Everritt v. Georgia
Supreme Court of Georgia
588 S.E.2d 691 (2003)
Raymond Everritt (defendant), John McDuffie, James Weeks, and Roosevelt Cox agreed to burn down Everritt's service station to collect insurance proceeds. McDuffie, Weeks, and Cox set the fire, but the insurer refused to pay. When Cox began telling friends that Everritt had promised him $1,500 for starting the fire and was reneging, McDuffie -- worried Cox would expose the scheme -- killed Cox with an axe three months after the fire, and Weeks helped dispose of the body. Nearly nine years later, Everritt was tried for Cox's murder based partly on Weeks's testimony that Everritt gave McDuffie new tires to disguise his truck and told Weeks to stay quiet. Everritt was convicted and moved for a directed verdict, which the trial court denied.
Whether a conspirator is criminally liable for a co-conspirator's murder of a third person committed to cover up the original conspiracy, when the murder was not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of that conspiracy.