Ga. Supreme Court rules on appeal from Columbus man who killed pregnant girlfriend
When his pregnant girlfriend checked her phone and tried to leave his 23rd Street home at 4:30 a.m., a jealous Jovan Elshawn Thompson put a gun to her left temple and pulled the trigger.
Then he rushed her to the hospital and left her, not sticking around to tell emergency room staff she was seven months pregnant. Doctors detecting the unborn child still alive delivered the baby through an emergency cesarean section.
When police caught up with Thompson, still covered in blood, he at first told them 22-year-old Sarahonica Thrasher was hit in a drive-by shooting. When informed she had a contact wound from the gun barrel’s being pressed to her head, he changed his story to say the weapon fired accidentally while he was trying to engage the safety.
That was on June 6, 2008. A year later a Columbus jury found Thompson guilty of murder, attempted feticide and two counts of using a gun to commit a crime. Superior Court Judge John Allen sentenced him to life in prison.
Last year Thompson appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, claiming he should get a new trial because of errors such as bringing his character into question by allowing the jury to hear “irrelevant, unfairly prejudicial” evidence Thompson tried to flush marijuana down the toilet right before his arrest.
He argued also that the jury should have been told he faced a mandatory life sentence if convicted.
In a decision announced Tuesday, the state Supreme Court rejected his appeal and upheld his conviction and sentence.
The prosecution, represented by District Attorney Julia Slater and the Georgia Attorney General, argued Thompson’s flushing marijuana before the police found it was evidence of his guilty conscience.
Countering Thompson’s claim the jury should have been told he faced a life sentence if convicted, prosecutors cited the 1982 Georgia Supreme Court precedent Camp v. State, ruling that in all felony cases which don’t involve the death penalty, “it is error to allow the jury to have the issue of the consequences of the possible verdicts before it while considering guilt and innocence.”
Now 32, Thompson began serving his life sentence on Aug. 12, 2009. He currently is in the Dooly State Prison in Unadilla, according to the state Department of Corrections.