State v. SIMS

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: October 15, 2025

S25A0663. THE STATE v. SIMS et al.

COLVIN, Justice.

Appellees Jaquez Sims and Quaran Jackson were indicted for

murder, multiple violations of the Street Gang Terrorism and

Prevention Act (the “Gang Act”), and other crimes related to the

shooting death of Jaishawn Overstreet.1 Prior to trial, Sims filed a

motion in limine seeking to exclude certain “social media posts”

purportedly containing indicia of Appellees’ gang association from

1 On September 20, 2024, a Hall County grand jury returned an 18-count

superseding indictment against Sims, Jackson, and a third co-defendant,
Kyland Williams, who had not yet been arrested at the time of this appeal. The
superseding indictment charged Sims and Williams with malice murder
(Count 1). It further charged Sims, Williams, and Jackson with felony murder
(Counts 4, 11) and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (Counts 5 and 8).
The indictment included 12 counts alleging violations of the Gang Act (Counts
2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18). Sims was charged in 11 of these counts
(Counts 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18), and Jackson was charged in eight
of these counts (Counts 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18). Lastly, the indictment
charged Sims and Williams with possession of a firearm during the commission
of a felony (Count 15).
admission at his trial, which the court had severed from Jackson’s.

Following an evidentiary hearing, the trial court granted Sims’s

motion in part. The State now appeals,2 arguing that the trial court

excluded relevant evidence of Appellees’ gang association without

performing the analysis required by OCGA § 24-4-403 (“Rule 403”).3

But because we cannot discern the legal basis for the trial court’s

ruling or conclude that it applied a proper legal standard for

excluding the evidence in question, we vacate the trial court’s order

and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

1. Overstreet was shot on April 27, 2024, and was pronounced

dead two days later. In Appellees’ charging documents, the State

alleged that Appellees were “associated with the Bloods, a criminal

street gang,” and that they committed Overstreet’s murder “in

2 The State appealed under OCGA § 5-7-1(a)(5) on November 26, 2024.

The State’s appeal was docketed to this Court’s April 2025 term and submitted
for a decision on the briefs. On February 7, 2025, Jackson filed a motion to
dismiss the appeal. After careful consideration of Jackson’s motion, it is hereby
denied.
3 As relevant to the issues on appeal, Rule 403 provides that “[r]elevant

evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by
the danger of unfair prejudice . . . or by considerations of . . . needless
presentation of cumulative evidence.” OCGA § 24-4-403.
2
furtherance of said criminal street gang” and “with the intent to

maintain or increase [their] status and position in the Bloods.”

During their investigation, law enforcement officers obtained

Instagram records of two users known as “q.s_5fr” and

“45wwaystogetpaid,” who the State contends are Sims and Jackson,

respectively. After receiving copies of these records, Sims filed the

motion in limine that is the subject of this appeal. As relevant here,

Sims’s motion sought to exclude any “irrelevant, unfairly

prejudicial, duplicative and otherwise inadmissible photographs” of

“social media posts” that the State planned to submit as evidence of

his gang association. Though his motion argued that the “admission

of such evidence would be a violation of [his] rights [under] the

Georgia and United States Constitution[s],” he did not cite any

specific provisions of those constitutions or any other authority.4

Sims’s motion was heard together with other pre-trial motions

4 Jackson did not join in this motion. Though Jackson separately moved

to exclude Appellees’ Instagram records, the order at issue on appeal concerns
only the evidence admissible at Sims’s severed trial. No written order appears
in the appellate record regarding Jackson’s motion.
3
during an evidentiary hearing on November 22, 2024.5 During the

hearing, the State tendered into evidence a flash drive containing

the entirety of the Instagram records it had obtained. Jackson’s

Instagram records spanned the period from January 1, 2024,

through June 5, 2024, and contained approximately 800 pages of

material. Though the State only obtained Sims’s records from the

week of the shooting — April 22 through April 29, 2024 — his

activities produced more than 10,000 pages of data. The State

conceded that some of these records were not relevant and therefore

not admissible at trial but declined to specify with certainty which

portions of the records it intended to introduce. The State did,

however, identify one group message (or “text thread”) that it

claimed was “[t]he most important piece of gang evidence” it had.

But rather than extracting this message from the records for review

or identifying where in the records the message was located, the

State had one of its witnesses describe the message to the court.

5 The trial court heard Sims’s and Jackson’s motions to exclude social

media evidence together at the hearing. Other motions were heard thereafter.
4
This witness, GBI Special Agent Shilo Crane, was qualified as

a gang expert for purposes of the hearing and testified regarding

Appellees’ social media records. When asked about the text thread

referenced by the State, Crane refreshed his recollection of the

thread using a report he had prepared, which contained excerpts

from it. It appears from the hearing transcript that the portions of

the report to which Crane referred were published for review by the

trial judge as Crane described them, but the report itself was not

tendered into evidence and is not a part of the appellate record.

Using his report, Crane explained that the group message,

which included Sims, Jackson, Williams, and other individuals,

contained multiple indicators of the participants’ membership in the

Sex, Money, Murder set of the Bloods street gang. Specifically,

Crane testified that it is common for members of the Bloods to

display the number “5” prominently in their communications and

tattoos, and that many participants in the group message included

the number “5” in their usernames. According to Crane, Sims was

identified as “q.s_5fr,” Jackson was identified as

5
“45wwaystogetpaid,” and Williams was identified as “Kyy5ivee.”

Other individuals in the thread went by “5nake” and “eliias5.” And

Crane testified that “45ww,” which is found in Jackson’s username,

references “45 worldwide, one of the subsets of Sex, Money, Murder.”

Crane further testified that participants in the thread used phrases

or words associated with Sex, Money, Murder, such as “Everybody

Klip full” and “What’s blazing Moe,” which often employed

purposeful misspellings that substituted ‘k’ or ‘x’ in place of the

letter ‘c.’ According to Crane, this substitution is used by Bloods “to

show disrespect to the Crips, one of their rival gangs.” Crane also

described photos and videos in the thread that showed the

participants making gang signs with their hands. These signs

included the letter “b” for “Bloods,” as well as others referencing Sex,

Money, Murder founder “Pistol Pete” Rollock.

Lastly, Crane described a video in the thread posted by

Williams in which Williams can be seen with a Glock-style handgun

that was wrapped in a red bandana, a color associated with the

Bloods. According to Crane, the video was posted in the thread the

6
day after Overstreet was killed and included the caption “5nake got

burnt last night.” Crane testified that the way in which the gun was

wrapped in a red bandana, when coupled with the caption, was

“indicative of taking credit or basically showing that [Williams’s]

gang is tied to this power . . . and [Williams] was involved in

something.”

During the hearing, Appellees argued that the evidence was

inadmissible because it was irrelevant, cumulative, and unfairly

prejudicial, consistent with Sims’s motion. 6 In response to Appellees’

claims that the evidence was irrelevant and cumulative, the trial

court indicated it would admit as relevant any evidence of gang

association, even if it was cumulative. 7 But the court appeared to

appreciate Appellees’ concerns that it would be unfairly prejudicial

6 Jackson’s counsel raised other grounds for excluding Appellees’
Instagram records from admission at Jackson’s severed trial, but, as
mentioned above, Jackson did not join in Sims’s motion, and the order at issue
only concerns evidence against Sims.
7 The court explained that if the evidence “falls into the category of being

relevant to show association, then it’s going to be admissible. . . . Even if there’s
a million of [these posts], because I think the jurors . . . are going to be hesitant
to tag somebody as a gang member unless they are confident that there is
evidence there to support it.”
7
to admit a message or post by one member of the group message as

evidence against another member without clear evidence that the

other member viewed the message or post. The court then orally

ruled that only two types of Instagram records would be admissible

against each Appellee at his severed trial: (1) messages or posts by

the Appellee on trial; and (2) messages to which that Appellee had

directly responded. As the court put it, “if somebody posts something

and they respond to it, both the post and response are coming in.”

The remainder of each Appellees’ Instagram records was excluded

from his severed trial. The court explained its reasoning as follows:

If somebody else posts something and there’s silence on
the other side, I’m not going to allow what somebody else
posted to . . . be admissible against the person that is
silent, because . . . you could infer that they didn’t see it
or they would have responded to it or that they don’t
condone it or whatever. It doesn’t seem fair to me, and I’m
just dealing on basic fairness here[.]

(Emphasis added).

Following the hearing, Sims’s counsel reduced the court’s oral

ruling to writing and submitted a proposed order to the court via

email on November 23, 2025. The order concerned only the evidence

8
admissible at Sims’s trial: Jackson’s name is not included in the case

style, and the email from Sims’s counsel to the court indicated that

Jackson’s motion would be addressed “by way of a separate [o]rder.”

The order ruled that

statements and images referenced in Investigator Crane’s
report which were expressly written or posted by
Defendant Sims are ADMISSIBLE as “an indicator of
gang association or membership” against Defendant
Sims. . . . Absent further order of this Court, all other
evidence indicating gang association or membership is
INADMISSIBLE.

Like Sims’s motion, the order did not cite any authority. Nor did it

explain the grounds on which it excluded “all other evidence

indicating gang association or membership.”

The State, which was copied on the email from Sims’s counsel

to the court, responded, stating that the “order accurately reflect[ed]

the Court’s ruling on gang/social media evidence”8 and that it

“consent[ed] to form.” Accordingly, on November 25, 2024, the court

entered the order without alteration except for a handwritten note

8 While we note that there are discrepancies between the court’s oral

ruling and its written order, these differences were not raised by the parties
and are immaterial to the resolution of the issues before us.
9
indicating that “ADA [Jim] Powers approves as to form.”

2. The State argues that the trial court erred by excluding

social media messages not written or posted by Sims without

applying Rule 403’s balancing test, which permits a trial court to

exclude relevant evidence “if its probative value is substantially

outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice . . . or by

considerations of . . . needless presentation of cumulative evidence.”

OCGA § 24-4-403. The State asks this Court to vacate the trial

court’s order and remand for a Rule 403 analysis. We agree that the

trial court’s order must be vacated, but for a different reason: the

legal basis for the trial court’s ruling on the exclusion of evidence is

not clear, and whether that legal basis was a lack of relevance or

Rule 403, it is not clear that the court applied the correct legal

standards in excluding the evidence.

(a) Before turning to the merits of the State’s appeal, we briefly

consider two arguments from Appellees concerning waiver.

Specifically, Appellees argue (1) that the State waived its Rule 403

argument on appeal by failing to raise that rule below, and (2) that

10
the State waived its right to object to the order on Rule 403 grounds

because it approved the form of the order. Both arguments fail.

i. In their first argument, Appellees contend that because the

State never asked the trial court to apply Rule 403, the State cannot

now do so for the first time on appeal. But this argument is

misguided and ignores the case’s procedural history: it was Sims

who moved the court to exclude “irrelevant, unfairly prejudicial,

[and] duplicative” evidence. To the extent Sims’s motion sought to

exclude evidence as “unfairly prejudicial” and “duplicative,” it

implicitly invoked Rule 403, notwithstanding his failure to cite that

rule (or any other authority). See OCGA § 24-4-403 (permitting,

under certain circumstances, the exclusion of evidence that is

“unfair[ly] prejudic[ial]” or “needless[ly] . . . cumulative”); see also

State v. Orr, 305 Ga. 729, 737 n.7 (2019) (explaining that Rule 403

is the “only” rule that “authorizes the exclusion of relevant evidence

based on the court’s evaluation of the ‘prejudice’ such evidence would

cause” and that all other rules within the Evidence Code referring

to prejudice are rules of admission, not exclusion). Because Sims

11
moved to exclude the contested evidence under Rule 403 (in

substance, if not by name), the trial court was required to consider

that rule when adjudicating Sims’s motion. And by opposing Sims’s

motion, the State preserved for ordinary appellate review its

objection to the exclusion of the evidence under Rule 403. As such,

this waiver argument fails.

ii. Second, Appellees argue that because the State consented to

the form of the order, the State cannot now take issue with the

court’s ruling, as stated therein. Specifically, Appellees note that

when a party consents to the form of an order, it waives the party’s

right to “complain of the court’s failure to include findings of fact and

conclusions of law.” Curran v. Scharpf, 290 Ga. 780, 781 (2012).

Appellees then claim that because the State’s argument “insist[s] on

certain findings and conclusions of law,” (i.e., on a ruling in its favor)

the State’s argument is waived under the principle above.

(Emphasis added). But Appellees’ premise is incorrect. Here, the

State does not challenge the trial court’s failure to include express

findings of fact or conclusions of law. Instead, the State challenges

12
the substance of the order by arguing that the court failed to apply

the relevant law properly. And, as Appellees themselves

acknowledge, a party does not waive an objection to the substance

of an order when it consents to the order’s form. Curran, 290 Ga. at

781 (“Where a final order is ‘approved by’ counsel for both parties in

writing[,] it is not approval of the substance (result) of the order.”

(cleaned up) (quoting Rude v. Rude, 241 Ga. 454, 455 (1978)).

Approval of the form of an order merely indicates that “counsel has

seen the proposed order and agrees that it contains what the court

orally directed be included in it.” Id. Accordingly, Appellees’ second

waiver argument also fails.

(b) We now turn to the merits of the trial court’s decision to

exclude certain of Sims’s Instagram records. As noted above, Sims’s

motion in limine sought to exclude his Instagram records as

“irrelevant, unfairly prejudicial, duplicative and otherwise

inadmissible” because admission “would be a violation of the

Defendant’s rights according to the Georgia and United States

Constitution.” The trial court granted that motion in part and

13
denied it in part. The order, however, offered no express legal basis

for doing so: it did not cite any rules of evidence or offer any

reasoning in support. Instead, it ordered “that the statements and

images referenced in Investigator Crane’s report which were

expressly written or posted by Defendant Sims are ADMISSIBLE

as ‘an indicator of gang association or membership’ against

Defendant Sims,” and that “[a]bsent further order of this Court, all

other evidence indicating gang association or membership is

INADMISSIBLE.”

This Court has acknowledged that a trial court’s oral

pronouncements “may provide insight on the intent of a later

written judgment,” though we have also made clear that oral

pronouncements of this type are not binding and that any

discrepancy between the written judgment and oral pronouncement

is resolved in favor of the written judgment. See, e.g., Williams v.

Williams, 295 Ga. 113, 114 (2014). And although the hearing on

Sims’s motion in limine—and in particular, the trial court’s

statements made before they were memorialized in a written

14
order—provide important context and clarity about the trial court’s

rulings on the evidence it admitted, the record is less clear when it

comes to the trial court’s reasoning with respect to evidence it later

deemed inadmissible.

To that end, the record shows that during the hearing on Sims’s

motion in limine, the majority of the parties’ arguments—and the

focus of the trial court’s statements—pertained to the relevance of

Instagram posts Sims made or received, with the parties expressly

referencing relevance a number of times; the trial court making

statements such as: “If it falls into the category of being relevant to

show association, then it’s going to be admissible. . . . I’m not going

to tie the State’s hands when it comes to that” (emphasis added);

and the trial court appearing to predicate its conclusion that certain

social media evidence was admissible against Sims on relevance

grounds.9

9 This statement is consistent with the court’s later oral pronouncement:

If they are talking — if one of these defendants is talking, it’s
admissible, and what they are talking about will be admissible. If

15
But the record is considerably less clear as to the trial court’s

reasoning for excluding “all other evidence indicating gang

association or membership.” The trial court’s order deemed that

evidence “inadmissible.” But neither the written order nor the

hearing transcript reveals a clear legal basis for that conclusion.

That is because the reasoning the trial court provided at the hearing

appeared to invoke principles of relevance under Rules 401 and 402,

and principles of unfair prejudice under Rule 403—without

providing an indication of which rule (if either) 10 served as the basis

of its ruling, which the court appeared to explain as follows:

If somebody else posts something and there’s silence on
the other side, I’m not going to allow what somebody else

they are responding to it — I said if a defendant responds to
something, it’s admissible against them. If he does the posting, it’s
admissible against him.

And importantly, it tracks the trial court’s written order, which admitted “the
statements and images referenced in Investigator Crane’s report which were
expressly written or posted by Defendant Sims . . . as ‘an indicator of gang
association or membership’ against Defendant Sims.”
10 For example, if the trial court concluded that social media messages

that Sims did not post and did not acknowledge were not relevant under Rules
401 and 402, then that could be the basis of the trial court’s ruling that such
messages were “inadmissible.” But it is also possible that the trial court
concluded that those messages were relevant, but that they should be excluded
under Rule 403.
16
posted to be — go be admissible against the person that
is silent, because, you know, you could infer that they
didn’t see it or they would have responded to it or that
they don’t condone it or whatever. It doesn’t seem fair to
me, and I’m just dealing on basic fairness here that that
would be admissible against them.

On one hand, the trial court’s statement about which evidence would

be inadmissible followed a lengthy discussion of the relevance of

evidence that the court deemed admissible. From this, it seems that

the trial court followed its pronouncement about relevant evidence

being admissible with a pronouncement about evidence that is not

relevant being inadmissible. 11 On the other hand, the trial court

went on to say—at least with respect to certain evidence the State

sought to admit—that it did not “seem fair” to admit that evidence

under norms of “basic fairness.” In contrast to the court’s earlier

remarks concerning relevance, these statements might be

understood to invoke Rule 403. In short, we cannot ascertain

11 To be sure, the State appeals the trial court’s order only on the basis

that the trial court excluded evidence without a proper analysis of that
evidence under Rule 403. But it is not clear to all of us that the trial court made
the threshold finding of relevance that would be necessary before applying
Rule 403.
17
whether the court excluded the disputed evidence for reasons of

relevance, unfair prejudice, or on some other legal basis.

And whether the trial court excluded the evidence here on

relevance or Rule 403 grounds, we cannot conclude that it applied

the correct legal standard for excluding the evidence on either of

those possible bases. Even construing the record in favor of

upholding the trial court’s judgment, it appears to us that the court

drew a line between “admissible” and “inadmissible” social media

messages and posts rooted at least in part in “basic fairness.”12 But

12 In reviewing the rulings of trial courts, we generally presume the trial

court followed the law absent something in the record that suggests otherwise.
See Winslow v. State, 315 Ga. 133, 140 (2022); State v. Abbott, 309 Ga. 715, 719
(2020); Moore v. State, 303 Ga. 743, 746 (2018). But the presumption that a
trial court followed the law is “just that—a presumption, which can be rebutted
by what is shown in the record.” Abbott, 309 Ga. at 719. See, e.g., State v.
Harris, 316 Ga. 272, 282-83 (2023) (vacating the trial court’s suppression of
identification evidence and remanding with instruction to “reconsider the
motion under the standards set forth” in this Court’s opinion where it was “not
clear to what extent the trial court considered the ‘critical factor’” of the
analysis); Middleton v. State, 316 Ga. 808, 810 (2023) (vacating the Court of
Appeals’s judgment reversing a trial court’s order granting a motion to
suppress because the grounds for the trial court’s ruling were “not clear” and
directing that the Court of Appeals “remand the case to the trial court with
direction that the trial court clarify” its ruling); Wilkes & McHugh, P.A. v. LTC
Consulting, L.P., 306 Ga. 252, 264-65 (2019) (vacating and remanding where
the trial court’s written order was not clear, “a review of the transcript of the
hearing” did “not add clarity” to its written order, and it was apparent that the

18
the decision whether evidence is relevant turns not on “fairness” but

rather on whether it has “any tendency to make a fact of

consequence more or less probable than it would be without the

evidence.” OCGA § 24-4-401. And Rule 403 provides that “relevant

evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially

outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the

issues, or misleading the jury or by considerations of undue delay,

waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.”

OCGA § 24-4-403. As a result, a trial court conducting a Rule 403

analysis cannot exclude evidence on grounds of “fairness” alone; it

must determine that the probative value of the disputed evidence is

“substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice” that

would be caused by its admission. See id. (emphasis added). Because

we cannot conclude that the trial court applied a proper legal

standard to exclude the evidence in question—whether that

standard was under Rule 401, 403, or something else—the trial

trial court did not apply the proper legal analysis).

19
court’s judgment must be vacated. See, e.g., State v. Brinkley, 316

Ga. 689, 691 (2023) (holding that the trial court abused its discretion

by excluding evidence on the grounds that the “prejudicial effect” of

the evidence “outweighed” its probative value, without considering

whether the probative value was substantially outweighed by the

danger of unfair prejudice, as required by Rule 403, and vacating

and remanding for the trial court to apply Rule 403); Harris, 316 Ga.

at 278-79 (2023) (vacating and remanding with instructions to

“reconsider the motion [in limine] under the correct legal standard”

where the trial court “never recited the correct standard under Rule

403” and “erred by applying an incorrect standard in its application

of Rule 403”).

We accordingly vacate the trial court’s order and remand this

case to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this

opinion. 13

13 Nothing in this opinion should be construed to preclude the trial court

on remand from directing the State to delineate those portions of Appellees’
Instagram records that the State intends to submit at trial for purposes of the
court’s review and to explain why each post or document is admissible under
Rule 403.
20
Judgment vacated and case remanded with direction. All the
Justices concur.

21