The Athens man who went on a crime spree in late 2010 and early 2011, killing a police officer in the process, will remain behind bars.
The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday upheld the convictions and sentences given to Jamie Donnell Hood for the murders of Kenneth Omari Wray and Athens-Clarke County Police Officer Elmer "Buddy" Christian, murders carried out along with other crimes in a dispute with a fellow drug dealer.
Hood claimed in his appeal that a number of errors were made in the convictions handed down in the murders of Wray and Christian. In Monday's unanimous opinion, written by Justice Shawn E. LaGrua, the high court disagreed and rejected Hood's arguments.
Hood, who was 33 in 2011, also was convicted for the shooting an attempted murder of Athens-Clarke County Police Officer Tony Howard as well as a carjacking and a kidnapping incident involving multiple victims. Hood's crime spree was linked to a disagreement with Kenyatta Campbell, a fellow drug dealer who reportedly began bypassing Hood as a supplier of marijuana and buying pot from a third-party source in Atlanta.
Hood was arrested in March 2011 following a standoff that lasted four days.
After his arrest, Hood was indicted for 70 criminal offenses, and the State of Georgia announced it would seek the death penalty for the murders of Wray and Christian. Following Hood’s 2015 trial, the jury found him guilty on 36 of the 70 counts, and instead of getting the death penalty, Hood was sentenced to life without parole for the murder of Christian, life with the possibility of parole for the murder of Wray, and three additional sentences of life without parole plus 300 years for the remaining offenses.
To read the full content of the court's decision, follow this link.
