SCOGA overturns Barrow Co. man's murder conviction

ATLANTA - A Barrow County man convicted of murder in the July 26, 2011 death of his wife has had that conviction reversed by the Supreme Court of Georgia.<br /> <br /> In a unanimous decision Monday, the high court ruled that the trial judge was wrong to refuse to allow James Lynn's attorneys to present evidence that his wife Tonya Lynn was having two extramarital affairs at the time she was killed. Lynn contended that his wife taunted him by telling him she was having sex with two other men.<br /> <br /> James Lynn admitted that he struck his wife with a baseball bat minutes after she told him of her infidelity. She was killed, and James Lynn confessed he hid his wife's body in a well after her death.<br /> <br /> James Lynn's attorneys said their client should have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and not murder, which would mean a lesser prison sentence. James Lynn was sentenced to a life prison term without parole for the murder conviction.<br /> <br /> A statement issued by the Supreme Court of Georgia Monday said, under the law, voluntary manslaughter is considered a less serious crime than murder. Georgia Code § 16-5-2 says that a person commits voluntary manslaughter when he kills someone but "acts solely as the result of a sudden, violent, and irresistible passion resulting from serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a reasonable person."

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