PERRY, Ga. — Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled to uphold the conviction of the man found guilty of killing Sam Poss.
Six years ago, 18-year-old Sam Poss went missing. Investigators found his body a few days later, buried in the woods outside Perry.
Brandon Warren and Dakota White both testified that they stabbed and strangled Poss in White's car.
Brandon Warren was found guilty and given a life sentence without parole in May 2018.
Warren was convicted of malice murder, felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, concealing the death of another, and tampering with evidence.
"This isn't closure for me. It's a step. It's a step, but this doesn't bring Sam back," said Nicole Poss, Sam's mother, back in 2018.
Warren sought a new trial on the grounds that he was he had ineffective assistance from his attorney during the trial for not objecting to a prosecutor's statement and for failing to tell Warren not to testify.
He said his lawyer failed to object when the prosecutor said during his closing argument that the State’s burden of proof was “beyond a reasonable doubt—did not mean “to a mathematical certainty, not 95 percent, 85 percent.
The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that the prosecutor’s statement was inadvisable at best.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said, “The evidence of Warren’s guilt was strong: White’s testimony implicated Warren, and that testimony was largely consistent with Warren’s own testimony, differing only as to who had stabbed Poss—and the jury could have found Warren guilty based on all of that testimony as a party to the crime regardless of who had stabbed Poss.”
They added that DNA from the knives made it more likely that Warren stabbed Poss and that his lawyer not objecting to the statements made by the prosecutor, it was not “reasonably probable” that it impacted the outcome of the trial.
In 2021 when Warren began the process of fighting his conviction, Nicole Poss said, "Sadly, we knew this day was coming because that's what happens after a guilty verdict, but it brings it all up.
She added, "There's so much love out there and so much love in the community. That's the only thing some days that gets me by, so thank y'all so much for loving Sam and loving us."
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