Georgia Supreme Court overturns murder conviction, says trial shouldn’t have used rap video
The Georgia Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of a Houston County man in the shooting death of a bouncer outside a nightclub.
Houston County prosecutors said Morgan Baker shot and killed Tamarco Head, who worked as a bouncer at Club Boss, in 2019. He was found guilty in 2022 and sentenced to life in prison.
His attorneys argued that the State should not have used portions of a rap video as evidence in the trial.
In an opinion released on Tuesday, Georgia’s highest court agreed.
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Before the trial, Baker filed a motion to stop a music video for the rap song “Ghetto Angels” by Kobe Crawford from being used as evidence. In the video, Baker can be seen holding a semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine.
The Houston County court ruled that a 33-second clip of the video could be shown to establish Baker’s identity. Baker argued that the clip would unfairly prejudice the jury against him.
“And because the State has not met its burden of showing that the error was harmless, we reverse Baker’s conviction,” according to the opinion, authored by Justice Sarah Hawkins Warren.
They say the State failed to show a link between Baker waving a gun in a music video and him wanting to shoot at security guards.
“If anything, the alleged ‘link’ between the video and Baker’s motive appears to be the video’s portrayal of Baker as a violent gunman—a link that essentially amounts to impermissible propensity evidence,” Justice Warren wrote.
She goes on to say the video had “little, if any, probative value” and was “at most, trivial.”
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Some dissenting justices say the video was “not as prejudicial as the majority opinion holds.”
They go on to say that the video took up a matter of minutes of a four-day trial that provided plenty of other evidence against Baker.
The video was played for a total of 99 seconds, and discussion of the video took up only a few minutes of the four-day trial—a trial, as I have explained, in which substantial evidence of Baker’s guilt was presented to the jury,” Justice Shawn Ellen LaGrua writes.
Baker has been serving his sentence at the Coffee Correctional Facility in south Georgia. There is no word on when he will be released.
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