Brian Herbert Wynnv.The State
Brian Wynn was convicted of ten counts of second-degree criminal damage to property after ten air-conditioning units were vandalized and stripped of copper. The State’s evidence identified Wynn as the person shown in surveillance video, but it did not establish that the fair market value of the damage to each unit exceeded $500, an essential element of the charged offense. The Georgia Court of Appeals vacated the convictions. It held that the evidence was insufficient to prove the statutory dollar threshold, but that the record supported the lesser offense of criminal trespass because the jury could infer from its own experience that the units had been intentionally damaged without consent. The court rejected a due-process objection to reducing the convictions because a defendant is on notice of lesser offenses included as a matter of law in the charged crime. It vacated the second-degree criminal-damage convictions and remanded with direction to enter a criminal-trespass conviction for each unit.
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