Dolemanv.The State
Dantevoise Doleman was convicted of murder and a series of armed robberies, burglaries, aggravated assaults, thefts, and firearm offenses committed with two co-defendants over several weeks in Muscogee County. The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed. The trial evidence included testimony from a co-defendant, victims, physical evidence, and circumstances connecting Doleman to the repeated crimes and the murder. The Court rejected challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence and to evidentiary rulings made during the joint trial. It also held that Doleman failed to establish plain error in the trial court’s decision not to inform the jury before its verdict about the sentence that could follow a conviction. A plain-error claim requires a clear or obvious legal error, and controlling Georgia authority permitted the trial court to withhold sentencing information in a noncapital felony case. The Court left the convictions and life sentence intact and explained that felony-murder verdicts had been vacated by operation of law and another aggravated-assault count had merged into the murder conviction.
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