Lee v. State

── Lee v. State ── Court: Supreme Court of Georgia Date: May 19, 2026 Category: General NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and official text of the opinion. In the Supreme Court of Georgia No. S25G0768 Jahsiah Lee v. The State On Writ of Certiorari from the Court of Appeals of Georgia No. 20SC177024 Argued: January 20, 2026  Decided: May 19, 2026 PINSON, Justice. The Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act makes it a crime for “any person employed by or associated with a criminal street gang to conduct or participate in criminal gang activity through the commission of” certain crimes. OCGA § 16-15-4(a). This provision does not make it a crime merely to commit one of those specified crimes while being a member of a gang. Instead, it requires the State to prove a so-called “nexus” between the de- fendant’s crime and the gang — that is, that the defendant com- mitted one of those crimes with the intent to further the criminal purposes of the gang. See Rodriguez v. State, 284 Ga. 803, 807 (2009). We granted review in this case to consider whether it is error for a trial court to instruct a jury that this nexus element can be met merely by proof that the defendant’s crime was the “type” or “sort” of crime that members of the gang commit, as the trial court’s instruction below told the jury (and as the suggested pattern instruction indicates). We now conclude that such an in- struction does not correctly state the law. As we explain below, to find the nexus element met, a jury must find that the defendant committed the crime at issue with the intent to further the crim- inal purposes of the gang. In a given case, that ultimate finding might well be inferred from evidence that the defendant commit- ted the same “type” or “sort” of crime that members of the gang commit. But such evidence is not, by itself, conclusive proof that the defendant committed his crime with the intent to further the gang’s criminal purposes. So a jury instruction that tells the jury that the nexus element is proved by evidence that the defendant committed the “type” or “sort” of crime that the gang commits, without more, is not a correct statement of the law. Because that was the import of the challenged instruction here, even viewed in the context of the jury instructions as a whole, the judgment be- low is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 1. Background Jahsiah Lee was charged with several crimes in connection with an armed robbery. One of those charged crimes was partici- pation in criminal gang activity in violation of OCGA § 16-15-4, which makes it a crime for “any person employed by or associated with a criminal street gang to conduct or participate in criminal gang activity through the commission of” offenses listed in a neighboring statute, OCGA § 16-15-3(1). At trial, the trial court instructed the jury that to prove Lee was guilty of this offense, the State had to prove (among other things) “that there is a