Norris v. Georgia
Annotate this CaseMelissa Norris was convicted by jury of malice murder and a related firearm offense in connection with the shooting death of her father, Charles. Norris and her father had a strained relationship based on Norris’s refusal to follow her parents’ rules. In late 1995, Norris, then fifteen years old, told a friend she had been arguing with her father. Sometime after the call, Norris took a gun from her brother's room, walked down stairs to where her father was sitting, pointed a gun to the back of his head and pulled the trigger. Norris called her friend again, wherein she admitted to shooting her father. The pair did not call for help or notify law enforcement; instead, they met up and walked down the street to the friend's aunt’s house for dinner. The aunt noticed that the girls were acting “giggly” and whispering back and forth throughout dinner. After providing numerous conflicting stories to law enforcement, including telling officers that her brother had shot the victim and that she was not at home when the shooting occurred, Norris eventually admitted that she shot her father in the back of the head. She testified at trial she did not know whether the gun was loaded, and that she was "just being stupid, horsing around" when the gun went off. On appeal of her conviction, Norris argued the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury on mistake of fact. Finding no such error, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed her conviction.
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