Supreme Court of Georgia Reverses Man’s Convictions Because Prosector Used His Prior Robbery Conviction to Argue He Was “a Professional Robber. That’s What He Does. That’s Who He Is”

Similar to its federal counterpart, Section 24-4-404 of the Georgia Code of Evidence provides in pertinent part that “Evidence of a person’s character or a trait of character shall not be admissible for the purpose of proving action in conformity therewith on a particular occasion.” This propensity character evidence prohibition prevents the prosecution from presenting evidence that relies on the aphorism, “once a criminal, always a criminal” or “once a robber, always a robber.”

Given this, it’s hard to imagine a more egregious violation of the propensity character prohibition that the one in Wilson v. State, 2025 WL 1737723 (Ga. 2025).

In Wilson, Andrew Wilson was charged with murder, kidnapping, arson, and theft by receiving stolen property. At trial,

In addition to presenting evidence of Wilson’s involvement in [the victim]’s murder, the State advanced its theory of Wilson’s robbery scheme by introducing evidence that in 2011, Wilson committed a separate armed robbery against John Taylor—a man the State said Wilson met at Onyx—and stole, among other items, an expensive watch.

At the end of trial,

In its closing argument, the State emphasized that “this was a case about greed, pure and simple” and posited that Wilson’s “motive is to rob people and to get their things. His motive is to take their things and then to conceal any type of proof or evidence that might link him to it. That’s what he did[,] or he tried to do[,] with Mr. Taylor and Paulino. And that’s what he did in this case.” The State added, “That’s what he does. He robs people,” “Andrew Wilson is a professional robber. That’s what he does,” and that is “exactly who he is.” Likewise, when referring to Wilson and Hubbard, the State said, “They rob people. They rob people of things that they don’t have and that they want, and that’s exactly what Mr. Paulino and Mr. Taylor showed. That is their plan, that is their motive, and that is their scheme. That’s what they do.”

And, yeah, this is the dictionary definition of propensity character evidence, which is why the Supreme Court of Georgia reversed Wilson’s convictions. Interestingly, the court concluded that the State can retry Wilson on all of the charges except for theft by receiving stolen property because “[t]he evidence presented at trial was not constitutionally sufficient to support Wilson’s guilty verdict for theft by receiving stolen property.”

-CM