ATLANTA – Nine years after a teen allegedly killed a man who stopped to ask for directions, his murder conviction has been tossed because of a faulty search warrant.
The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday reversed the conviction of Avery Leon Bryant, who was 17 when prosecutors say he shot Newton Gordon in East Point in 2008.
The unanimous opinion says there was enough evidence to convict Bryant. But it says a key search warrant in the case wasn't valid because it didn't state with "particularity" what was to be seized.
The justices found there was a "reasonable probability" of a different outcome if the evidence had been excluded.
A spokesman for Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard didn't immediately respond to an email asking whether Howard would seek to retry Bryant.
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