Monday's ruling overturned a decision by a Superior Court judge who disallowed the evidence saying police did not have probable cause to search the suspect's apartment, car and his parents' Lake Lanier home.
Michael LeJeune is charged with shooting Ronnie Davis, 39, in the head over a $250 cocaine debt at LeJeune's Roswell apartment in December 1997. Prosecutors allege that LeJeune and his former fiancee, Rekha Anand, both then 20, stuffed Davis' body parts in the trunk of his car and set it on fire.
After taking the Dunwoody man's head to the lake house, LeJeune put it in a vise to try to remove the bullet, Fulton County prosecutors allege.
Anand was initially charged with murder but pleaded guilty in June to a reduced charge of concealing a body in exchange for helping prosecute LeJeune. She gave Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents new information that helped them obtain new search warrants from magistrates in 2003 to find the blood.
Superior Court Judge Constance Russell again threw out part of the evidence. She ruled that police should have gotten a search warrant signed by her not a magistrate since the murder case had been assigned to her.
The Supreme Court disagreed.
LeJeune's attorneys unsuccessfully argued that searching for the same thing in 1998 and 2003 was double jeopardy.
A trial date for LeJeune has not yet been set, said Erik Friedly, a spokesman for the Fulton district attorney's office.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2004/3/161037