that he requested
two questions later”). Because Compton did not preserve his sole
enumeration of error for appellate review, we affirm.
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.

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