ATLANTA (AP) - Nine years after a teen allegedly killed a man who stopped to ask for directions, his murder conviction has been tossed because of a faulty search warrant.
The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed the conviction of Avery Leon Bryant, who was 17 when prosecutors say he shot Newton Gordon in East Point in 2008.
The unanimous opinion says there was enough evidence to convict Bryant. But it says a key search warrant in the case wasn’t valid because it didn’t state with “particularity” what was to be seized.
The justices found there was a “reasonable probability” of a different outcome if the evidence had been excluded.
A spokesman said the Fulton County district attorney’s office plans to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling. If that’s not successful, the district attorney’s office plans to prosecute the case again.
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