Hooks v. Georgia
Annotate this CaseDiane Gibbs lived with her son Jimmy in an apartment complex in west Atlanta. For a while, Diane was in a romantic relationship with defendant Alton Hooks. By December 1999, however, the relationship had soured, and around that time, Hooks told a relative that Diane was “going to make [him] do something to her.” A neighbor saw Hooks in the apartment that Diane and Jimmy shared, noting that Hooks stood by the front door “[p]ractically the whole day,” which the neighbor thought was unusual. Two days later, relatives of Diane and Jimmy went to the apartment, concerned that they had not heard from Diane or Jimmy. When no one answered the door, the relatives summoned a security guard, who, in turn, called for police officers. The responding officers discovered Diane and Jimmy’s bodies: both had sustained stab wounds to their necks. Jimmy had sustained a number of defensive wounds. Although the type of knife used to inflict the neck wounds could not be identified definitively, at least some of the defensive wounds that Jimmy sustained were shown to have been inflicted with a serrated knife. Hooks was tried by a Fulton County jury and convicted of the murder of Diane and Jimmy Gibbs, and of unlawful possession of a knife during the commission of a felony. Hooks appealed, contending that the evidence was legally insufficient to sustain his convictions, that the trial court erred when it denied his motion for a mistrial, and that it erred when it admitted certain evidence. Upon our review of the record and briefs, the Supreme Court saw no error and affirmed.
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