Stitts v. State

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
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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: November 4, 2025

S25A1205. STITTS v. THE STATE.

PETERSON, Chief Justice.

Tianvye Stitts appeals his convictions for malice murder and

other crimes in connection with the shooting death of Darcy Jones.1

Jones was killed on November 14, 2020. In August 2021, a Fulton
1

County grand jury charged Stitts with malice murder (Count 1), two counts of
felony murder (Counts 2 and 3), aggravated assault with a deadly weapon
(Count 4), possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony (Count 5),
possession of a firearm by a convicted felon (Count 6), and giving a false name,
address, or birthdate to law enforcement (Count 9). The indictment also
charged Darrence Morgan with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon
(Count 7) and false statements (Count 8). Morgan entered a guilty plea as to
Count 7 and testified at Stitts’s May 2023 trial. At that trial, a jury found Stitts
guilty on all counts. Stitts was sentenced to serve life in prison with the
possibility of parole on Count 1, a 20-year concurrent prison term for Count 4,
two consecutive 5-year prison terms for Counts 5 and 6, and a 12-month prison
term for Count 9 that was commuted to time served. The felony murder counts
were vacated by operation of law. Stitts timely filed a motion for new trial,
which he later amended. After an evidentiary hearing on the motion, the trial
court corrected Stitts’s sentence to merge Count 4 with Count 1. The trial court
denied the motion for new trial on March 31, 2025. Stitts timely appealed, and
his appeal was docketed to this Court’s August 2025 term and submitted for a
decision on the briefs.
Stitts argues that the evidence was insufficient to support the malice

murder conviction, and the jury’s verdicts should be overturned on

the general grounds. He also argues that the trial court plainly erred

in failing to charge the jury on accomplice corroboration, in giving

an Allen2 charge, and in failing to charge the jury as to impeachment

by a prior conviction. Stitts also raises ineffective assistance of

counsel claims for failing to object to certain jury instructions.

Because none of these claims have merit, we affirm.

1. The trial evidence

Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the trial

evidence showed the following. On the night of November 13, 2020,

Stitts drove his girlfriend, Shaneka Soucy, to work at Bodega, a

nightclub in South Fulton. Soucy said that she typically worked from

about 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. until 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. Stitts drove Soucy’s

Jeep and dropped her off in the back parking lot.

Stitts also worked at the club as a security guard and worked

2 Allen v. United States, 164 US 492 (1896).

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that night even though he was not originally scheduled to. Stitts was

part of a security team that was unarmed and responsible for

diffusing situations inside the club. Soucy said that after Stitts

dropped her off, she next saw him midway through her shift.

At some point on the night of November 13 or in the early

morning hours of November 14, Tiffany Respess arrived at the club

with a friend, and she interacted with Derrance Morgan, a friend of

hers and a convicted felon who was working as a security guard for

Bodega that night. Morgan came into possession of Respess’s gun, a

purple 9mm handgun. 3

Sometime during Soucy’s shift, she gave Morgan the keys to

her Jeep so he could move it to a spot behind Bodega in order to keep

customers from parking there. According to Soucy, several hours

3 Morgan and Respess offered differing accounts of that exchange.
Respess testified that Morgan asked whether she had her gun, and when she
said that she did, he went to retrieve it from her car, reminding her that her
gun had been stolen before. Morgan testified that he saw Respess carrying her
gun as she was approaching the club and he asked her to give it to him since
she could not take it into the club. Morgan said that he then immediately gave
the gun to Stitts so that Morgan could deal with a situation in the parking lot.
Respess, however, said that she saw Morgan carrying the gun on his hip
sometime later when she was smoking with him in the club.
3
later, she saw people running around the club on account of a

shooting inside the club.

Kasseem Gibson, a security guard who was working at the

front door, testified that he heard three gunshots in quick

succession, and when he turned towards the back of the club, he

heard another two gunshots and then saw a person later identified

as Jones collapse as he exited the restroom and Stitts walk out of

the bathroom “right behind him.” Jones died from gunshot wounds

to his torso. Gibson testified that he was looking directly at Stitts

when he came out of the restroom and saw Stitts tuck a gun into his

pants while standing right by Jones’s body. Stitts stood there for

several seconds before running out through the back door. Gibson

said that he was “100 percent certain” in identifying Stitts as the

shooter. Gibson went out the front door and saw Stitts running

across the lot and “going crazy.”

One of the managers of Bodega, Muhammad Rahman, said

that he was walking to the restroom when he heard gunshots and

saw Jones stumble out of the restroom. Rahman next saw a security

4
guard, whose name Rahman did not know, come out of the bathroom

and get “back on post” by the backdoor. Rahman looked at the victim

and then at the guard, and when he established eye contact with the

security guard, the guard ran out of the back door. Rahman said that

the victim and the guard were the only two people in the bathroom.

Rahman did not see the guard again because he began trying to clear

the building. 4

The owner of Bodega said that he was standing by the front

door when he heard the gunshots. When he went to the back of the

club and looked out the back door, he saw Stitts driving away in a

Jeep. Stitts hit several cars as he fled; the owner described Stitts’s

driving as “sporadic” and “hysterical.” The owner did not see anyone

else driving away from the back parking lot.

Law enforcement arrived to find Jones’s body outside the

bathroom and recovered three 9mm Ruger shell casings inside the

bathroom. Respess and Morgan talked to police, and Respess

4 At trial, Rahman did not identify Stitts as the security guard he saw

come out of the restroom after the victim.
5
reported that her gun was stolen. Morgan denied having Respess’s

gun inside the club and maintained that he had given it to Stitts.

Law enforcement observed the damage to several cars parked

behind Bodega and identified Stitts as the suspect in the shooting.

Upon fleeing the scene, Stitts was next spotted in a

neighborhood in College Park. There, at approximately 2:40 a.m. on

November 14, 2020, a security camera from Melanie Wilbourn’s

residence recorded Stitts repeatedly ringing the doorbell. Nathan

Stewart, who also lived at the residence, did not get a good look at

the person ringing the doorbell, but told the person to leave. Wilborn

said that the person ringing the doorbell motioned to ask Wilborn to

use her phone before running off into the woods. Wilborn saved the

security footage and gave it to police. The footage, as well as still

shots of the surveillance video, were admitted into evidence and

shown to the jury. Soucy’s Jeep, which Stitts fled in, was found close

to Wilbourn’s residence and was parked “weirdly.”

Later in the afternoon of November 14, Gibson was at home

when Stitts walked up to Gibson’s bedroom window and asked to

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come inside. Gibson asked Stitts about the “crazy” night at Bodega

to see what Stitts would say, stating that a “young boy” was killed

and that people were saying that Stitts was responsible. Stitts

denied it. Stitts left when Gibson said he had to go to work, and

Gibson told his roommate to not let Stitts inside their apartment.

Later, Gibson learned that Stitts was in Gibson’s apartment, so he

called the police who arrested Stitts there. Stitts gave police a false

name.

2. Sufficiency of the evidence

Stitts argues on appeal that the evidence was insufficient to

support his malice murder conviction. 5 Stitts cites Jackson v.

Virginia, 443 US 307 (1979), and argues that the Jackson standard

was not met because there were no eyewitnesses to the killing and

the State’s case rested on uncorroborated testimony of Morgan, who

Stitts claims was an accomplice. Even if the Jackson standard

5 Because we generally do not review evidentiary sufficiency sua sponte

in non-death-penalty cases, we limit our sufficiency review to only those counts
asserted on appeal. See, e.g., Morrell v. State, 318 Ga. 244, 246 n.3 (2024).

7
required accomplice corroboration, the evidence was sufficient here.

In considering a claim that evidence was not sufficient as a

matter of federal due process under Jackson, “our review is limited

to an evaluation of whether the trial evidence, when viewed in the

light most favorable to the verdicts, is sufficient to authorize a

rational trier of fact to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable

doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted.” Goodman v. State,

313 Ga. 762, 766 (2022) (quotation marks omitted). “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.” Id. at 766–67

(quotation marks omitted).

As a matter of Georgia statutory law, the testimony of a single

witness is generally sufficient to establish a fact. OCGA § 24-14-8.

But in felony cases where the only witness implicating the defendant

is an accomplice, “testimony by the accomplice must be corroborated

by other evidence implicating the defendant.” Bowdery v. State, 321

Ga. 890, 896 (2025) (cleaned up).

8
We have held that a sufficiency analysis under federal due

process is different from and does not include the state requirement

imposed by OCGA § 24-14-8. See, e.g., Copeland v. State, 314 Ga. 44,

48 (2022). But even assuming that federal due process did include

the OCGA § 24-14-8 requirement, that Morgan was an accomplice,

and that Morgan’s testimony needed to be corroborated under

OCGA § 24-14-8,6 that requirement has been satisfied here.

Here, the thrust of Morgan’s testimony was that he gave a gun

to Stitts while Stitts was working at the club. Several witnesses

confirmed that Stitts was working that night as “inside security”

and Gibson saw him with a gun, even though inside security guards

were supposed to be unarmed.

6 Recently, some members of the Court have expressed doubt as to
whether we were right to conclude that federal constitutional sufficiency
review properly excludes state-law evidentiary rules, such as OCGA § 24-14-8.
See Baker v. State, 320 Ga. 156, 165 n.3 (2024). We declined to resolve those
doubts in Baker, and do so again today, because even if we consider the
accomplice-corroboration rule in the due process sufficiency analysis, the
evidence is sufficient.
Although Stitts refers to the OCGA § 24-14-8 requirement, he makes no
argument referring to OCGA § 24-14-6, which requires a case based on
circumstantial evidence to exclude every reasonable hypothesis save that of
guilt. Thus, we do not consider OCGA § 24-14-6 in our sufficiency analysis.

9
Stitts’s argument is based on the incorrect premise that

Morgan was the main source of evidence against him. Setting

Morgan’s testimony aside, the evidence was sufficient. At least two

witnesses — Gibson and Rahman — testified that after hearing the

gunshots, a person working as a security guard came out of the

restroom after the victim fell out, the security guard and the victim

were the only two people in the restroom, and the security guard fled

from the club afterward. Gibson specifically identified Stitts and

said that he was certain it was Stitts who was responsible for

shooting the victim. Other witnesses saw Stitts fleeing from the

scene in Soucy’s Jeep, crashing into several cars in the process.

Thus, although no witness saw Stitts shoot the victim, Gibson’s and

Rahman’s testimony was strong circumstantial evidence that he did.

Additionally, Stitts’s flight from the crime scene and his attempt to

evade detection by providing a false name is evidence of guilt. See

Jenkins v. State, 313 Ga. 81, 89 (2022) (evidence of flight,

concealment, assumption of a false name, and other related conduct

is evidence of guilt). Thus, even if Morgan was an accomplice, his

10
testimony was corroborated by independent evidence, and the

collective evidence of guilt was sufficient to support the malice

murder conviction. See Fisher v. State, 309 Ga. 814, 821 (2020) (non-

accomplice descriptions of the shooter, as well as defendant’s flight

after the shooting, was sufficient to corroborate accomplice

testimony); see also Hooks v. State, 318 Ga. 850, 852 (2024)

(“[C]ircumstantial evidence alone can be constitutionally

sufficient[.]”).

3. General grounds

Stitts argues that the trial court should have granted a new

trial under OCGA §§ 5-5-20 and 5-5-21, commonly known as the

“general grounds.” But the decision to grant a new trial on the

general grounds is vested solely in the trial court. See Muse v. State,

316 Ga. 639, 653 (2023). Because the record reflects that the trial

court understood its authority to grant a new trial on the general

grounds and exercised it, this claim presents nothing for us to

review. Id.

4. Lack of an accomplice-corroboration charge

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Stitts argues that because Morgan admitted giving Stitts a gun

prior to the shooting, he was an accomplice, and the trial court was

required to instruct the jury under OCGA § 24-14-8 that the

testimony of an accomplice must be corroborated to establish a fact.

Stitts asked the trial court to give his requested instruction on

accomplice corroboration, but the trial court declined to do so based

on its conclusion that there was no evidence showing that Morgan

was an accomplice. Stitts did not object to the lack of an accomplice-

corroboration charge after the trial court gave its instructions to the

jury. Because Stitts did not object to the charge as given, he concedes

that we can review his claim only for plain error. See Payne v. State,

314 Ga. 322, 325 (2022); see also White v. State, 291 Ga. 7, 8 (2012)

(an objection voiced at the charge conference does not preserve

objections to the charge as subsequently given, so challenge for

failure to give a requested charge in such cases is reviewed for plain

error); Wilson v. State, 259 Ga. 55, 58 (1989) (defendant failed to

preserve refusal to give requested jury instruction where he failed

to renew objection after the charge was given).

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To show plain error, the appellant must demonstrate that
the instructional error was not affirmatively waived, was
obvious beyond reasonable dispute, likely affected the
outcome of the proceedings, and seriously affected the
fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial
proceedings. Satisfying all four prongs of this standard is
difficult, as it should be. This Court does not have to
analyze all elements of the plain-error test where an
appellant fails to establish one of them.

Payne, 314 Ga. at 325 (citation omitted).

Even if there was slight evidence that Morgan was an

accomplice such that the trial court erred by not giving the

accomplice-corroboration charge,7 we cannot say that any such error

affected the outcome of the proceedings. Here, most of the

incriminating testimony came from Gibson and Rahman, and Stitts

points to no evidence that these two witnesses were accomplices to

7 “To authorize a requested jury instruction, there need only be slight

evidence supporting the theory of the charge.” Hamm v. State, 294 Ga. 791,
794 (2014) (quotation marks omitted). “In considering whether a witness is an
accomplice, we look to the definition of party to a crime found in OCGA § 16-2-
20, such that there must be some evidence that the witness shared with the
defendant a common criminal intent to commit the crimes in question.” Payne,
314 Ga. at 326 (cleaned up). Although there is no evidence that Morgan gave
Stitts the gun for the purpose of killing Jones, there is evidence that Morgan
specifically asked for Respess’s gun (which Morgan disputes) and he moved
Soucy’s Jeep to park it right behind the club sometime before Stitts fled in it.
We need not resolve whether this evidence was sufficient to support a finding
that Morgan was Stitts’s accomplice.
13
Jones’s murder. Thus, Morgan’s testimony was not so critical to the

State’s case that it was likely that the jury convicted him based on

Morgan’s testimony alone. See Payne, 314 Ga. at 326 (“Where

accomplice testimony is the ‘bedrock’ of the conviction, it may be

likely that the jury convicted the defendant on the accomplice’s

testimony alone.” (cleaned up)). Moreover, because multiple

witnesses more directly implicated Stitts or otherwise corroborated

Morgan’s testimony, the lack of an accomplice-corroboration charge

did not likely affect the outcome of the trial. Compare Hawkins v.

State, 304 Ga. 299, 303 (2018) (although failure to give accomplice-

corroboration charge was clear or obvious error, it did not likely

affect the outcome of the trial because, outside of the accomplice’s

testimony, “there was significant and consistent evidence” that

specifically connected the defendant to the crime), with State v.

Johnson, 305 Ga. 237, 241 (2019) (“[B]ecause virtually all of the

incriminating evidence flowed from [the accomplice], the outcome of

the trial court proceedings was ‘likely affected’ by the trial court’s

failure to provide an accomplice corroboration charge to the jury,

14
and a proper instruction would likely have resulted in a different

verdict.”), and Stanbury v. State, 299 Ga. 125, 131 (2016) (the

omission of the accomplice-corroboration charge likely affected the

outcome of the trial where the accomplice “was the only witness who

affirmatively identified [the defendant] as the second man inside the

house who robbed and shot” the victim). Therefore, there was no

plain error, and this claim fails.

5. Allen charge

Stitts argues that when the jury indicated it could not agree

after less than a full day of deliberations, the trial court erred in

giving an Allen charge, sending the jury home for the day, and then

giving the Allen charge again before the jury started deliberating

the next day. Stitts argues that the trial court should have declared

a mistrial instead. Stitts has not preserved this issue for review.

The record shows that Stitts twice asked the court to dismiss

the jury when it informed the court that it was undecided midway

through the first full day of deliberations and again at the end of

that day. The court told the parties that it would conduct an inquiry

15
into the nature of the jury’s deadlock and would give an Allen charge

if the jury was “hopelessly deadlocked.” Stitts agreed, stating that

“it doesn’t appear as though a mistrial is imminent.” After

conducting that inquiry, the trial court gave an Allen charge, with

no objection from Stitts. The jury was sent home, and the following

morning, the trial court told the parties that it intended to give a

portion of the pattern Allen charge, but Stitts asked the court to give

a more complete Allen charge. The trial court did so, again with no

objection from Stitts.

Even if Stitts’s initial request to dismiss the jury (after it sent

notes saying it was undecided) could be construed as a motion for a

mistrial, he agreed with the court’s course of action to conduct an

inquiry into the possible deadlock and, more importantly, conceded

that a mistrial was “not imminent.” At no point thereafter did Stitts

move for a mistrial. Thus, his claim that the trial court erred in

refusing to grant a mistrial was not preserved. See Hartsfield v.

State, 294 Ga. 883, 886 (2014) (defendant failed to preserve issue for

appellate review by failing to renew motion for mistrial after court

16
administered its curative instruction).

6. Jury instruction on impeachment by a felony conviction

Stitts argues that his “codefendant” and “main” witness for the

State (i.e., Morgan) pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a

convicted felon prior to Stitts’s trial, and as a result, the trial court

should have charged the jury that a witness can be impeached by a

prior felony conviction. Stitts made no objection, so we review his

claim only for plain error. See, e.g., White, 291 Ga. at 8.

Stitts’s claim fails because there was no clear and obvious

error. When charging the jury on witness credibility, the court

specifically instructed the jury that it could consider a witness’s

felony conviction, as shown by proof that the witness has been

convicted of a felony. Later, the trial court instructed the jury that

possession of a firearm by a convicted felon was a felony.

We read jury instructions as a whole to determine whether the

instructions were erroneous. See Clark v. State, 315 Ga. 423, 440

(2023) (“In evaluating a claim that the trial court was required to

give certain jury instructions, we view the charge as a whole to

17
determine whether the jury was fully and fairly instructed.”

(quotation marks omitted)). So viewed, the jury instructions given

here sufficiently informed the jury that it could consider Morgan’s

felony conviction in assessing his credibility. And because Stitts does

not say what specific language the court should have used instead

of the given charge, he has not shown a clear and obvious error in

this charge. See, e.g., Baker v. State, 319 Ga. 456, 462 (2024) (jury

charge instructing the jury to consider a witness’s “interest or lack

of interest in the case” substantially covered the omitted charge on

witness bias such that there was no plain error in failing to give the

additional charge); see also Thomas v. State, 297 Ga. 750, 754–55

(2015) (“Failure to give a requested jury charge in the precise

language requested does not warrant reversal where the charge

given substantially covers the applicable principles of law.”

(quotation marks omitted)).

7. Claims that trial counsel was ineffective

Stitts argues that trial counsel was ineffective for two reasons,

which we discuss below. Neither claim has merit.

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To prevail on his ineffectiveness claim, Stitts must show that

(1) his trial counsel’s performance was constitutionally deficient and

(2) he was prejudiced by counsel’s deficient performance. See

Strickland v. Washington, 466 US 668, 687 (1984). If Stitts fails to

establish one of these two prongs, “we need not examine the other.”

Robinson v. State, 308 Ga. 543, 553 (2020). To show deficient

performance, the defendant must demonstrate that counsel

performed counsel’s duties in an objectively unreasonable way,

considering all of the circumstances and in the light of prevailing

professional norms. See Strickland, 466 US at 687–88. In evaluating

alleged deficiency, we afford a “strong presumption that counsel’s

performance fell within a wide range of reasonable professional

conduct, and that counsel’s decisions were made in the exercise of

reasonable professional judgment.” Wright v. State, 314 Ga. 355, 357

(2022) (quotation marks omitted). And “decisions about trial tactics

and strategy in particular may not form the basis of an

ineffectiveness claim unless they were so patently unreasonable

that no competent attorney would have followed such a course.”

19
Warren v. State, 314 Ga. 598, 602 (2022) (quotation marks omitted).

To establish prejudice, Stitts “must show that there is a

reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional error[ ],

the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Strickland,

466 US at 694. “In reviewing a ruling on a claim of ineffective

assistance of counsel, we defer to the trial court’s findings of fact

unless they are clearly erroneous, but we apply the law to the facts

de novo.” State v. Spratlin, 305 Ga. 585, 591 (2019).

(a) Failure to object to omission of accomplice-corroboration
charge

Stitts argues that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to

object to the lack of an accomplice-corroboration charge. We

disagree.

As mentioned above, trial counsel did not object to the lack of

accomplice-corroboration charge after the court refused to give this

charge based on its conclusion that there was no evidence

establishing that Morgan was an accomplice. The record shows that

Stitts’s defense at trial was that someone else, namely Gibson or

20
Morgan (individually or collectively), committed the shooting

without Stitts’s involvement, and that he fled because he was

scared. Because an accomplice-corroboration charge would have

conflicted with the defense theory, trial counsel’s failure to object to

the lack of such a charge was not objectively unreasonable and thus

was not deficient performance. See Hardy v. State, 317 Ga. 736, 741–

42 (2023) (trial counsel was not deficient where an accomplice-

corroboration charge would have conflicted with the defense theory);

Manner v. State, 302 Ga. 877, 883–84 (2017) (trial counsel was not

deficient for withdrawing the request to charge on accomplice

corroboration because it was not objectively unreasonable for

counsel to conclude that any benefit to the defendant in the charge

“was outweighed by the instruction’s potential conflict with the

theory of defense”).

(b) Failure to object to the lack of a specific charge on
impeachment by a felony conviction

Stitts argues that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to

object to the lack of a jury charge on impeachment by a felony

21
conviction. We disagree.

Although Stitts raised this ineffectiveness ground in his

amended motion for new trial, the trial court did not rule on it.

Although we often remand for consideration of unresolved issues, a

remand is unnecessary here because we can determine from the

record that Stitts cannot meet the Strickland test. See Lane v. State,

312 Ga. 619, 623 (2021). As discussed above, the jury charges that

were given adequately informed the jury that it could consider a

witness’s felony conviction in determining that witness’s credibility.

Therefore, Stitts cannot establish that it was objectively

unreasonable to forgo objecting to the charge as given, and his

ineffective assistance of counsel claim on this ground fails.

Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.

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